Great article RoG!!! You brought back some memories. I remember seeing the Discs of Tron game at a mall one time but i never had a chance to play it. Back in 2003 there was a video game exhibit that came to San Antonio called Videotopia. It was about the history of video games and at the end of the exhibit was an arcade that had a plethora of cabinet games old and new. I finally got to play Discs of Tron there and enjoyed every minute of it. Keep up the good work, looking forward to the halloween season!!!

You shoudl've gone to MAGIC MOUNTAIN

there is a place pretty similar to this in the northern chicago suburbs called nickel city... added bonus: everything costs a nickel... or 2 nickels... or some amount of nickels.

oh arcades... how fun you are.

Shit, I don't think there are ANY publicly playable arcade games within at least 25-30 miles from me. All the good places closed years ago.

Rog found Eden!

There aren't enough arcades in Houston. The arcade I live closest to is a Tilt at Memorial City Mall. A sheer majority of the games are ones that give out tickets, and the only games that I ever play there are MvC2 and Soul Calibur II.

excellent. it's nice to see SNK's Super Spy existing in an MVS Cab nowadays. i even have the music from the soundtrack in my iPod.

I've actually been to this arcade twice, one last summer and once just this last winter. To me it just seemed... run down. Lots of the games were either shut off or had broken screens/controls. Tron was one of these :(

I did have some fun with Skeeball, and Hercules Pinball, even though since it was a regular sized ball getting falls was a lot easier. The Air hockey was messed up too :-/

-RoG-, you should write some kind of text on video games. As a young historian from generation Y, I am a little too young to have experienced these arcade games growing up. I really think in 10-20 years time people will look back on the beginnings of video games and want to understand their growth from the perspective of someone who lived through it. I love reading your articles on video games, its like a mini-history lesson on the subject.

Wow, that's actually pretty awesome. All the arcades in my city have been shut down (to my knowledge) but a 20 minute drive can get me to one. And it has the mammoth X-Men machine too. :)

This comic store I go to used to have that X-Men machine, but it's gone now cause they needed the extra space :( Nice article.

I'm only through page three of this, and I've already got a massive hard-on due to seeing such classic gaming cabinets. Please -RoG- don't let me get flaccid here...

OH MY GOD, I JUST BUST A VIDEO GAME NUT!!!!

Dude, that arcade rocks! I wish the one I used to frequent in my youthful days didn't close (it's now a sports bar - ugh!).

*cues up Forever MAME*

The thing that makes me want to cry the most is the thought that probably 90% of these games were available in my boring small-town mall arcade when I was a kid...I will never forget going there and having my dad literally get these little metal stools that they had for little kids to stand on so I could play the games. TRON, the Discs of TRON cabinet, the air hockey table, 4-player TMNT, so much pinball...

Man, you never realize what you had until it's gone. As sucky as that mall was...actually, it wasn't sucky. It was awesome. I'd trade all the GAPs and Bed Bath and Beyond's and Targets to get just one day at the Susquehanna Valley Mall in 1984.

Man that place looks great. I hate to revisit the arcades of my youth to find the classics games replaced with penny slot/shelf machines and grab a toy thingies. But it's always great when you find somewhere that managed to keep hold of some of the old classics in good condition, they're only going to get more rare from now so you gotta pump the coins in when you get a chance

Great Article! Seeing that disks of Tron Cab was outrageous fortune- Almost worth the drive just to catch that!

Would've been cool if they also had Baby Pac-Man...the one where it's half actual pac man game and half pinball. I saw a Discs of Tron cabinet ONE TIME in my life, and that was at some water park a long (15+ years) time ago...I never played it though...Street Fighter 2 had JUST come out and had a far stronger hold on me. what the hell did it play like?

Damn thats awesome, usually people are too fucking stupid to keep their old machines in working order and open to the public, cheers to super bear, I wanna go!

Old machines are what retro dreams are made of. That and 8-Bit pixels.

I havePlay Doh cologne, and I love it. The boyfriend doesn't find it as delightful as I do.

I tried the Crayon and regretted it. It smells like dust and wax, they got that part right...but not like crayon.

I cannot believe I've not seen this article until now, god damn I wish I had a decent arcade even remotely close to where I live.

I just came across this article myself, brings back alot of memories. There was an arcade next town over called Hangar 18 that had alot of the current (at the time) games... I even remember a tabletop Crystal Castles game there. I got to play Hercules at an arcade/video store nearby years ago that also had Darkstalkers and the X-Men arcade game (it's now a cowboy gear outfitters place, after having been a pawn shop, also). The only arcade near me now is a Tilt that has pretty much the same stuff that was listed above, plus a bunch of light gun games like House of the Dead and CarnEvil.

When I die I want to be flown over to the U.S. and buried there. I call Colossus on 6 player X Men.