I was watching TV the other night and saw a show called Pawn Stars ( not what I originally thought but what can you expect in a 7:30 pm time slot), it was an interesting show but the thing that caught my eye was a guy selling an original 80's vintage Pacman video game table. I was more than a bit lucky growing up above our beachside corner store. This was for many reasons but in this case because we had several video games and pinball machines in the store and I was lucky enough to have a big bag of specially marked 20c pieces, this meant that I could play the games as much as I wanted and I got my coins back. Anyway back to the show, these guys from the Pawn shop bought the machine for $175 even though it was not in the best condition, they took it to another guy that is obviously more than mildly obsessed with these classic machines, he charged them about $350 but brought this amazing machine that gave me zoo much pleasure growing up back to almost new condition. I am sure that there would be a guy somewhere nearby that could do the same here all I need is to find an old Pacman or Asteroids machine to fix up.
Today games machines sit in almost everyone's lounge, whether it's a Wii, Playstation or whatever the games have improved but I don't think the social aspect of the old time video machine arcade can be replicated. Now, I'm not saying it was all perfect but the potential for kids to get locked inside endlessly playing the same game is not one that's going to help them in the future, unless they want to join the army (I still think that Call of Duty is the best recruitment tool the army's ever had)
Thanks for sticking with me through my nostalgic musings, I'd really like to hear your experiences with video games growing up and how do you think the newer types of game experience are going to influence our kids.
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