Click the pics above to read the Williams Flyer for Narc.
In the 90's there was an honest to goodness arcade in my neck of the woods called Zap. It had probably about 15-20 arcade games, 5 pinball machines, and two air hockey tables in the back. While it was mostly new games, in fact this arcade was where I first saw Dragon's Lair II, bear in mind this was before I was able to find out everything on the internet...they had some nice older titles like Galaga, Xevious, and Ms. Pac-Man. The games would rotate pretty frequently so you might walk in and get to play some Bionic Commando and Rush'N Attack one week then those would disappear and you would get a chance at Elevator Action and Moon Patrol.
My closest friend and I would be there almost every Saturday night and once we got pretty low on tokens generally decide to go out in a blaze of glory with Narc, though sometimes Space Gun and T2 would win out. If you've played Narc you know that the violence is over the top to say the least. This sort of became our ending for a Saturday night, blow the last few tokens to see how much further we could get each week.
Then one weekend my circle of friends and I were shocked to see that Zap had closed. We found it odd because it was popular, it was set up across from a movie theatre so it constantly had nightly business from the young adult and teenage crowd.
Turns out that Zap dealt in more than tokens, they were busted for selling drugs in the back office. As soon as my close friend and I heard this we couldn't help but bust out laughing, I mean how ironic is it to have a game about drug busting in your arcade if you were in fact a drug dealer.
A couple of weeks later the arcade opened up with a new name, Monkey Shines. It was a nice arcade but didn't nearly have as many titles as Zap had. It hung in there for a little while but as I recall didn't make it more than a year. As far as I know it wasn't shut down due to the selling of Monkeys in the backroom or even a drunken Monkey knife fight though.
To this day this town is suffering from the lack of a good arcade. I truly wish someone would do something about that.
Turn The Page - Rush
My closest friend and I would be there almost every Saturday night and once we got pretty low on tokens generally decide to go out in a blaze of glory with Narc, though sometimes Space Gun and T2 would win out. If you've played Narc you know that the violence is over the top to say the least. This sort of became our ending for a Saturday night, blow the last few tokens to see how much further we could get each week.
Then one weekend my circle of friends and I were shocked to see that Zap had closed. We found it odd because it was popular, it was set up across from a movie theatre so it constantly had nightly business from the young adult and teenage crowd.
Turns out that Zap dealt in more than tokens, they were busted for selling drugs in the back office. As soon as my close friend and I heard this we couldn't help but bust out laughing, I mean how ironic is it to have a game about drug busting in your arcade if you were in fact a drug dealer.
A couple of weeks later the arcade opened up with a new name, Monkey Shines. It was a nice arcade but didn't nearly have as many titles as Zap had. It hung in there for a little while but as I recall didn't make it more than a year. As far as I know it wasn't shut down due to the selling of Monkeys in the backroom or even a drunken Monkey knife fight though.
To this day this town is suffering from the lack of a good arcade. I truly wish someone would do something about that.
Turn The Page - Rush
3 comments:
William S Sessions says "Winners don't use drugs."
In retrospect maybe we should've seen it coming...shady dealings with shady people going on in the back office (which had a one-way mirror for a window that looked out at the arcade floor). But we were young and innocent.
I'd like to see a Breaking Bad-type show about the behind the scenes drama at Zap.
How do you know that Breaking Bad isn't about the drama at Zap?
Way to spoil season 4, Dax...
Asshole.
Post a Comment