The late 80s and early 90s arcade scene was pure laissez-faire. Everything was pay-to-play, and there were clear winners and losers. You want the high score? You want to see your initials in neon sitting atop the leaderboard? Then you better have the quarters. In addition to quarters, you better have the time.
Alternatively, you could have been some kind of wunderkind that blew away the high score on a single quarter. In my experience, that never happened. Not once. I don’t mean it never happened to me, though it certainly didn’t. I mean I’ve never seen it happen to anyone nor heard of it happening to anyone. I spent a fair amount of time around arcades, full-blown ones and little mini ones… and never saw one wunderkind. What I saw were a bunch of kids determined to spend time and treasure to hold that top spot.
DREAMS OF ARCADE STARDOM
The first massive arcade I ever encountered independently was called Wonderama. It was a huge space located up Pennsylvania Avenue, the main commercial drag in my neighborhood. Wonderama featured every legendary game you could imagine. They had Donkey Kong, Galaga, Double Dragon, Centipede, Q*bert, and no definitive list of Gen X arcade games is complete without Ms. Pac-Man. In addition to the glowing cabinets, they featured pinball machines and a Blimpies counter inside where you could purchase sub sandwiches. Except we didn’t call them subs in New York. We called them heroes.
The first few times I visited Wonderama, I was with my older siblings. I did exactly what all broke kids did back then. If a machine was temporarily unoccupied, I would stand in front of the running demonstration screen and pretend I was actively playing the game. I would wiggle the joystick and slam the plastic buttons, desperately hoping some passing kid would see me killing it before the Insert Coin screen flashed back into view. If that warning screen popped up and you were still faking it, the jig was up once it did. The other kids would know you were either slightly crazy or carrying a pocket full of lint. Either way, the look was not a good one.
Usually, right before that Insert Coin text reappeared, the coveted leaderboards would take over the screen. If you were standing in front of Galaga, the matrix looked something like this:
And so on.
After a while, playing those demonstration screens and trying not to be identified as crazy or broke, I began to notice a distinct pattern. Most kids who held the high score usually occupied a few slots in the Top Ten. There would normally be two or three local heavyweights going neck-and-neck, followed by a minor drop-off before the mid-tier names took over. Who were these amazing kids crushing these games? I wondered. How on earth were they doing it? The few times I sacrificed a quarter of my own I scored roughly a thousand points before being blown to smithereens. Clearly, the machine was rigged.
Then I noticed something else. Once the truly great players sat down at a game, they didn’t get up. They would play a round, land somewhere on the leaderboard, punch their initials into the system, drop another quarter into the slot, and do the entire thing over again. This was commitment in its rawest form.
It was the same dynamic with the pinball machines. The kids who dominated the silver balls were completely committed to their labor. The few casual pinball players I knew, including myself, simply weren’t very good. At some point, the reality became undeniable: if I wanted to post my name somewhere on that first page of initials, it was going to take a lot of quarters.
In my household, quarters were a little bit hard to come by. When I did manage to secure one, I had to ask myself a serious question. Was I genuinely willing to drop it into the quarter graveyard masquerading as a video game for underwhelming results? Once I made that choice, would I be okay with knowing I wouldn’t be seeing another one for a while? These were internal questions that I actively wrestled with.
Then there was the dilemma of what else I might get from that quarter if I opted out of the video game. A kid with a quarter could do substantial damage at the corner store in those days.
If only there were a way I could get some extra quarters. Perhaps then I could display the requisite amount of dedication to reach the top—or at least get on the first page. I could already see those big, blocky initials beaming from the glass:
I, too, could be a God of the Arcade, if only I could get my hands on some extra silver, was my thought. Soon enough, I devised a plan to execute my vision. It would require ingenuity, hard work, and a small amount of sneakiness.
THE SILVER-PLATED PLAN
On the corner of my block in Brooklyn, there was a grocery store called Mets. I frequently saw kids my age hanging around the registers, bagging groceries for the customers. Normally, these were some of the more industrious, unsupervised kids in the neighborhood. That description did not apply to me—at least not yet. I was still heavily protected and kept on a short leash. But I figured that if I could slip away and bag groceries for just a few hours, I would make out okay with a handful of silver.
One afternoon, following a half-day schedule at school, I crafted an alibi and made my way over to the grocery store. The scene at the registers appeared highly disorganized to an untrained eye, but my eye was trained. I had observed the street hierarchy many times before I finally made my move.
The system operated on strict territorial rules. There were the regulars—established kids whose operations you did not lean on if you valued your safety. Then there were the older kids who could easily manage two checkout lanes simultaneously; if you tried to jump onto an open register, they would quickly remind you that they were working both stations. But generally, if you showed up and waited patiently, you could find a few open slots. I figured out the absolute best time to strike was when the regulars went after the big-ticket jobs, like helping an elderly customer wheel their heavy shopping cart all the way home.
The moment they left their stations, it was perfectly acceptable to step in and handle the bags until they returned. The regulars naturally monopolized the busiest registers, which meant I could secure some quick change during their absence. That afternoon, I spent about two hours bagging groceries using that exact rotation strategy. Before long, my pockets were so heavily weighed down with loose change that I became genuinely terrified someone would jump me for the loot. I wrapped up the operation, exited the store, and headed home to count the profits. Emptying my pockets onto the bed, I felt like I possessed every denomination of coin known to man. When the dust settled, I had earned over eight dollars in a single afternoon.
It was the very first independent money I had ever pulled down in my life. I still don’t completely know how an eight-year-old kid mustered the courage to pull that off. It was terrifying territory.
Then the realization came that I had to get rid of the money before I was found out, and I mean all of it. How could I explain leaving home flat broke and returning loaded with silver? Hey Everyone… I know I told you all I was at the after-school program but I was actually at the corner grocery making my bones. I have four dollars to show for it so hopefully that can buy me a pardon. I didn’t think that defense would go over too well with my parents.
Luckily, I possessed a spectacular plan to liquidate my newfound wealth. I would distribute it one by one into the quarter graveyard, and my reward would be immortality on the screen.
I wasn’t reckless enough to travel all the way up to Wonderama with my illicit bounty, so I decided to start small. There was a local pizza shop up New Lots Avenue that housed a few arcade cabinets. I could slip in there, dominate the machines, and get my initials up where they belonged. I possessed the dedication, the cash, and a little bit of stolen time. I figured Ms. Pac-Man was a nice, easy target to exploit.
One by one, my quarters got swallowed up like Ghosts after Pac-Man had digested his power pellets. I couldn’t get any further than a board or two past the very first cartoon break scene. If you know anything about the game, you know that performance is abysmal. My initials ended up so far down the leader screen that the only way I was ever reaching the top spot was if the machine featured a Sort Descending option. It didn’t.
I came to my senses with a little over four dollars in change still jingling in my pockets. Standing there on the tile floor, I realized right then and there that I simply did not possess the right stuff for video game stardom. I decided there was a much better way to dispose of the remaining evidence with significantly less frustration. I summoned my inner Theodore from Alvin and the Chipmunks and decided to spend it on food. A pepperoni slice with extra cheese and a fountain drink. I sat in the pizza shop and devoured it. What remained of the grocery store money was a small enough handful of coins that I felt comfortable smuggling it past the front door, confident I could easily explain away a few stray cents if I happened to get questioned.
THE SONIC BOOM LESSON
The lesson from the arcade is more of a brutal truth, the one lesson in Xessentialism that comes with a built-in thud like a sonic boom. The arcade was the perfect microcosm of achieving goals in a pay-to-play society.
Today’s games, you sign up and spell your name right you get 1,000 reward points. You pop in your email successfully, 500 more points. You verify your email, another 2,000 points and a prize. By the time you get to the first level you are flush with rewards. In other words, so far I’ve done nothing but participate and I’m being rewarded. That is the literal definition of a participation trophy! The arcade was having none of that noise.
You want to get your name on that board? It’s going to take lots of time and it’s going to take lots of quarters. If you are casual about your commitment, don’t curse the wind when your initials wind up near the bottom. It’s the inevitable result if you haven’t put the time and resources into achieving something beyond what you thought was possible when you first sat down at the stool as a novice.
In the real world, those quarters aren’t always actual quarters. Sometimes extra effort is the token, sometimes giving up resources like a full tank of gas to drive to community college is the token, sometimes studying past exhaustion is the token, sometimes sprinting that extra few meters is the token. These tokens are everywhere, and time always takes its deposits off the top in these situations. Show me someone with a stated goal whose initials sit low on their proverbial board, and I’ll show you someone who either lacks the time, the quarters, or both.
You could probably get by short on any of the two, but lacking both in tandem is fatal to your goal, whatever it is. Until you realize that it takes both to succeed, you are kidding yourself, much like I was when I was playing the demonstration screen of the video game.
Lastly, if you find yourself in a situation like mine where your goal firmly backhands you to reality, it’s okay to fully accept that you want no parts of your originally stated goal while you cut your losses. Better to come to that conclusion soon enough to switch pursuits.
If you find yourself confused about what that direction should be, I recommend thinking about it over a pepperoni slice with extra cheese and a fountain drink.
