Alas, the glory days of amusement arcades ended decades ago.
However, if you're anything like us - you'll no doubt find it impossible to walk past one of these neon-lit establishments without nipping inside to relive your misspent youth, before blowing ten quid in about thirty seconds (unless you've exchanged all your money for 2 pence pieces, in the hope of getting lucky on the penny falls).
Digitiser 2000 continues today's loose theme with this essential checklist of things you are guaranteed to stumble over in every arcade. Listen, David - why not cut it out of your screen, and take it on holiday with you this summer? Go on.
However, if you're anything like us - you'll no doubt find it impossible to walk past one of these neon-lit establishments without nipping inside to relive your misspent youth, before blowing ten quid in about thirty seconds (unless you've exchanged all your money for 2 pence pieces, in the hope of getting lucky on the penny falls).
Digitiser 2000 continues today's loose theme with this essential checklist of things you are guaranteed to stumble over in every arcade. Listen, David - why not cut it out of your screen, and take it on holiday with you this summer? Go on.
THINGS YOU'LL FIND IN EVERY ARCADE:
- Air hockey table with a broken score indicator stuck at 99 points.
- Weird horse racing/gambling game with plastic horses that stutter towards the finish line as if they're choking on a French stick.
- Penny falls being hogged by a pensioner who snarls like a puma whenever you approach.
- Claw game with old-style five pound note wrapped around a breeze block.
- Terrible carpet with a pattern that looks like vomit (though it probably is just vomit).
- Small child trapped inside a pinball table.
- Unloved bagatelle machine stuck to a pillar.
- Pneumatic Wild West shooting gallery featuring an animatronic hillbilly that frantically drops his trousers when shot, like he's some frontier pervert.
- Overweight, middle-aged man in a vest playing Alien 3: The Gun, while his bored daughter has a tantrum on the floor.
- Weird driving game cabinet that you've never heard of, and it isn't working anyway, and there's a water-bloated corpse inside.
- 1980s coffee table-style arcade game that's covered in so many cigarette burns you can't tell what it is. Galaxians? Galaga? Zaxxon? Donkey Kong?
- Stupid, ignorant, idiot child thinking he's playing Daytona USA, even though he's not put any money in.
- Novelty photo booth that makes your portrait look like it's been hand drawn, sort of, if you squint a bit.
- Someone having an epileptic fit due to the strobe effect of the flickering, barely working, screen of a vintage Star Wars Arcade unit.
- Disinterested woman manning a change booth while reading Twilight fan fiction on her phone, as she eats a Peperami.
- Passion tester machine with a brass grip that's been worn down to a nub by local youths.
- Basketball game that appears to have credit... yet nobody is playing it.
- Broken whack-a-mole, with several of the moles replaced by lost espadrilles.
- Aggrieved twentysomething exchanging 20,000 tokens for a toilet roll tube wrapped in luminous fun fur.
- A young Tom Hanks feeding money into a fortune-telling booth.
- A litter bin overflowing with empty milkshake cups, plastic change pots and raw pork.
- Fruit machine based on Deal or No Deal that has somehow avoided being defaced.
- Ancient Virtuality machine that's had the headset replaced with a colander and a pair of thick reading glasses with tinfoil taped to the lenses.
- Fibreglass charity box shaped like a boy wearing a leg brace, that unfortunately still claims to belong to "The Brighton & Hove Spastics Society".
- Coin-operated electric chair.
- Coin-operated gallows.
- Coin-operated lethal injection machine.
- Coin-operated death row.
- Unlicensed Finding Nemo kiddie ride being ridden by a ghost.
- Teenage girl weeping next to a set of scales.
- Small inter dimensional portal, hidden behind a curtain, that leads to an alternate reality where EVERYONE IS ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
- Four samurai debating the best way to storm Kumamoto Castle.
- Mother Nature urinating onto a fresh linen-scented Yankee Candle.
- Naked soul singer shivering in a bath of iced figs.
- A statue of Wozniak covered in fairy lights and spume.
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