I grew up in the 70s and 80s and have fond memories of my first visit to a local arcade in Hobart, Tasmania called Flashback. There, I could spend my limited coins (usually lucky to have more than five 20-cent coins at a session), on the latest games of the time.
These first games included a heap of vector games such as Asteroids, Lunar Lander and Battlezone, along with pixel-based classics such as Space Invaders, Galaxian, Pac-Man and Moon Patrol.
Flashback in town unfortunately didn’t last but was soon replaced by an even bigger arcade called Leasure Land and as well as older classics such as a four player Atari Sprint that myself and friends loved playing, there were new games such as Galaga, Tutankham, Time Pilot and of course a lovely sit down Star Wars arcade. Lots more than these of course, but they were ones that I particularly liked and loved to play.
Over the next few years, arcade machines sprang up in more places. There was a small arcade not far from my home (well, I could walk or ride my bike there). One of my favourite machines was a nice upright Pleiads cabinet.
For a time, I held the local (well, there was no Internet, so no idea how my scores compared to other regions) records for both Time Pilot and Tutankham, and often my initials TAC would be on a machine’s high score table.
For my 18th birthday, my father rented an arcade machine from the local machine operator. It was a game I hadn’t played before called Bosconian. My friends and I played it well into the night and early morning, and it became one of my favourite games of all time.
A lot of the games I have collected and a lot of games I have programmed for the Spectravideo and MSX have been inspired by the arcade games I fell in love with during my teenage years.
I always wanted an arcade machine of my own and finally was able to purchase one from a local operator, for a decent price, as it had some wiring problems that I was easily able to fix. This was one of the original Leisure Land upright machines from an operator called B & M Coin Amusements. It came with a PCB of Twin Cobra very similar to another game that I liked and played, called Raiden.
Machines were slowly added over time, usually for cheap or even free, as they were mostly not working and I slowly worked on fixes.
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Wailee Horizontal
This curious cabinet arrived in the arcade along with its partner (Wailee Vertical) when I placed a low bid on a local auction. There were three chassis between the two cabs; the one that was in the Horizontal orientation cab was mounted inside but not plugged in. I hooked up all the connections, and then
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Midway Baseball/Space Invaders
This arcade is a bit of an ugly duckling but hides some inner charm. It started out as a Midway Baseball. Then, when Space Invaders became massively popular in a short period of time, both existing Midway cabinets and new cabinets off the production line were kitted out as Space Invaders machines. This particular unit,
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Original Battlezone
This is a project arcade cabinet worth doing, covering off an absolute classic and distinctive arcade with an original full-size upright Battlezone. More than likely, this was the very unit I played as a kid in the very first proper arcade here in Hobart, Tasmania. It is complete, bar the backdoor, and comes with: The
