When We Were Young: A review of SNK Arcade Classics, Volume 1 |
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by the hammer of Jim Squires! |
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When most people think of the video arcade, they think of the early eighties. Those were the days of wine and roses (and Pac-Man). Of course it didn’t last very long. The bubble burst and, for the most part, the arcade scene died a quick and painful death. During my formative years however the arcade scene had a brief but successful resurgence. The early nineties saw a number of great titles that brought the popularity of quarter-munching electronic entertainment back to the forefront. Games like Street Fighter II, Lethal Enforcers, and the six-player X-Men Arcade ruled the day. But tucked away in the back of the arcade was one cabinet that few of us knew what to make of. It usually cost a little more than the rest, but it didn’t have just one game. You could choose from two, four, or — if your local arcade could afford it — up to six different games. The big red cabinet didn’t have much in the way of art to draw you in, just big white letters in a generic font . They read NEO-GEO. From the second I put my first fifty cents into that machine, I was in love.









