I think I was truly one of the first real “gamers” when it comes to Video games.
Back in 1979 at the tender age of Fifteen I took my first real job ever at an Arcade. I’m not sure you can call it a real job if you get paid in quarters, but I worked about 15 hours a week and played games for another 10 at least.
Back in those days we had Defender, Pacman, Centipede, Missile Command and of course, Asteroids.
At home I had an Apple 2 computer and even wrote my own missile command code.. But the Arcades and pizza joints were pretty much the best place to play games.
Now I really don’t consider myself a conceited person, or a braggart. But around this time, I became really proficient at Asteroids. Scarily proficient actually, I’m not sure it’s good to talk about this stuff at my age but even after 25 years, people still remember me playing the game.
On a typical Friday night at the local pizza place I’d have 5-10 people watching me play Asteroids.
Why did they watch? Because I rarely if ever lost a ship. My record was 90 minutes without being killed.
It got to the point that the owner of the Pizza place turned off the power in the building to get me off the machine.. Not once.. Not twice… but three times.
When taking on the dreaded little ships, I rarely if ever, had to fire more than one shot.. It was sick to watch.
You see I had my own little racket going. I would load up the screen with Free Ships and then sell them to the people watching me play.. Intead of spending 25 Cents for 3 ships, I’d sell them 10 ships for 25 Cents..
The longest I ever played the game in one sitting was six hours on a single quarter..
I could have played indefinitely, and what was really funny was when you walk in to a place and there would be a guy who had the high score on the machine. I would drop a quarter in, and watch the expression on his face change from smug to pissed to awe..
Was I the Best Asteroids Player ever? I’ll never know for sure but I do know that no one could have beaten me.. not a chance.
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