The Video Arcade that Wasn't

A friend and I used to really enjoy playing pinball. We happened upon a group of stand up video machines in the late 1970’s as we were exiting our local mall through a Sears store. We noticed Atari’s video pinball which we thought was interesting. We played it a couple of time but we didn’t really enjoy it as much as a real pinball machine.

We did, however, notice other kids our age (mid-teens), gathered around some of the other machines. One of them had something on the screen that looked like this:

When we finally got up to the machine to play, we were hooked. Space Invaders was the first true arcade game that we played. It was one in a series of 2D “shoot-em-ups” that we just loved. Asteroids was next followed by Defender, Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, Berzerk, Star Castle, and Missile Command among others.

All of this was taking place in a little area outside of Sears that I think was used for handling shipping. It was kind of open. There was a window there with a way to contact someone to pick up an order. But mainly, this was just a hallway down one of the exits at Sears. I don’t know who actually placed the arcade machines there. To my knowledge, this little area was never advertised, but everyone I knew seemed to know about it. There were always kids there playing the games.

Eventually, the mall got its own formal arcade with many more machines and a snack bar. I have to say that I was a little saddened when the meta arcade outside of Sears disappeared.

Those were fun days.