Play Your Favorite Arcade Games Free

Play 70's & 80’s Arcade Games Free!

When I was in ninth grade it was 1982 and my best friends were Doug Wertman and Tom Jones. Doug and Tommy were what would today be called “gamers”. In 1982 parlance they were “losers who spent their lunch money playing arcade games”. Every lunch hour we would trudge from campus, five blocks to The Enterprise Gameroom. Doug and Tommy would spend their entire lunch budget (two dollars…never more, never less) playing Defender. They got pretty good at it. Not “Rod Weimer good” but good enough that sometimes they didn’t have to use all eight of their corners before it was time to go back for fifth period.

I never cared for arcade games. I only went because Doug and Tommy were my only friends and I didn’t want to spend my lunch hour (actually, forty minutes) alone. So, they’d play Defender and I’d get a Pepsi and a microwave burrito. Every now and again I’d drop a quarter into Galaga but that was about as far as my “gaming” would go.

None of us were what you would’ve called “go-getters”.

I wasn’t into games then for the same reason I’m not now. It just seems like such a pointless way to spend your time. You didn’t win anything except the ability to keep playing the game. That’s the same way I surmise games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush are today. It’s an activity you do to while away your free time. A way to just burn clock until you go back to school/go to bed/ die. I don’t have any suggestions of ways your time might be better spent. I didn’t way back in 1982. Doug and Tommy would waste their time playing games and I would waste my time watching them play. If I could go back, maybe I would’ve brought a book or even used the time to study. I realized what BS that is before I even finished typing the sentence. Of course, I wouldn’t use my lunch break to study. Sometimes you just need some downtime. If crushing electronic candy helps you enjoy your downtime more, then, by all means, you should do it.

And, if you’d like to play all of the games they had in my hometown arcade…Defender, Dig Dug…yes, even Robotron 2084 is there…then you can find them all on the amazing Internet. In 1982 we thought all the Internet would ever be good for was changing your grades to A’s and starting global thermonuclear war.

Play the games [HERE]