Greetings, friends, and welcome back to Consoleation. As always, I genuinely appreciate your taking the time to read these pieces. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.
Mortal Kombat is getting a tenth installment this year. While I’m personally terrible at these games (Hey– I’m a Street Fighter guy. I don’t do Block buttons,), I have fond memories of visiting arcades and watching players with a lot more skill duel to the death in Mortal Kombat or Mortal Kombat II, oftentimes resulting in brutal finishers by the victor that always caught my attention. The fighting game scene in arcades during the early years of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II popularity involved as much watching as it did playing; after all, there were lines to take on the current winner, and there wasn’t a lot else to do while waiting than to scout your competition. There also wasn’t much (if any) Internet access back then, so one of the best ways to learn special moves and combos was through observation. I caught on to the move sets a bit and could hold my own for a match or two before getting displaced and sent to the back of the line.
Observation during the Arcade Era had a lot of advantages.
For starters, observation is what helped me defeat Dragon’s Lair in 1983, at the age of 11. I watched numerous players take their shots at the game, and I kept mental notes of which moves were required for each room. Since the rooms occurred at random, more observation meant piecing together correct moves for most rooms that I would encounter. I talked at length about Dragon’s Lair in my first Consoleation piece, but it’s notable that watching other players was instrumental in getting me to a point where I could beat the game without requiring too many continues– and spending lots of money. Since money was tight for me as a kid, I couldn’t afford to continue too many times… unless it was a special occasion and I had more than a couple of dollars’ worth of tokens.
Learning to play any new game was made easier by watching others play it first; you got a feel for what the buttons did, game objectives, enemy attack patterns, locating bonus point caches, and more. Before playing Life Force for the first time, I watched several other players try it over the course of a couple of weeks. Just by watching, I learned about the power-up system, I identified weak points on bosses, and I got a basic feel for game progression. When I finally put in my first quarter, I was prepared… kind of. I made it to the end of the third level before losing all of my lives, which was a bit farther than I had seen others get to. That sense of accomplishment kept drawing me back for successive visits, and I eventually beat the game in a few weeks (thanks to a few continues).
Success on pinball tables requires strategy, and watching other players was a great way to learn table layouts and shot strategies faster. What does that ramp do? How is multiball triggered? Where is the Extra Ball target, rollover, or capture hole? Using Pin*Bot as an example, it’s easy to feel either overwhelmed by the busy table layout for new players. Through observation, though, you would learn about completing the central light bank targets to enable multiball (which skilled players can do in one shot), you would learn that shooting up the left ramp increases the bonus multiplier and the multiball jackpot, and that finding the right ball launch speed with the plunger can equate to big points. These are all lessons that I learned simply by standing along the side of the machine as others played and watching.
Sometimes, watching other players was all you could do in arcades as a youngster. Once your supply of tokens runs out, you could leave… but that wasn’t what I did. I would watch other players and their conquests. In the BYT period (Before YouTube), watching was the only way to see an ending for a particular game, unless you beat it yourself. I’ve never beaten any of the Mortal Kombat coin-ops myself, so watching others play gave me the chance to watch the endings and learn more about MK lore. Many FMV games played out like short movies, so it was neat to sit back and watch the stories unfold without having to worry about making the right moves or losing all of my lives.
These days, arcade observation has been replaced by watching game streams and Let’s Play videos. Now you can watch games being played from anywhere. Do you want to see how others tackle that boss that you’re stuck on? Are you interested in checking out a game before you spend money on it? Do you want to see how a certain game ends? You don’t need to go to an arcade to watch… you can simply log into your computer, cell phone, or tablet. The scope and ease of access for this information is unlike anything that we could have dreamed about back in the Golden Age of Arcades.
There’s something missing, though. It’s that feeling of being there, of seeing things happen first-hand. You miss seeing the genuine emotion from a player who finally beat Blues while playing Yie Ar Kung-Fu after many attempts. You miss the camaraderie of being in the arcade with other video game fans, like yourself. You miss the verbal cues, like “For this boss, I tend to circle it like this, and then fire!” from players who know that you’re watching. It was… a different sense of community back then, where watching video games was as special as playing them was.
They were definitely “had to be there” moments, and I count myself lucky that I got to experience them for myself. I’m even more fortunate that I get to share those moments and experiences with you.
It’s great to be back after pressing Pause on Consoleation for a bit to focus on my academic career. Turning to you, do you have memories of watching people play games in arcades– either while growing up or as an adult? Did you learn anything from watching others play, or was it something that you just did? Now that I’ve shared my memories, I’d be honored to read some of yours in the comments section below. Thanks again for reading!