As a broke *** child what was your arcade allotment?

Not just when you got straight A's on a report card or your birthday but when you were just hanging at the mall. How much would your parents break off for you? $2? $5? $20? Were you dropped off while your parents shopped or did mom, dad, or both stick around and play games? Did you hustle your parents and just keep the money?

Which non-arcade spot had the most unique games and was clearly owned by a gamer? One pizza hut in town had Mortal Kombat and then Street Figther III. The other pizza hut had a pole position game for years way too long.

The only arcade I had when I was a kid was the few machines they had inside of the movie theater or bowling alley. No idea what any of them where. Didn't frequent them enough to remember the names. They were all either light gun games or driving games though. Probably only spent a couple of dollars on them

I did walk into a laundromat about 4 or 5 years ago and was surprise to see they had a Crazy Taxi machine. That was pretty cool.

Like Brian there was a couple of arcade machines at a movie theater the family used to go to when seeing movies. It is where I first played Pit Fighter, Street Fighter II, Devastators, a third person on rails action game, similar to GI Joe Arcade. I believe I first played After Burner there as well, though I'm not sure. There was also a classic Atari like game I really liked, but till this day I can't remember it. Other places were a corner store near my school, where I played Black Tiger, Blades of Steel, and Kung Fu Master. And as I come from PA, there was Kennywood Park, which had a very good arcade area back in the day. There I played X-Men, Simspons Arcade, TMNT Arcade, Terminator 2 Arcade, Alter Beast, Final Fight and so many others I can't name off the top of my head. While most people went to Kennywood to go on the rides, I would always go there with my family to play videos games at their arcade and eat their potato batch curly cheese fries with malt milk shakes. Good times...

Oh, and speaking of Pizza Hut, a restaurant version that was popular back in the day is where I first played Gauntlet. And a Chuck E. Cheese is where I first played Outrun.

$2 for an evening while my folks had dinner with friends or went shopping was the usual allotment I got, my folks were pretty steely about not giving me more than that. Later, when we lived more out of town and I was old enough to go into the "city" on my own on the bus, they would give me $5 for lunch and I'd blow it at the arcade.

As for an unusual spot for a machine, I went to a 7-11 in Salem, Oregon one time in the mid-00s that had a whole 2 player DDR machine in the back corner. It was busted to hell and the power was off, but it was there and I assume at some point was operational.

No arcades in a tiny town, only got to go for one on special occasions. So if that did happen it was pretty generous on what I could spend.

I played a fair bit of pinball though, there was a little diner that had a couple machines in a side room for awhile.

No real Arcades, bowling alley had some games though. My allotment was: "Go pretend I was playing the demo versions on loop"

$20 on each birthday and Christmas. And for grades, money went up on an exponential scale up to I think $40 or so for a 4.0. Since I really, really wanted an N64 and Ocarina of Time, I started to get pretty good grades.

I don't know how I can convert it, since I'm older than the Euro. But like pocket change whenever I was at the theater that had a Neo Geo cabinet, an Adams Family pinball and a Street Fighter II cab; let's say 5 goes. That was the only single venue with machines, since every bar got rid of them when people kept breaking them.

Then the equivalent of €20 when the fair was in town, which we call luna parks.

It never went on arcades. I'd get 20p for a mix-up until I was about 14. Then I got £5 a week for doing the washing whilst they were at church. At one point I saved those up to get a Playstation but my nearest arcade was miles away.

$5, then whatever tokens I could find.

I remembered that back in my childhood, I've played Daytona USA several times in the arcades so this is one of the games that made me love Nascar.

As a young kid, say before I was 10 or so, the only arcade we had was in the mall. I'd maybe get $5 or so each time we went, not including any allowance I had saved up.

When I was a little older, this arcade opened up that had a $2 admission fee BUT most games only cost a nickel instead of a quarter! Let me tell you, putting a dollar into the change machine and getting 20 fucking nickels instead of just 4 quarters was a beautiful thing! The most expensive games there cost 15 cents. Some games were actually free. How this model was successful in a physical arcade in the late 90s, I have no idea. It probably involved crime. I don't care. Whenever we went to this arcade, my brother and I would use whatever we wanted from our allowance money, but my parents would always pay the $2 admission fee. My mom would go a few doors down to JoAnn Fabrics. I was old enough to walk around and play games by myself. My brother was not, so my dad stayed with him. And played the X-Men arcade game. That's almost all my brother played at that arcade, at least those first few years. It was such a memory for my dad that when the X-Men game came to Xbox Live, my brother and I asked him if he wanted to play with us for old time's sake. He politely declined.

It was usually a couple dollars, maybe $5 if that’s the lowest bill my parents had at the moment. If the change machine gave quarters instead of tokens (which in my local Towson, MD arcade it did), my parents asked for the remaining change. Being a goody two-shoes, I almost always gave some back.

I played shooters by choice, Area 51 or House of the Dead. If the arcade had it, my top pick was Time Crisis 2 with the clacking light guns. My friend and I could stretch a little money a long way on those games.

I was a broke ass child. What arcades.

Going to a real arcade was a special treat - usually I got to play whatever machines were in the mall hallway once every few weeks. I would usually get 50 cents or a dollar. This was the early to mid 80s though, so everything was 25 cents per play.

I remember the shock the first time I saw a 50 cents per play machine - if only I knew then what the future had in store…. *goes off to buy some loot boxes* :)

I usually got to go to the Family Fun Center once a month, it just happened to be in the neighborhood I grew up in so it was a pretty common spot for our parents to take/send us for entertainment. I do distinctly remember being scolded for playing Jurassic Park some evening because it cost like $1.50 to play and, if you've played it, you know how notoriously evil that game was.

My allowance tended to be $20-$40 depending on chores I did around the house. I mostly played Die Hard (which I've just learned was a totally original IP in its native Japan!), the X-Men, Simpsons and Avengers games and Cruisin' USA/World.

My most specific arcade memory, though, is the night I went out with my dad at Disney World while my mom stayed home with my suddenly sick younger sister and he proceeded to slam Crown Royal and waters at the bar while shoveling cash into my hand so I could beat a long-held nemesis back home, Sega's Title Fight, which was a hell of a work out for a young kid and really did not want you to advance past the fourth or fifth fighter without putting in some more coins. I think I (he) spent about $70 that night but I eventually came out on top!

As an adult and knowing what entertainment complexes charge for alcohol, I wonder if he almost immediately regretted spending all that money on virtual boxing and Crown Royal, though. I'm sure that was half a week's paycheck for him. I should ask.

Only ever visited one actual arcade on occasion as a kid, when I was visiting my friend who lived in another city. Usually wasted just about all the spare coins I happened to have in my pockets and the game was probably House of the Dead 90% of the time.

Outside of that, I very rarely just played something like Sega Rally Championship at a random gas station my folks happened to stop by, whenever we were on a vacation.

we didn't really have arcades in my area and actually being a broke family we didn't seek them out either. if by chance we went to a mall with a tiny arcade vs the closer mall normally we did then i usually got to play a machine once or twice and it was a quick pick and choose cause my mother didn't wanna stand there long either.

the only exception was when i went on a vacation to a ranch with my fathers family around my early teens to a ranch that i was bored to tears at for a week and he gave me some money ( probably 5-10?) that i could do whatever with and you bet all of it when into the tekken 3 machine in the lounge they had, that was probably the best part of an otherwise shitty vacation .. that and beating super mario bros. deluxe on my gbc

No arcades in my town. A local pizza place had a couple of machines, but on the rare occasion we went we didn't get to play. We were "restaurants are for eating not playing."

Didn't hang out at the nearest mall (40 minute drive, lol) until I was in the 12-13 age range and by then I was babysitting and that was my spending money. And by then I was in my girly phase and we were buying jewelry at Claire's, cheap clothes etc., rather than playing games and such. Come to think of it, I think I was in my late 20s before I ever even went into an arcade.

Oh god, I think I only got money to play on an arcade machine like two or three times as a kid. And I don't mean two or three outings, just instances. That shit's expensive.

Even in high-school when our pizza place had MvC I only played it like twice. I could just buy more pizza instead!

@nodima: I would have killed for a Dad like that. When the pandemic first happened i dropped off one of my spare xbox ones. I thought the 3 month lockdown would be the perfect chance to force my dad, who has always dismissed gaming, to give videogames a shot. He had the nearly 300 games in my digital library at his disposal. I was prepared to spend more if he wanted to go in any direction (this is why backwards compat is key.. hopefully xbox announces more for the 20th anniversary). He didn't lift a finger. Didn't do research or anything. He might be the biggest braggart, in all facets, with no substantiations that i have ever met. He showed zero curiousity into my gaming lifestyle. I don't know who got me my NES but i doubt he was championing for it. He is retired and I just imagined a world where during the pandemic he picked up games and went through all the nuance of a single game and realizing how much was at his disposal. Maybe he would come to me about my favorite game or he would expose me to something i had put down way too early. Thanks for the therapy session.

I remember diehard too. I think videogames present the most recognizable nostalgia. Even more than smell. The sequence of sounds and graphics was drilled into our heads in these arcades a a cacophony of 20 or 30 machines all fighting for our attention. Eaching boring its pincers.