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X-E visits the Casino Arcade!

Whew, finally done. Here's another trip report, this time taking us to the almighty summer retreat, the Casino Arcade. It's a two-pager covering everything from crane machines to Skee-Ball, plus a look at the shitty prizes 100 bucks bought us. Got a lot going on on this side that I'll tell you about over the weekend, but in case anyone's off for the holiday, have a good one! They'll probably be another article of some sort before the 4th, but give me a break -- this most recent one is 80,000 paragraphs long, and most of the paragraphs contain more than a sentence.

Posted by Matt on 07/01/2004. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 138 comments

Yeah, I hate those scales they use on the redemption tickets. At the Cheyenne/Arapaho tribal casino where my Dad works, there is a "drill machine" that works like the pick-up the bin thing Matt was talking about. For something that can’t allow kids, this machine has Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon cards eight ways til Sunday. Really tough to line it up juuuust right to push the doohickey out that contains the prize.

Chestnuts roasted by kingklash @ 07/02/2004 2:24 PM

Hey Matt you should take a swing down to the ‘cades down in Seaside. One arcade (I believe it’s called the Carousel Arcade) has a room dedicate to the the games of the 80′s. It’s dark, smokey and down right awsome. Nothing beat playing a little Nintendo’s ‘Vs Excitebike" or Hercules the World’s Largest Pinball game while "99 Luft Baloons" is thumping in the background. Now if only I could find an open Chees King store in a mall. . . . :-)

Chestnuts roasted by Also Named Matt @ 07/02/2004 5:12 PM

*Yes.* *Do* review the second Care Bears movie. The eleven thousand viewings of that movie my sisters subjected me to have left deep, deep scars on my psyche…

Did anyone else ever see a weird religious commercial that stole the Chuck E. Cheese’s jingle? ("Chuck E. Cheese’s/Where a kid can be a kid" – that jingle.) I don’t know if it was a joke/an extremely poorly-conceived promotion for a church event/whether there was a real copycat restaurant involved (I think there actually might have been, though I could just be thinking of Billy Bob’s Pizza Wonderland), but there were all these little kids rushing around a guy dressed as Jesus – I think there were balloons involved – and they sang "I love Jesus" instead of "Chuck E. Cheese’s."

Chestnuts roasted by Goz @ 07/02/2004 5:24 PM

And I swear that it was not a hallucination. One of my sisters remembers it, too.

Chestnuts roasted by Goz @ 07/02/2004 5:26 PM

Great to finally see you again Matt! Your pics were all over the misadventures back in 2000-2002, even if you were kicking it with Charmeleon!

Chestnuts roasted by Bowz @ 07/02/2004 5:39 PM

Mother of sweating Christ!!! Matt! I live in Point Pleasant! I work at Jenkinsons Bar im a bouncer there! Holy shit!….ok I’m good.

Chestnuts roasted by Josh @ 07/02/2004 7:20 PM

Mother of sweating Christ!!! Matt! I live in Point Pleasant! I work at Jenkinsons Bar im a bouncer there! Holy shit!….ok I’m good.

Chestnuts roasted by Josh @ 07/02/2004 7:20 PM

Thanks for the mention of "Wings". Possibly next time you’ll review ’3000 Miles To Graceland’ featuring sweet, cute dumb ass mechanic Lowell Mather AKA Thomas Haden Church as a US Marshal with a big assed cowboy hat and a big assed belt buckle.
On second thought, just review the episode of "Wings" where Lowell and Bunny have sex in Brian and Joe’s house.

Anywho, I agree that those prizes usually suck ass. You’ll be lucky if you’ll pick up a paper Chinese fan.
I usually don’t hit the cranes, but you make me wanna. I need to play a crane game!!!

Chestnuts roasted by AngeFaitore @ 07/02/2004 7:20 PM

You work at that bar? Duuude. We go there all the time. Lovin the Tiki.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 07/02/2004 7:33 PM

Hey Matt, you know what we have in Washington State?

Peanuts.

That’s right, we have the Bamboo Peanut Mark3.

Are you interested?

Chestnuts roasted by Mathew Olson @ 07/02/2004 8:25 PM

Vwhaaa? E-mail me. :)

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 07/02/2004 8:30 PM

** Skee ball trick **

Hey If anyone cares there is a trick to hit the 100 circle in skee ball. Ive hit the 100 spot 7 of 10 times with it consistantly.

Instead of rolling it up the middle of theramp directly. Bank the ball off the right or left bumper at an angle. If you hit the right spot it will jump into the 100 spot almost all the time. The right spot is near the top of the bumper before it ramps upwards.

Chestnuts roasted by Vicdotcom @ 07/02/2004 8:56 PM

I think that TV’s worth trying for. How many people can say they won their TV playing Skeeball?

I loved the Care Bears movies. The Carebears in Wonderland one is the best.

Chestnuts roasted by Starreh @ 07/02/2004 10:55 PM

I never thought ME would ever acknowledge me but there’s a first time for everything. just to follow up on Joysticks the infamous JOE DON BAKER makes his presence felt. This movie is definitely worth an X-E critique if you can find it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085764/ check it out….if you dare

Chestnuts roasted by phunqsauce @ 07/02/2004 10:55 PM

dude, i love your site

Chestnuts roasted by dingo @ 07/02/2004 11:10 PM

Matt

Talking of Pinball machines, down here in New Zealand (look on your map) we have some classic ones like Congo (remember that terrible movie??) and if you’re lucky- the GN’R machine from 1993 woohoo!

Chestnuts roasted by Icebreaker @ 07/03/2004 12:23 PM

Most of the arcades around here that use the ticket system for prizes have the machines that count them for you so you don’t get ripped off. Nice way to go.

Chestnuts roasted by Tikibob @ 07/03/2004 2:15 AM

Alex, He does give a f*** about my paper airplanes.. show a little class that is if you actually have class and weren’t raised in a barn

Chestnuts roasted by Mike A. @ 07/03/2004 10:27 AM

I live near Niagra Falls in Canada and there was a place called Dazzleland! it sucked so much, but still my friends and I went there every weekend, once one of the games was broken and was giving out all the free tickets no matter if you won or lost, I played it until it was out of paper! its now been turned into a huge ass Casino arcade with a boston pizza!

Chestnuts roasted by Loozer @ 07/03/2004 3:48 PM

Just stumbled across your site recently and I love it. Brings back so many memories.

Thanks for this post. Now I know that all of these years of traveling to Seaside Heights has been worth it instead of venturing off for uncharted territory. Seaside’s casino arcades defintely seem to blow Point Pleasant away!

Chestnuts roasted by Louie @ 07/03/2004 5:16 PM

Wow! That was a really great article, and a reminder of why I spend so much time reading X-E.

That article brought back childhood memories, but not of casino arcades I had visited. There were no places like that around when I was a kid, because I lived in shitty backwards hellhole–if there were any in the nearby city, nobody ever took me to one.

No, it reminded me of all the crappy prizes I used to win at the town’s Halloween carnival. Every year they’d have a little carnival at the abandoned school gym. I’d play the crummy games and I’d feel elated when I got home because I scored four bags of cheap plastic junk, like plastic spider rings, keychains (even though I was 10 and had no keys), calendars, and all kinds of other junk. You’re right: nothing makes a kid feel better than winning a ton of crap. Sad thing? If I weren’t afraid of getting beaten up, I’d probably be doing it today.

Chestnuts roasted by Astro Zombie @ 07/03/2004 6:43 PM

Movie theaters (especially ones in big cities) are the best place to find arcade games. I first saw Star Wars Trilogy Arcade at one in my area. I also remember seeing a Batman Forever game in the style of the TMNT/Simpsons/X-Men games at this one also. Yesterday,I went to see Dodgeball at the theater,and they had a Star Trek: Voyager light-gun game in a sit-down booth with privacy curtians on the side. It’s not every day you see Jeri Ryan on the side of an arcade game.

Chestnuts roasted by Overlord @ 07/03/2004 10:43 PM

i would definitly drive from oklahoma to new jersey just to pick up a fucking stripe or gizmo and i would not quit spending until i was broke or at least hyad both…new jersey here i come

Chestnuts roasted by Mr.Fun @ 07/03/2004 11:15 PM

I realize that I’m about the 125th comment here, and that no one will ever read this, but I just had to share my story of casino arcades.

I had often visited the local place, I believe it’s called "Funtasia," but had never won anything substantial. Until one day, when I was just about too old to be in one of those places without getting odd looks, I sat down to this one electronic game– in which you try to line up similar coloured pieces until the screen overflows –and played for a while, then, just as I was about to lose, I made the luckies, flukiest, move of all time and set off a massive chain reaction that cleared the entire screen.
I didn’t just win hundreds of points, or a thousand points, I won tens of thousands of points. With one token!
I took that and bought a huge, non-bootleg, Porky the Pig plushie.
I still consider that to be one of the greatest days of my life.

Chestnuts roasted by m_woolman @ 07/03/2004 11:15 PM

dammit now i gotta go spend some dough down at the arcade,but i save my tickets I brought home a mini Disco ball last time Im going for the 41,000 tickets for a digital Camera

Chestnuts roasted by That80sguy @ 07/04/2004 4:46 AM

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2004 at 11:25 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.