With my Adventure Time t-shirt and my Gorillaz Chuck Taylors on*, I trekked my way into unknown territory last night. For the first time ever in all the years that I have been living in NY, I set foot in Williamsburg, NYC. I figured I needed to dress the part some because to infiltrate and understand the hipsters, you must become one like the hipsters. I don't think I'd ever fully be able to succeed in that regard and my War on the hipsters continues but the point of the evening was for something far more entertaining than made-up wars in my head. I went to play some classic, glorious video games on some glorious arcade machines and met up with some like-minded awesome people at the Brooklyn Barcade.
Oh, how
clever a name! The Brooklyn Barcade is exactly what you think it is: a
place where you can not only get your gaming on but for getting your
drank on as well. It's so much more than that though. It houses some
great machines and waves of nostalgia to immerse yourself in. Even if
you never had the opportunity to experience some of the games before,
there's something undeniably charming about a lot of them in their
routine simplicity. There's love in the way they are presented. My
memories of Ms Pacman (though my sister and I preferred Pacman Jr.) were
joystick related. Here though, there's magic in the feel of your hand
on the arcade stick. It's all in the environment of an arcade that
gives it so much feeling; it's in the immersion of you and the machine
in front of you; and inserting quarters into the slot, hearing it drop
in with that beautiful sound of 'acceptance' and bringing up that screen
that tells you to press start to play.
Of course, a
couple of the machines ate some of my quarters. $3.50 was all I had to
my name to be shared among my friend B and fellow TAY'er UI 2.0 but I
was pressed for time too and we made do. But you know, even the machine
eating your quarters is somehow part of that experience. Sure you feel
all mad and there's the moment of frantic tapping on the start button
to see if you can get the game to start up, along with your cry of
disbelief of "...this ?$@!#!$! ate my quarter!" (yep, you totally shout
it out in Q*Bert style**. Of course! It's the only way to do these things).
I've only been to a few arcades - some really colourful ones in Japan with their sensory overload on colours, sounds and pigs;
and the Chicken Arcade in Chinatown, NYC - and being in the Brooklyn
Arcade felt a bit much like the arcade in Chinatown but less shady, less
cramped and more relaxed. It's dark, with the glow from every machine
helping to light the place while calling to you in an enticing manner.
The machines sort of silently stand there and lure you in with their
little demos jogging your memories while displaying exactly what sort of
fun you're about to dive into.
I did not
have a lot of time to spend at the arcade unfortunately and so choosing
which games to play was a hard one. Being that there were three of us
as well meant we tried to pick a game where we could all die together.
And die together we did with our choice of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
B took Donatello, UI played as Michelangelo (mmhmm, no surprise) and I was Raphael (why would I be any other turtle?)
B and I had been eye-balling the Tapper
machine since we stepped in because who does not want to play a game
where you serve beer to angry customers in a video game bar while you're
being an 'angry' customer with your beer in hand in a bar that houses
video games? That's right. Think on that.
Ah, the memories of the Swan and her master like skills and her gracefulness at Tapper.
I don't
know what it is with my like of swinging from vines in any of my games
but the fact that the controls were "jump" and "knife" made me quite
intrigued by Jungle Hunt. Unfortunately, my jungle jumping skills are not so skillful and I fell to my demise before I got to any knifing.
When I do swing though, it's all stylish like. Look at that. It's the fall you should be ignoring. That never happened regardless of what I just told you previously.
With my 3Ds
in tow, I got quite the number of hits but this trip to the arcade was
not just for the appreciation of the awesome gaming machines with their
awesome siren song games but also to meet and greet with NYC-based video
game critics and writers. I got my 3DS out because I saw our very own
Jason Schreier from Kotaku at the bar. At some point I had my head down
clearing my Streetpass Mii plaza, and when next I looked up there he
was chatting away talking about all the 3DS Streetpass features and the
clearing he needed to do as well to be able to tag UI and myself. I
will forgive that he could not quite hear me or "know" who I was, while
secretly shaking my fist, but I finally tagged (and met!) Jason after
missing my opportunity to do so the first time at the Legend of Zelda concert.
He was
quite fun from just the few minutes I got to spend with him and utmost
respect to him for his Zelda 3DS edition too. High Five to you, Jason!
And yes, a 3DS XL is so much more beautiful in screen size but hey, I'm
just going to keep dreaming that a Majora's Mask edition will come out and only then will I be able to live a peaceful, happy life.
But no high five for the lack of pink pieces to share in the Puzzle Swap. In fact, this was the only one I could take from him. What the stuff, man?!
I also got
to shake hands and chat a while with Tina. I think she realized I was
milling about to make an introduction and I felt bad for that but I did
not want to be rude and blast my way into her conversation. Tina was
very sweet and it was great meeting her and just having a little bit of a
chat. Unfortunately she gave me the bad news that Evan was going to be
there a bit later and seeing as I had to go, I sadly missed meeting him
and finally putting to rest and confirming that Zarnyx is indeed female
(and maybe try to push secret shameless plugs for TAY... shhh, maybe
next time on the TAY business TAY-folk. Only kidding! No one saw
anything!).
*Yes, I also wore pants before anyone says anything.
**For a Memorable Conversation in the language of Q*Bert, click here.
***No Hipsters were hurt in the making of this post.
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