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.
My parents didn't have money to spare like that, and we didn't go out much, so in those brief moments I would watch others play arcade games. Cringe as it is one of my best memories growing up was watching some college kids play those simulated race car games with the actual steering wheel and everything. Was young enough it was just fun to sit there and watch the demo too.