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My best friend buys his first arcade machine. Secretly, I'd hoped this might be a mid-life Time Crisis, or at the very least an Operation Wolf. But it's simply a careworn upright cabinet, an entry-level fixer-upper. An eBay description would most likely describe it as "generic", although that doesn't feel like the right word to describe the sweeping, if slightly puckered, blue and yellow side panel art, even if the marquee signage says, simply, "VIDEO GAME". (It's a Ronseal-esque sentiment stealthily undermined by an oversized "O" that resembles the Death Star.) This cabinet looks bashed and slightly battered, its authentic vintage confirmed by a control console designed to accommodate an ashtray. In short, it looks pretty much perfect.Open it up, turn out the guts and the wiring is a cat's cradle crossed with a dog's breakfast, but it works. The ageing CRT screen may need 10 minutes to warm up before it really gets going but it delivers an appreciable window of optimum clarity. After that, things get warm and fuzzy, but that's not the worst way to relive formative arcade experiences. What is truly special is the ROM that comes pre-installed, a treasure trove of selectable titles from the formative age of coin-ops. It feels rather like a vintage Now! That's What I Call Music compilation, with essential smash hits from the early 1980s bulked out with some intriguing also-rans and nearly-theres. For every Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? there are one or two Happy Talks.
The capstone is the inclusion of Donkey Kong, an opportunity for my friend and I to relive our shared appreciation of The King Of Kong, the remarkable 2007 documentary that quietly adds a Paragon/Renegade metagame to the original title. Now, no matter how you progress on each credit, it seems to ask a moral question of the player: in real life, are you a Wiebe or a Mitchell? For the most part, it feels like I am neither, because I cannot make any substantial headway with Donkey Kong, even with access to more credits than ever before. Twin Galaxies referee Walter Day can put his feet up; there will never be the need to announce a potential kill screen coming up. But this beautiful machine remains a gateway to quality time with Qix, Bombjack, Zaxxon - all holy relics of gaming. Even on a slightly wonky CRT monitor, it feels like a privilege, a luxury.
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