The weather was typically unsettled in May 1994. Midway through my year-six school trip to the Isle of Wight we’d gone on a day trip to Blackgang Chine – a kind of magical theme park of sorts where we were told Queen Mary in 1920 had her hat knocked off by a massive whale’s jaw bone. Anyway, that’s not important. We’d come inside to a cafe area as it had started to rain. In this cafe I have two of my most vivid childhood memories: hot cinnamon flavoured hard round sweets and a Virtua Fighter arcade cabinet. As a young lad who’d essentially learned to read and write largely off the back of Mean Machines Sega magazine, you can imagine my excitement.
I expect people born in a more modern era than the 80s who have watched TRON probably think that arcade games were everywhere back then, sprawling aircraft hangar-sized warehouses packed to bursting with the very latest cabinets of the day. That wasn’t the case in Sussex where I grew up. Pubs sometimes had a golf machine and there was a sit-in Postman Pat van inside Sainsbury’s that was very popular, but that was it unless you were lucky enough to go to a fancy leisure centre, the kind that had laser tag as well as a swimming pool. Of course, I had no money so no way to play this Holy Grail of arcade games.
Oh, but I watched it, my lime green shellsuit reflecting back at me. Virtua Fighter’s Attract Mode ran through short fights between the characters as “get go, get get go” accompanied the most banging bit of music my juvenile ears had ever heard – and at that point I’d heard Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You)”. All the while the screen taunted me with INSERT COIN(S). “I have no coins, and I must scream,” I thought to myself wittily as I remembered the 1967 short story by Harlan Ellison and contemplated how I’d be glad to see arcades die a death at the hands of games consoles. My humour will forever be wasted on people, I pondered before coming up with a plan. I was determined to play Virtua Fighter, so I set my sights on a Sega Saturn.