Introducing the next generation to a trip through gaming history
My 4-year-old daughter tends to offer illumination in some of the strangest places. I chalk this up to her unjaded and innocent mind being a wide open, sponging mechanism to everything under the sun.
It’s an absolute joy to let her take the lead and explore this brand new world for herself and in most cases these adventures wind-up as film scripts or short story fodder that fills up 90 percent of my filing cabinet.
This past month, I unleashed my critter upon the Chattanooga Film Festival for a day of cardboard mazes and food trucks. If you have not partaken in one of the greatest annual salutes to the filmmaking art form, then you are missing out on one of the best city events known to man! But I digress.
Vendors and supporters had their own tent at CFF and as my daughter tends to do, she went hog-wild meeting random people and geeking out on every blinking light and buzzing sound. That is when she found it, alone by a cardboard club house, a solitary gaming cabinet, a skull armed with tentacles bouncing inside a 16-bit side scrolling shooter. It called to her with an insidious siren’s song and as I watched her eyes glaze over in amazement, I too found myself in a dreamy trance.
Because in that instance I traveled back in time to my formative years as a dopey-eyed sprout ogling over a Galaga cabinet. I cannot remember how old I was; I cannot tell you what year, either. But clear as day, that looming colorful monstrosity of an angry intergalactic space crab ensnared me with its menacing metallic pincers and thus, a life-long gamer was born.
My daughter seized the joystick and wildly started the game up on an endless free play (thank goodness). She is a bit too short to be an effective gamer, but you can bet a slick nickel that dear-ole-dad became both stool and safety harness as she blasted demonic forces out of the sky with a jet plane armed with a shotgun and katana.
All the while, being half crouched holding up a 4-year-old, many questions came to me. Where did this cabinet come from, what storefront put this amazing distraction here, and why on earth have I not been there yet?
This is how I found myself on a Saturday night standing in the rain on the sidewalk off East Martin Luther King Boulevard staring into a dimly lit cavern of arcade goodness.
What I walked into was a trip down nostalgia road and for near three hours I bathed in the warm cabinet glow of hungry screens beckoning me to feed them my money.
So I ordered a can of Buffalo Sweat and ceremoniously split a roll of quarters three ways with two of my gaming squad-mates and together we button mashed ourselves into a frenzy of profanity and stories from childhood.
The Coin-Op has been on my radar for some time and many of my local friends go there on the way to JJ’s Bohemia or to hang out with a beer and catch up on local goings on. It’s a bit cramped on space but for the most part on a Saturday night, the crowd was polite and easygoing. About what you would expect going anywhere in Chattanooga.
Bouts of Mario Cart and Super Smash Brothers dominated a projection screen. It’s a lot of fun watching players duke it out like we did in our living rooms so long ago. And oh the pinball, the beautiful pinball machines neatly lined up in all their blinking greatness of the by-gone years I remember fondly.
My friends and I cozied up with a Sega Dreamcast nestled in the corner of the bar and took turns thumping each other relentlessly with some game called Power Stone. A humbling experience because for the most part Dreamcast never found its way into my hands and the bulky hell that is the controller is kind of a nightmare to manipulate.
All in all, The Coin-Op Arcade is a sweet little hangout reminiscent of the arcades I remember as a kid. It would be downright criminal to not drop in to give those quarters burning holes in your couch a new home.
If anything, round up a few buddies and get down with some pinball and arcade gaming the way God intended: with a few drinks and a plenty of good memories.
When not vaporizing zombies or leading space marines as a mousepad Mattis, Brandon Watson is making gourmet pancakes and promoting local artists.