My wife and I recently took our son and daughter to the mall to do some clothes shopping, and as expected, our son was finished much, much sooner than our daughter was. My wife decided to go with our daughter to help her finish up, when I spotted a video arcade a few stores down from where we were sitting.
I told her that I would take our son to the arcade, and I would get a soda or something. Little did I know at the time that the establishment had an entire section devoted to 80's arcade games, and that my wife and daughter would be the ones waiting for us for a while, anyway.
I made change for a five dollar bill and gave a handful of quarters to my son, who immediately ran to some very sophisticated and realistic car-racing game, with about two dozen buttons and gadgets, the specific purposes of which he seemed to know by heart.
I watched him weave in and out of lines of cars for about five or 10 minutes, occasionally crashing, and occasionally advancing another round, when I happened to glance over and see a very familiar face that of Ms. Pac Man.
It was as if I had been magically transported to my youth, and I told my son that I would be right back. I walked over to a little section of the arcade that had hardly any customers, and I saw two entire rows of 80's arcade games.
Games that I had not seen or even thought about for many years, including Space Invaders, Frogger, Q-bert, and Donkey Kong were right there in front of me, and now, I had all of the money I needed to play for as long as I wanted to play.
I was at it for about an hour when my wife showed up. I thought that she would be annoyed with me for leaving our son alone while I gracefully guided Ms. Pac Man through her maze, but as soon as she saw the line of 80's arcade games, she jumped right in next to me on Pole Position, a game my son thought was absolutely pathetic.
We must have stayed at the arcade for three or four hours that day. It was actually our kids who started to pester us to leave, so we finally gave in and went home.
Our kids had a good laugh at their parents that day, and they made fun of how simple those games were compared to the games of today. I quickly pointed out to them that if it had not been for those 80's arcade games, today's games may not even be here.