JoOngle
Member
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2011
- Messages
- 517
This is unlike National Lampoons vacation, a real story, since you guys are into the 80s and Joe Dante style movies, I'll write some of my childhood memories here from time to time, this time It's about my vacation to spain early 80s and how I got to fall in love with Arcade games.
My vacation to spain in the 80s as a 12yo kid
It was early summer, me and my family had planned to go to Spain on vacation. I've never been that far away from home so I was both nervous and excited at the same time.
When we landed, I was met with an unusual smell of spices in the air combined with a stream of hot air. It was the kind of hot air you'd get from an old furnace, not burning, but like a hot wind gently coressing your face, I was a kid, ready to explore and it was glorious.
The Hotel
We arrived at a 3 star hotel, it wasn't anything special, but there was something special about it, I got my very own room.
The clerk wasn't excited about that, he was angry and irritated, mumbling something about "spoiled brat" when handing over the keys to me after my parents.
I went in and was in holiday heaven, my own room in a strange city in an even stranger land. It was hot everywhere, and I instantly ran down to explore the city in the night time.
My parents didn't want me to go alone, but they were used to me exploring on my own and usually coming back safe back in my country, so they tagged along and ended up eating late night dinner at a restaurant.
I saw the local arcade as we passed by the restaurant, and I said I'll hang out in there, mom gave me a bunch of quarters (which in spains case would be a whole load of pesetas).
In there I saw good classics such as space invaders, they also had a colored version of it, with a huge Bassy Oompfy "Dun dun dun dun"... while the space invaders went across the screen. I played Galaxians, Galaga, pinball machines and ofc. those coin-pushing machines that was so popular in tourist spots. We didn't have that at home. I quickly noticed the scam, that the leftover coins on the side would not fall into the tray but a collection tray for the earnings inside the machine, this means that very few of the coins made it to the user-payout tray in front, most of it went into the side trays as the coins would get pushed aside.
I was an egoistic kid...
I had bought 5 lollipops from an vending machine, and lost them on the way, some kid came running after me with the candy and gave it to me.
My parents noted "what a nice kid", yeah I said.... and gladly took it back.
My grandmother noted that I was a bit egoistic, I should at least have shared 2 of them with the kid, which I didn't. This is something that scarred me a bit so I remember that till today, wonder if that shaped me to become kinder as an adult? Might have...
The joys of playing too much with a stick
I played at that arcade on my own every day while other kids were enjoying the beaches and the sea. So much in fact that I ended up with a sore nerve, so sore in fact that it got an infection, yes, this was me playing too much with the joysticks of those arcade machines, I remember the joy was winning over the hurt, but a whole lot of more pain was to come my way.
We went to the doctor, he said he could cure it, but I would have to take a syringe to the buttcheek, and oh boy did that hurt.
I could not sit for days, and then I thought of that kid I didn't share my candy with. remembering the words of my Grandma "You should have given that nice kid at least 2 of those"...
Bad karma had gotten me.
Back home, where the adventure really begins...
I could never quite get those arcade experiences out of my head, my head would remember the various cutsceene computer music that the various games played, and I was totally into that now.
One day I went past a computer store and saw a Commodore 64 in the window, I had no clue what that was, but it had a TV screen (A commodore monitor back then, but as a Kid I had NO clue). SO I went in.
The seller told me I could do anything I wanted, program my own stuff, play games and do school homework on it.
Wait...WAIT...you said games?
Well - said the seller, we don't really have any games for it yet, but you could program your own.
The Day that changed my entire life
It hit me like a bolt of lightning, the magic words a 12 year old kid of the 80s wanted to hear, an Arcade machine in my very own home - I can make MY OWN GAMES!
The next day I bothered my parents all the time, telling them all sorts of fantastical stories about this new thing, I would want this more than anything on the planet. Please, PLEASE, I'll deliver A million newspapers, cut all the lawns, I gotta have this!
My parents thought that Games meant Gambling - so to my ultra christian family this was a tool of the devil and wouldn't have it.
But christmas came, and my Grandmother had bought the machine of a magazine (computer magazine, international...but from MY town), and I was totally surprised by this.
It was more than christmas, it was a revelation, it was the beginning of my adventure that later in life would decide my entire future, what I work with, what I do for a living, well just about anything.
It was the childhood that defined who I am today.
More to come...
I'll end it with the beginning of the new adventure (you will read more in other posts if you like these sort of stories from the 80s).
I showed my computer to my local neighborhood kid, he was in theory my school bully, but we hung out when I was alone, because we were both very lonely so we always ended up playing together.
One day I coded a program in basic that makes random sentences as an answer to a question input by the user.
I told him that it could predict the future and answer questions. My neighbor and "sometimes bully" was easily fooled, and he was amazed by this, he was genuinely scared.
He totally freaked out when some of the answers that came - was very close to his truth, he freaked so much out he ran out of the house and later came back with an extensive list he wanted to ask the computer.
He was also afraid of ghosts, so when he asked if there was a prescence here, and the computer said "closer than you may think", he screamed and ran into the wall, I had to calm down my "bully".
My vacation to spain in the 80s as a 12yo kid
It was early summer, me and my family had planned to go to Spain on vacation. I've never been that far away from home so I was both nervous and excited at the same time.
When we landed, I was met with an unusual smell of spices in the air combined with a stream of hot air. It was the kind of hot air you'd get from an old furnace, not burning, but like a hot wind gently coressing your face, I was a kid, ready to explore and it was glorious.
The Hotel
We arrived at a 3 star hotel, it wasn't anything special, but there was something special about it, I got my very own room.
The clerk wasn't excited about that, he was angry and irritated, mumbling something about "spoiled brat" when handing over the keys to me after my parents.
I went in and was in holiday heaven, my own room in a strange city in an even stranger land. It was hot everywhere, and I instantly ran down to explore the city in the night time.
My parents didn't want me to go alone, but they were used to me exploring on my own and usually coming back safe back in my country, so they tagged along and ended up eating late night dinner at a restaurant.
I saw the local arcade as we passed by the restaurant, and I said I'll hang out in there, mom gave me a bunch of quarters (which in spains case would be a whole load of pesetas).
In there I saw good classics such as space invaders, they also had a colored version of it, with a huge Bassy Oompfy "Dun dun dun dun"... while the space invaders went across the screen. I played Galaxians, Galaga, pinball machines and ofc. those coin-pushing machines that was so popular in tourist spots. We didn't have that at home. I quickly noticed the scam, that the leftover coins on the side would not fall into the tray but a collection tray for the earnings inside the machine, this means that very few of the coins made it to the user-payout tray in front, most of it went into the side trays as the coins would get pushed aside.
I was an egoistic kid...
I had bought 5 lollipops from an vending machine, and lost them on the way, some kid came running after me with the candy and gave it to me.
My parents noted "what a nice kid", yeah I said.... and gladly took it back.
My grandmother noted that I was a bit egoistic, I should at least have shared 2 of them with the kid, which I didn't. This is something that scarred me a bit so I remember that till today, wonder if that shaped me to become kinder as an adult? Might have...
The joys of playing too much with a stick
I played at that arcade on my own every day while other kids were enjoying the beaches and the sea. So much in fact that I ended up with a sore nerve, so sore in fact that it got an infection, yes, this was me playing too much with the joysticks of those arcade machines, I remember the joy was winning over the hurt, but a whole lot of more pain was to come my way.
We went to the doctor, he said he could cure it, but I would have to take a syringe to the buttcheek, and oh boy did that hurt.
I could not sit for days, and then I thought of that kid I didn't share my candy with. remembering the words of my Grandma "You should have given that nice kid at least 2 of those"...
Bad karma had gotten me.
Back home, where the adventure really begins...
I could never quite get those arcade experiences out of my head, my head would remember the various cutsceene computer music that the various games played, and I was totally into that now.
One day I went past a computer store and saw a Commodore 64 in the window, I had no clue what that was, but it had a TV screen (A commodore monitor back then, but as a Kid I had NO clue). SO I went in.
The seller told me I could do anything I wanted, program my own stuff, play games and do school homework on it.
Wait...WAIT...you said games?
Well - said the seller, we don't really have any games for it yet, but you could program your own.
The Day that changed my entire life
It hit me like a bolt of lightning, the magic words a 12 year old kid of the 80s wanted to hear, an Arcade machine in my very own home - I can make MY OWN GAMES!
The next day I bothered my parents all the time, telling them all sorts of fantastical stories about this new thing, I would want this more than anything on the planet. Please, PLEASE, I'll deliver A million newspapers, cut all the lawns, I gotta have this!
My parents thought that Games meant Gambling - so to my ultra christian family this was a tool of the devil and wouldn't have it.
But christmas came, and my Grandmother had bought the machine of a magazine (computer magazine, international...but from MY town), and I was totally surprised by this.
It was more than christmas, it was a revelation, it was the beginning of my adventure that later in life would decide my entire future, what I work with, what I do for a living, well just about anything.
It was the childhood that defined who I am today.
More to come...
I'll end it with the beginning of the new adventure (you will read more in other posts if you like these sort of stories from the 80s).
I showed my computer to my local neighborhood kid, he was in theory my school bully, but we hung out when I was alone, because we were both very lonely so we always ended up playing together.
One day I coded a program in basic that makes random sentences as an answer to a question input by the user.
I told him that it could predict the future and answer questions. My neighbor and "sometimes bully" was easily fooled, and he was amazed by this, he was genuinely scared.
He totally freaked out when some of the answers that came - was very close to his truth, he freaked so much out he ran out of the house and later came back with an extensive list he wanted to ask the computer.
He was also afraid of ghosts, so when he asked if there was a prescence here, and the computer said "closer than you may think", he screamed and ran into the wall, I had to calm down my "bully".
