Re: Local arcades back in the day
Posted by:
JLC
()
Date: January 22, 2016 12:10AM
More memories
Foosball; the table sat at the Fairfax location barely ever being played for a long time. Foos just wasn't popular at Fairfax initially. But there was a period where there were no new games nor pinball, so we started playing it to fill time. Our table sucked, and had the slippery plastic balls. We didn't know any different, so we played with what we had. We heard that the Falls Church Playtime had a bunch of tables, and "the guys over there are really good".
What we didn't know is that Falls Church had good tables (Tornado and/or Dynamo tables), and used cork balls. Cork balls play COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY than the crappy plastic ones that we used. You can't grip plastic, you just knock it around. We did get very good at that style of play, but we'd think we were pretty good, then travel to Falls Church to show how much better we had gotten, to get our asses handed to us by the lowest tier of Falls Church player. See, you weren't allowed to play the "good" guys until you had bested the lower level minions first, that's just the way it was back then.
So we'd go home with our tails between our legs, and in another 3-4 months of practice have ourselves convinced we had improved enough to change the result, where the outcome would repeat again just like the last time. ;-)
Really the problem was that Dosky wouldn't pay for good cork balls (which wear out), while the plastic ones last virtually forever because they are hard as rocks, LOL. The Falls Church guys KNEW they wanted the good tables and balls, and simply demanded them. We were too ignorant to know any better, so we got stuck with the cheap stuff.
I ended up going to NOVA and eventually UVA, but not for a few years. By then the video game thing was out of my system, and if there were any games at Manassas or Annandale NVCC, I never noticed them.
But another funny couple stories. Dosky was the cheapest bstd I think I ever knew in my 50 years of existence on this planet. But he would every 3-4 months give me a handful of tokens from Chuck E Cheese. See, kids would use the CEC tokens at OTHER arcades, a lot of the arcades were set up similarly. It ended up being a pretty funny side event to the arcade business.
The way it normally went was you could use quarters in the machines if you were a NEWB, but if you bought TOKENS for the machines, you normally got 4/$1 instead of just the 4. But at most arcades you got 25 tokens for $5. So you were a moron if you used quarters.
Anyways, the Dosky's used to get SO PISSED that kids were using the CEC or Showbiz tokens at the Playtime arcade(s), because it meant they were playing Playtime games without spending any money AT Playtime for Playtime tokens.
Of course, we returned the favor, where we would use the tokens that Dosky gave or sold us (at a discount LMAO) back at the other arcades. Some machines would not accept the "wrong" tokens, but a surprising number of them would, especially if (WHEN) you figured out what technique to put the token in so it would be accepted.
We were using so many Playtime and CEC tokens at the Showbiz place near Woodson HS, they were REALLY pissed and onto us about it. They had a few new games that Playtime didn't have, because the Dosky's would wait until the game was 6mos old (and cheaper) before actually buying one. But Showbiz bought the new ones immediately. So it was a game for around 18mos of us trying to use the tokens, and them trying to catch us. It was hilarious to flirt with the girls there (they were super cute), and then go play a game, and as soon as the game was over the manager would run over to the machine, open the coinbox up, to try and bust us using a Playtime token. Only to find we had used a Showbiz token knowing they were going to check. ;-)
Gaming strategy in it's earliest forms!
Eventually we got lazy and got caught, and were banned from coming back.
Another funny story; one of the girls (I'll call her "B" for now) at Showbiz was always flirting with everyone (She was hot too) I didn't find out until I went to college that she was actually the girlfriend of one of my best friends at college. But before I knew him at UVA she wound up giving chlamydia to half of Fairfax (luckily I never experienced that one) over that time period, including my buddy! LMAO