Couple stand out to me:
-
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.
-
Seeing Mortal Kombat 2 on a big screen CRT cabinet and thinking I was going to go to hell because of the violence (lol).
-
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.
-
Pumping endless quarters into Aliens vs Predator (one of my favorite arcade games).
-
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 mom would go to bowling league and she would watch me by handing me a pile of quarters and let me play fighting games. I didn't have a console for the longest time, so stuff like Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Ms. Pacman would be my main exposure to video games.