Choices, always with the choices:

- Introduction
- Submission form
- Those GameGods in Full
- Most recent GameGods

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Once, we had an empire…

An amusement arcade. Sadly, not yesterday.

If you lived in the UK in the ‘70s/’80s and you’re bothering to read this, you probably spent far too much of your time in places like the above – moving from machine to machine with a sweaty clutch of 10p pieces, racking up crazy scores on crazy games, forging mini-rivalries with fellow gamers, cultivating a three-letter personality and setting him loose as a warrior of the high-score tables…

We miss all of that a lot. So, whaddaya say we try to dredge it back up from our memories before time and the drudges of middle-age smother it forever?

We want to spirit up a phantom image of a UK where those franchise arcades, snooker clubs, chippies, newsagents and mini-cab offices still blip and zap and chirp to the likes of Robotron, Track & Field, Galaxian, Scramble, Moon Patrol, Amidar, Joust…

And, who knows? Maybe we’ll actually end up reuniting a few of these ‘Game Gods’. At the very least, we can all have a bit of a nostalgic wallow.

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Either:
Write us a little feature-ette type-thing about your old high-score hunting ground – as long or short as you like, with or without pictures… How you do it, we don’t care. So long as it’s evocative and specific and makes us sniffle a bit. Send it here

And/or:
If you just want to notch up a contribution fill-in this form below and then click 'submit' to send it in…

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Click here to comment on this feature

NAME STEVE

WHEN Early/Mid 80s
WHERE Stoke

MY HIGH-SCORE NICKNAME SD
NEMESIS NICKNAME EVO

GREATEST HIGH SCORE ACHIEVEMENT First person out of my group of mates to get over 30k and the free game on Moon Cresta

HAUNT 1 Shipleys (arcade, Hanley)
GAMES 1 Galaxian, Pole Position

HAUNT 2 Mr Nudge (arcade, Hanley)
GAMES 2 Jr Pac Man (with Pinball table, I think), Xevious

HAUNT 3 Pleasure Island, Hanley
GAMES 3 Street Fighter

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY I used to be ok at most games in the early 80s, but I just couldn't play Defender. Really liked the game, but was absolutely useless at it, kept pouring the money in but never got any better

AND FINALLY In the early 80s, my local Spar converted a small room behind the bacon counter and lobbed in 2 arcade machines. Of course, this small room was crowded with kids (and the bastard older kids who wouldn't let you play). My first encounter with legendary games such as Galaxian, and Moon Cresta was there, and as the room got more packed and the 10p were piling up on the machine, when it got to your turn you did your utmost to last as long as possible because it could be a long time before you got back on the machine.

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NAME KORRUPTOR

WHEN '86 - '92
WHERE Southampton Massive

MY HIGH-SCORE NICKNAME COR
NEMESIS NICKNAME IAN

GREATEST HIGH SCORE ACHIEVEMENT Space Harrier, completion, one credit. 'Wish I could still do that... :(

HAUNT 1 Southsea - Golden Nugget
GAMES 1 Op Thunderbolt, Space Harrier, Outrun, Afterburner, R-Type, PowerDrift, Super Hang On, Rainbow Isles

HAUNT 2 Circle k (Hedge End)
GAMES 2 Twin Cobra

HAUNT 3 Fox and Hounds (Chandlers Ford)
GAMES 3 Asteroids, Space Invaders, Galaga

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY Powerdrift; about to complete the bugger on a credit, and easily steal several table crowns when the bastard power cut-out. I never got my 20p back, either. Cunts.

AND FINALLY Too many memories escaped due to the amount of pot we were smoking when we bunked off school to crawl to Southsea, but I digress... I'll never forget the sheer lust associated with the sit-down Afterburner cab, or the amount of regurgitated cigar, chips and candy floss the pavement saw after 7 squid passed through it's tantalising slot.

Mates are bastards for insisting on so many barrel rolls.

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NAME NEIL RUDD(The Frozen One on YakYak)

WHEN About 1983 ish
WHERE Sunspot Amusement Arcade, Ilfracombe

MY HIGH-SCORE NICKNAME TFO
NEMESIS NICKNAME KGB

GREATEST HIGH SCORE ACHIEVEMENT I held the UK high score record on Q*Bert. Forget exactly, but it was in the region of 26,500,000 or so. Got fed up after about 6 hours and jumped 137 (I remember exactly) Q*Berts off the top of the pyramid so I could (1) Go and get something to eat, and (2) Have a piss. Hands were bleeding due to the way I held the joystick!

HAUNT 1 Sunspot Amusement Arcade, Ilfracombe
GAMES 1 Q*Bert, Xevious, 1942, Star Wars (sit-down cab), Out-Run (sit in cab)

HAUNT 2 Harbour Amusement Arcade, Ilfracombe
GAMES 2 Track and Field, Hyper Sports

HAUNT 3 Carousel Amusement Arcade, Ilfracombe
GAMES 3 Mr Do! (and I was dreadful at it)

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY Had just got good at Radar Scope when the damn thing packed up one weekend, never to be seen again.

AND FINALLY Track and Field at the Harbour Amusements Ilfracombe. Myself and Jonathan Edwards (yes THAT Jonathan Edwards) would play that game for hours, with the smell of lick all over the cab buttons as that was the technique to get the quick 'three fingered flick'. As in real life, he was bloody fantastic at the on-screen athletics, and I was always second best. Ho Hum.

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NAME CHRIS AHCHAY

WHEN Late 70's onwards
WHEREAbbots Langley

MY HIGH-SCORE NICKNAME AKA
NEMESIS NICKNAME KEV

GREATEST HIGH SCORE ACHIEVEMENT Finally figuring out how to beat the ship in R-Type.

HAUNT 1 Rolls Royce Sports & Social Club
GAMES 1 Spacies, Galaxian, Mr Do, 1942, R-Type

HAUNT 2 Hemel Hempstead Ice Skating Rink
GAMES 2 Defender, Missile Command, Stargate, Asteroids, Video Pool (!) - too many to list...

AND FINALLY Flying Shark at the social - this would have been 1987/1988 - I've always liked vertical shooters and got pretty good at it pretty quickly - but there was one section (third level I think, lot's of boats) which would always chew up all my remaining lives.

So, I'm playing the game when I hear this voice behind me "Do you want me to show you how to do it?". I turned around and there was a nine or ten year old girl standing there. I, feeling a bit surprised, feigned indifference, shrugged off a quick "okay then..." and handed over the controls. She took the game to pieces.

We (my mates and I) got quite friendly with her after that. I wish I could remember her name...

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NAME JONNY ROBERTS

WHEN Sometime Last Year (2002)
WHERE The Bluenote, Derby

MY HIGH-SCORE NICKNAME JAY
NEMESIS NICKNAME ...

GREATEST HIGH SCORE ACHIEVEMENT Some time ago, on a drunken Thursday night at the Bluenote, a friend of mine introduced me to her new boyfriend. Pleasentries were exchanged, seemed a nice guy and all that, he was small, dreadlocked and a bit smelly but that might have just been his hair. Anyway, he ended up toddling over to my favourite thing about that place, the Point Blank machine in the corner - turns out he's the UK champion. Shite!

I'd had a couple of drinks by this point (oh yes, this was back in the day) and feeling rather cocky, so I decided to challenge the guy. 50ps were laid out, a couple of slightly disinterested drunk people stood watching as we started our journey through the lamest levels we could find. The first 12 went out the way, we were virtually neck-and-neck, I had a bit of a fumble on the counting one but he lost two lives on the duck stage... it all boiled down to the last one, a Very Hard Rope/Pirhanas. He seemed creeped out that someone had managed to keep up with him, I was creeped out because I didn't remember what I'd just done.

We didn't even skip the opening screens, we were trying to psyche each other out...

And then he bastard went and shot my guy off the rope. So much for fair play. I went on to get one more target than him on the final stage, he had about 7,000 more points than me at the end, we shook hands and went for a sit down, beads of sweat forming.

They split up not long after, which is probably a good thing as I can claim from now on that I played Point Blank against the national champion and *almost* won...

HAUNT 1 The Bluenote (“Nightclub”, Derby)
GAMES 1 Point Blank, Puzzle Bobble

HAUNT 2 Willows’ Sports Centre (Er, Sports Centre)
GAMES 2 Metal Slug, Point Blank, Block Block, and a random shite driving game

HAUNT 3 Way Ahead (Record Store)
GAMES 3 Puzzle Bobble, Something Else Shooty: It really is crap around here

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY Derby is the one that got away, there are really very few highscore hotspots, especially since Way Ahead closed down...

AND FINALLY HAOSAMFTR?: Point Blank again, this time at Willows Sports Centre... There's a Laserquesty type thing there called "Megazone". Sundays played host to a five hour session, with two groups with 20 minutes in between. It was customary to have a game of Point Blank in my break, and a few people started to gather round halfway through my game.

After I'd finished, one little guy goes "I wouldn't want to run into you in a dark alley".

I'm still not sure quite what he was getting at.

Jonny

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NAME IAN BOFFIN (FUSEBALL)

WHEN 1982-1985
WHERE Woking / London (West End)

MY HIGH-SCORE NICKNAME BOF
NEMESIS NICKNAME WAL

GREATEST HIGH SCORE ACHIEVEMENT Getting within 100,000 of the Sinistar world record in the basement arcade of Marbles shopping center, Marble Arch.

HAUNT 1 Pool Rooms, Woking - Downstairs
GAMES 1 Battlezone, Galaga, Missile Command, Stargate, Tutankham

HAUNT 2 Pool Rooms, Woking - Upstairs
GAMES 2 Tempest, Defender, Asteroids, Qix, Centipede

HAUNT 3 Crystal Rooms, Leicester Square, London
GAMES 3 Sinistar, Gaplus, I'Robot, Marble Madness

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY On holiday in Menorca in 1985 there was this Robotron machine that was constantly out of order in one of the hotels. Despite a complete absence of Spanish vocabulary I tried to convince the hotel bar manager to let me buy it off them. The day before we left to go home they fixed the damn thing and refused to sell it. Good thing too. I don't think the airline would have accepted it as hand luggage.

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NAME NALSKI

WHEN 1980 onwards
WHERE Redcar

MY HIGH-SCORE NICKNAME NAL
NEMESIS NICKNAME CDW

GREATEST HIGH SCORE ACHIEVEMENT Too many to list, but always got a buzz out of getting a couple of million on BombJack!

HAUNT 1 Nobles, Redcar Sea Front
GAMES 1 Time Pilot 84

HAUNT 2 George Carries's, Redcar Sea Front
GAMES 2 APB... just love the way the boss copper speaks in between levels!

HAUNT 3 (The other) Noble's, Redcar Sea Front
GAMES 3 Galaxian, Bubbles, BombJack, Time Pilot, Time Pilot 84, Joust, Defender (of course!), Galaga etc etc

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY Was just about to complete Rastan Saga on one 10p an there was a f*cking power cut! I'll NEVER forgive the leccy company!!

AND FINALLY I used to regularly play BombJack and used to see "SAH" on top of the Hi-Score table... of course I used to regularly beat it too. Then this "SAH" started playing games that I was already master of and knocking me off the top of the table. Found out it was a rather nice "She"... cut a long story short started going out with her for a bit, she let me service her coin box and I let her waggle me joystick!!!

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NAME Gravy

WHEN Around 1996
WHERE Williams HQ

MY HIGH-SCORE NICKNAME GAZ
NEMESIS NICKNAME GAZ (fecker stole my nick and was worst than me!)

GREATEST HIGH SCORE ACHIEVEMENT To be honest I'm no game god. Game Spod is a more appropriate moniker but this story is about a fleeting moment when I felt big and tough while playing video games in the belly of the beast :)

My mate used to work for Williams in Chicago and during a five week holiday in the states I was allowed to come into the office and dabble with some of their arcade machinery.

Someone had got a Robotron from somewhere, put it on maximum difficulty and chucked it in the rec room. Being on holiday I played it a lot. A hell of a lot and for a couple of days was top of the high score table with around 600k.

Then my mate and another guy got into it and got very very good. This had an emasculating effect on my own M4D 5k1LL2 and as I saw my scores slide lower and lower then managed to peak out at about 1.5m. On Robotron. On maximum difficulty. Fuck!

HAUNT 1 Bike Shop, Sutton Court Road, Hillingdon
GAMES 1 Donkey Kong Jnr, Qix, Amidar, Defender

HAUNT 2 Richmond Ice Rink
GAMES 2 Defender, Space Invaders

HAUNT 3 Heathrow Bowl
GAMES 3 Marble Madness, Bombjack

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY They all did :( I peak too early, that's my trouble. Good learner but no staying power

AND FINALLY I got a lighter with a piezo electric clicker, dismantled it and used to give people electric shocks at school. "Ow miss, he's got a machine that shoots pins!"

After that got boring I soon managed to fnd out that you could spark arcade machines on their coin key slot and crash em or even better get free games (Donkey Kong Jnr seemed to work pretty well)

Speaking of Donkey Kong Jnr (a big fave) if you got the highest score the best thing (or horriblest, why are they so often the same thing) was to enter no letters but lots of deletes. For some reason this would completely fuck up the display and make the game unplayable. Nice!!

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NAME Simon Barnett

WHEN Late 70s to now
WHERE All over the place

MY HIGH-SCORE NICKNAME PSI
NEMESIS NICKNAME ???

GREATEST HIGH SCORE ACHIEVEMENT Topping the table on Moon Cresta at Woburn Safari Park whilst on Sixth Form induction week.

HAUNT 1 Panshanger Community Association SOCIAL CLUB
GAMES 1 Scramble, Moon Cresta, Some sub hunting thing, Pooyan

HAUNT 2 Hatfield Swimming Pool
GAMES 2 Galaxians, Phoenix

HAUNT 3 Assorted cross channel and north sea ferries
GAMES 3 Rally X, Pacman, Commando, Outrun

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY Me! Just when I was getting good at Pooyan Dad fell out with the rest of the committee and we never went to the social club again. Then we moved away.

AND FINALLY 1982 - Ferry to Holland. Machines on board only took Dutch coins so we spent the crossing memorising the patterns of the attract screens on Pacman and a few others. Then on the way home a week later when we had Dutch coins we were on a different ferry with different games...

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NAME Richard H (koworld)

WHEN 1979 onwards
WHERE Oxfordshire

MY HIGH-SCORE NICKNAME RIK
NEMESIS NICKNAME ARS

GREATEST HIGH SCORE ACHIEVEMENT Owning Return of the Jedi in Gloucester Green cafe. That felt soooooo lovely. To actually be good at a machine

HAUNT 1 Windrush Leisure Centre (Swimming Pool, Witney, Oxfordshire)
GAMES 1 Space Invaders, Galaxian, Frogger

HAUNT 2 Gloucester Green Cafe (Oxford)
GAMES 2 Return of the Jedi

HAUNT 3 Oxford Ice Rink
GAMES 3 Hyper Sports, Track & Field

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY Weird fucking Rollerball thing that seems to have not actually ever existed.

AND FINALLY Well that Rollerball thing I guess. It was on a Townsend Thorenson cross-channel ferry. I played it, and played it, and played it. All the way through the journey (three hours that one I think). Thing is, I was instantly good at it, that never really happened to me usually. I could make a single credit last ages and ages. But the real winner was that it won me admiring over-my-shoulder glances from a nice French girl. I still think of her, from time-to-time, and only when I'm alone.

That experience got written-up in the original paper-version of WotR. 1984 it must have been.

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NAME Mat Allen (Mayhem)

WHEN Early 80s to Mid 90s
WHERE London and South East

MY HIGH-SCORE NICKNAME MJa
NEMESIS NICKNAME n/a

GREATEST HIGH SCORE ACHIEVEMENT Getting into the early wave 20s in Star Wars

HAUNT 1 Gatley Avenue newsagent, West Ewell (81-85)
GAMES 1 Includes Galaxian, Pacman, Crush Roller, Gorf, Qix and Scramble

HAUNT 2 Local fish n chip shop, West Ewell (85-89)
GAMES 2 Defender, Hypersports, Joust, Streetfighter pressure pad edition

HAUNT 3 Kingston arcade, opposite the train station (90-92)
GAMES 3 Almost entirely Streetfighter 2, with a bit of Wrestlemania thrown in

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY Playing Flying Shark on the ferry back from French school trip, doing incredibly well and having to halt the game because the ship was about to dock into port. Doh!

AND FINALLY Being young AND short when many of the classic games were doing the rounds always proved a problem. Trying to reach stand up machines' stick and buttons sometimes meant standing on tiptoe. Or in the case of Battlezone classic, using a box! Hence the preference for sit down or cocktail machines sat itself in my mind. Star Wars was always a good one, wasted too many hours on that certainly.

I just wish I could go back to the summer of 1980 and see that wonderful cavern of arcade machines sitting somewhere in Cornwall. They had just about everything out currently at the time, and a flurry of cocktail versions to boot. Absolute gaming heaven!

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