Reflections: Arcades, Summer Vacation and a New Home

I just wanted to leave an update here on my latest Reflections piece to share some tidbits on my personal life, and some musings I’ve had lately as well. This being a blog, I do appreciate the format where everything I write doesn’t have to feel like a well researched journalistic post on video games, but where I can just write about what God has on my heart and other milestones of my personal life.

We finally moved into our first home! It’s been a blessing, and being able to own your own property is so much better than renting let me tell you. If you rent, that’s cool and I respect that but if your ever able to own, do it. There are state programs for first home owners to help you out. Aside from that, I’m on summer vacation now since I am a teacher, so I can update here more often and #clearthequeue on my backlog of games. I like to hold off on buying new games until I actually play and beat some of my older ones, that’s a life lesson to any gamer.

Thinking about vacation and time off, it brought to mind the days I used to handle my “business” at arcades, if you know what I mean.

There used to be this big arcade down here in Miami where I would play at least once a week. It was called Flippers (like the flippers on the side of a pinball game, get it?) and it was awesome. Imagine your typical dark, overlooked, hole in the wall arcade with lots of geeks all crammed into a large room full of lights, arcade games and DDR (Dance Dance Revolution). I actually got really good at DDR because of all the money and training (yes, I had a trainer, he was a friend who was REALLY good at DDR) I put into the game, that I can play quite a few songs on Expert Mode to this day (it’s Basic, Difficult then Expert).

That place is long gone, and I have plenty of fond memories from it as well. Arcades just aren’t popular in South FL, with only three of them left! One is Dave & Busters, another is Game Time which is located in a popular open air mall called Sunset Place and the last one is Arcade Odyssey which is another hole in the wall.

It sucks a little because I used to enjoy going to these arcades so much, because of that old school feel where you can just play with anyone that was there and rock them in the latest fighting game or kill some zombies on House Of The Dead together. Either way, I’m glad to see that there are still some of them around and I enjoy going to them every now and then.