After losing my last Famicom in my quest for skipping levels in Star Wars, my gaming hobbies were stifled a bit. This was the time when some of my classmates introduced me to the arcades. So to the arcades we went and games were a plenty. I was already familiar with the arcades years before this; our family would go to SM North Edsa as a stop over whenever we went to Laguna or back to Pampanga, and the arcades back then was conveniently placed in the food court area. Since my loving console is gone, I now have a new purpose for loose change other than tinkering with the light gun socket.
There were only two games in the arcades in those times that I remember particularly and they were fairly common: Street Fighter II and all its iterations, and Mortal Kombat 1 & 2. There were other titles that elude my memory (lots of games in the arcades that I enjoyed had a Famicom port anyway) because I never paid that much attention to them; Fighting games were my obsession. Player vs. player matches were common those days and I had my fair share of battles, usually with some kid from another school. The only characters I used in Street Fighter are Ryu or Ken, even now with Street Fighter IV, they are the only characters I play. With Mortal Kombat, I played Liu Kang and no other. I guess that’s my style of play, I specialize and I rarely deviate from the style of play I enjoy. It will become evident as I grow older specially w/ role-playing games.
Regularly going to the arcades was actually just a short stint for me. It didn’t last as long as a whole year as far as I can remember. I still play on an arcade machine every now and then just for kicks, specially when I’m in the mall and I have some spare time and loose change. That’s about it for the arcades; it was quickly overshadowed by a new game machine I saw – the SNES.
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