Couple stand out to me:
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Seeing Virtua Fighter for the first time back in what 1993 or so at an amusement park and being wowed by the graphics, thinking it was photo realistic.
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Seeing Mortal Kombat 2 on a big screen CRT cabinet and thinking I was going to go to hell because of the violence (lol).
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Playing X-Men with my dad and his friend and his kid on a 6 player machine that had widescreen, very cool for the time.
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Pumping endless quarters into Aliens vs Predator (one of my favorite arcade games).
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Seeing some dude beat Tekken Tag which I could never clear and thinking he was the coolest.
Arcades were great. A dream of mine is to visit a game center in Japan and play some of the classics on an actual machine.
DDR down at the putt-putt.
What came before was cool, TMNT at the pizza hut, etc. but DDR was peak.
Long lines for the machines, everybody having a great time.
People actually clapping when someone managed to get through a particularly hard song.
I have two left feet so I never could do DDR good, but I had fun with it!
DDR was the most athletic thing I had going for me back then lol. I can still hear Dark Black Forest and Butterfly in my head.