Actual Arcade Thread

[shaft.ed]

7-8 year old shaft.ed shoveled my entire life savings into the Bad Dudes arcade game and got severely grounded when my parents found out about it (not for the money, but because I lied and was telling them I went to the park and instead went to the arcade, repeatedly. Yeah in the 80s kids could do stuff without parents. Crazy shit).

I played it again later as a teen and, my god what a horrible game. I have no idea how me and the kid next door got hooked on it. There were definitely better options available

[shaft.ed]

OMG
I'm so disappointed in my child self
the plotline was rescuing Ronald Reagen

In the English version, after the Bad Dudes defeat the Dragon Ninja, they celebrate by eating hamburgers with President Ronnie. At the very end, President Ronnie is seen holding a burger while standing between the Bad Dudes.

also wtf is that foreshadowing?

[shaft.ed]

On a family vacation, my parents sent me to get ice. Next to the ice machine was an Addams Family pinball machine. I checked the machine in case someone had left credits on it. See, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents growing up. Since they came of age during the great depression, the majority of our interactions involved saving money in any way possible. My grandmom would go through the circulars and clip coupons. She'd shop at the grocery store on Monday when they honored triple coupons. We'd sometimes buy soda and cereal for free. (there's a whole other story in here about the evaporated cans of cream soda). Being a fashionable lady, she didn't like wearing her reading glasses in the grocery store, so I'd sometimes go with her to make sure she was picking out the right brands for her coupons. Driving was also an activity Grandmom didn't like wearing her glasses for, so on Saturday morning (in lieu of watching my cartoons mind you), she'd take me yard saling so I could read the street signs for her. I'd watch her haggle over a nickel in price for a piece of pottery marked 25 cents that would just go in a box when we got home never to be seen again. With my Pop-pop, we'd go down to the boardwalk on Sunday mornings and walk the pier. You'd think we'd be enjoying the views of the early morning sun up over the beach and ocean. But no, we had our heads straight down at the ground, visually sifting through litter and cigarette butts the entire walk. We were hunting for loose change people dropped and abandoned in the darkness and the hustle and bustle of Saturday night at the boardwalk. We'd even collect arcade tickets that we planned to cash out for a big stuffed animal or maybe even a bike one day. There were thousands of arcade tickets and tokens in their closets that when we cleaned out the house after my Pop-pop passed. The arcades were long closed down or had changed hands, so we never did do anything with our fortune. Let this be a warning to all you bitcoiners out there. Occasionally we'd even score a bill walking the boardwalk on Sunday mornings. What we did with the haul was unusual. My grandparents weren't big spenders. Most of their money stayed in the purse or went to Atlantic City to fund the casinos. But we'd use the change towards our weekly Dunkin Donuts. These and occasional Slurpees were the indulgements granted during the summer. I guess we'd sometimes go miniature golfing where I'd get hit on the head by the windmill but that another other story. This was back when they had the long cream and Boston cream donuts. Think they call them Long John's now, but they're different. They used to be almost baggy, like a sack made out of dough and 'cream' pouring out of them. There was a toothsomeness cutting your incisors through the dough. We'd get a bakers dozen for the week, three for me, three for my brother, three for my grandma, three for my Pop-pop, and I don't really remember what happened to the thirteenth donut. We'd make fun of Pop-pop because he liked the old school dry donuts that to kid me were nearly inedible and had to be rehydrated in his coffee prior to every bite. So what does any of this have to do with the Addams Family pinball machine? Well, once a year we actually went to the boardwalk when you were meant to go, at night. The arcades were after the free samples of saltwater taffy or fudge. Of course we hit those coming and going. In the arcade, whenever you passed by a machine, you checked it for an unused credit. The joy of finding a free game or a life or an unhurled skeeball for free was better than playing the games themselves. Cause we weren't really allowed to play any of the video games. We'd get a game or two of skeeball and that was the arcade. So that fateful day in Orlando, next to the ice machine, I walked up to the Addams Family pinball machine, hit that credit button with a small bit of hope noticing it illuminated. And all those years of training paid off with the launch of that chrome sphere. I obviously ignored my quest for ice at this time, there was pinball to be played. The previous player had a left a pretty good score. I quickly hit a free ball and I remember the multiball being quite straightforward to trigger. I played that first ball for a good 30 minutes or so. By this time, my brother had been sent out to check on me, but he would remain next to the ice machine, watching the action. I think I let him play one of the free balls I accrued. In the end I played for around 40-60 minutes, and we had set a high score (probably largely due to the points already on the machine when I found the extra ball). For the rest of our vacation, I'd check that machine for unused credits, but the magic was never recreated.

EDITORS note: The Addams Family pinball machine was released 5 years after our family vacation, so some of the details in this story might not be entirely accurate.

[shaft.ed]

So your post got me to read up on the Addams Family extra ball situation and it reads as though extra balls are pretty generous on it and its conceivable to collect an infinite loop of extra balls unless the machine is modified.
That might explain why there was a credit left on the machine