🚀 go-pugleaf

> A friend of mine has been playing marble madness and he says he hurt his
> hand from aggresive trackball use. This makes me think of my Arcade wounds
> of past, like callouses on my hand from exidy's Bandito (Remember that one?)
> the joystick was serrated in a cruel way. My hands used to hurt playing
> Asteroids for 9 hours, a sort of numbing feeling in the palms, and my eyes
> would black out sometimes from watching the screen for so long. My wrist
> used to hurt after many games of Tempest, spinning the knob. Does anyone
> rmember a joystick version of Asteroids called Meteor? I know Atari had the
> joystick version for the home, but this was a coin-op, It had 2 buttons and
> was a bitch to control. I also get pinched by trackballs for the football
> and missile command games from Atari, a flap of skin passes in between the 
> ball and enclosure causing pain. Anyone else experienced pain? Why do we
> do this, I have spent 1000's on these games that could have gone to other
> things. Pain, destitution, solitude, anger, momentary triumph, is this
> our reward?
> 
> 				Halfway arcade Hedley.

I have had blisters from the rough edges of a Defender joy stick and
sore wrists and fingers from fast moving games like Ripoff.  I have 
never pinched my fingers on a track ball but I have brused my hands.

I never really believed how much some games are played until I started
collecting old games.  They older ones have electomechanical quarter
counters and some of the numbers are unreal.  The highest I have seen
is the Asteriods game that I fixed up for my parents.  The combined
count of the two quarter/token counters was around 80,000.  It still
works fine and looks OK after some cleaning up.  There is a burnt
dot in the middle of the screen's phospers which is typical for vector
graphics games but otherwise there are no signs of 80,000 uses after
I cleaned up the cabinet.

				Rick Schieve