With the announcement of the coin-op Xbox 360 console, the Arcade Station T2, we hearken back to one of the most amazing evenings of my life. But first, the T2. This is basically a licensed console with two 360 controllers hanging off of it that will play any game including multi-player mode. No official availability or price.
That said, this reminded me of the my favorite gaming memory. Come back with me to 1987 or so. A young man walks into a pizza parlor with his parents and sister. There, near an old Galaga machine sits something uniquely odd. It seems to be playing Super Mario Brothers in demo mode. It was the Play Choice 10, a magnificent mess featuring ten games stuck into a coin-op cabinet. That boy put in a quarter and began to play SMB. A few seconds later he was out a quarter. Good God! What infernal machine is this? Who dares suggest that I am an impotent SMB player.
I learned a lot that day. I learned that I wasn’t very good at coin-op video games. I learned that I wasn’t good at video games, period. And I learned that you should never, ever play exact console versions of video games on a coin-op console. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.