Flashback Friday: Arcades

It’s 198X. After a long week of school– between classwork, homework, and dodging bullies– visits to the arcade were the elixir that I needed to keep me going.

Sometimes, it was a trip to a place with arcade games, rather than a traditional arcade. A pool hall. A convenience store. A diner or restaurant. A bowling alley. Whatever was within reasonable walking distance from where I was living at the time was fine– but on the weekends when I would stay with my paternal grandparents, it was often a legit arcade that I would visit… and, to paraphrase Shao Kahn from the Mortal Kombat: Annihilation film: It was glorious.

The photo at the beginning of this piece is of Just Fun, an arcade located in the Fairfield Mall in Chicopee, Massachusetts. It’s a later photo, though still early enough to be fuzzy, and shows the entranceway. My first experience there was with a game called Star Fire, an Exidy game from 1979 that absolutely rips off Star Wars. I was just 7 years old, but remember playing it on short visits. It was during the 1980s, especially during the middle and late 1980s, that my time spent there was so meaningful.

Visits were usually on Friday nights, and often preceded by a visit to Friendly’s to fuel up before my gaming time would begin. Armed with $5, or 20 tokens, I was off to play my favorite games and check out new ones. Atari’s Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back games were frequent plays. Dragon’s Lair was, too– and while it was the first game I ever “beat” there, I had previously accomplished that feat at another Just Fun location in nearby Holyoke. There was a Discs of TRON deluxe sit-down cabinet located toward the rear of the arcade, adjacent to the arcade employee office, that always captivated me.

This Just Fun also had some games that I only played there. For whatever reason, this location was rich with Bally/Sente games. Hat Trick, for example, is a 1v1 (with goalies) hockey game that I spent more than a few tokens on. Trivial Pursuit, based on the board game, is a game that showed I wasn’t as smart as I thought. Name That Tune was based on the game show of the same name– which I watched at home often. Gimme a Break and Sente Mini Golf were also there.

It wasn’t just about video games, either. Just Fun visits got me into pinball. I spent a lot of time watching and playing High Speed, a machine that I became skilled enough in that I consistently could outscore adults. That passed on to other machines, like F-14 Tomcat, Big Guns, Twilight Zone, Comet, Pin*Bot, and more. There was a rotation of machines, since pinball had a smaller base as compared to video games, so I got to experience different machines over the years.

Spending time in that arcade shielded me, at least temporarily, from what was a difficult childhood. “Nerds” weren’t as accepted in society back then, so social life at school was rough. My home life wasn’t great, either, living with my understandably and constantly angry divorced mother and two younger siblings that I was often responsible for. When I was inside of those Just Fun walls, my mother wasn’t yelling at me and I wasn’t getting told that I was going to get beaten up. It was a safe zone that I so desperately needed.

The mall closed in 2001. I was just shy of 30, and had long since moved on from it, instead spending time at the Holyoke Mall. The closure still stung, though— it was probably the first one that hit me hard because I could never go back. (The same feeling would hit several times over as the years passed and other landmarks of my childhood vanished.) Losing that mall, and that arcade, felt like parts of my life disappeared. I can only recall from memories what it was like, and as my age advances, putting those memories into words becomes very important. A time will come when I can’t remember things as clearly, as accounts such as this may be all I have.