🚀 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
... 
> 				Halfway arcade Hedley.

Yes, indeed, I remember my most interesting "arcade wound"; it was the blister
(which became a callus) on the third finger of my left hand which appeared due
to the strange little ridge below the black ball on the Time Pilot joystick.
Also, I've bruised myself on Marble Madness trackballs, and pinched my hand
with the crossbow on Crossbow...

I sometimes wonder why I keep doing it.  But it's too much fun to stop!

The Ex-Master Blaster, now known as...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name:		G. T. Samson
Title:		The Evil MicroWizard
Quote:		"No matter where you go...there you are." -- B. Banzai
Other_Quote:	"You speak treason!" "Fluently!" 	  -- The Doctor
ARPA:		gts@wjh12 [preferred] OR samson%h-sc4@harvard
USMail:		Lowell N-43, Harvard U., Cambridge, MA 02138

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name:		G. T. Samson
Title:		The Evil MicroWizard
Quote:		"No matter where you go...there you are." -- B. Banzai
Other_Quote:	"You speak treason!" "Fluently!" 	  -- The Doctor
ARPA:		gts@wjh12 [preferred] OR samson%h-sc4@harvard
USMail:		Lowell N-43, Harvard U., Cambridge, MA 02138

> 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
> ...

Ah, yes, back in my heavy-duty video game days, I rmember that after
playing Tron for a while my thumb would go numb for the rest of the day.
There seemed to be something in the shape of the joystick that pinched
a nerve in my hand or something.

	-paul asente

Asked once where I had picked up a single callus under the second knuckle
of my index finger. I replied "By defending the planet of course." Yes, 
it was the Defender scar. Tribute to long hours of battle after saving 
several million stranded humans ...

--Chuck
-- 
                                            - - - D I S C L A I M E R - - - 
{ihnp4,fortune}!dual\                     All opinions expressed herein are my
        {qantel,idi}-> !intelca!cem       own and not those of my employer, my
 {ucbvax,hao}!hplabs/                     friends, or my avocado plant. :-}

> 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

> I sometimes wonder why I keep doing it.  But it's too much fun to stop!
> 
> The Ex-Master Blaster, now known as...
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Name:		G. T. Samson
> Title:		The Evil MicroWizard
> Quote:		"No matter where you go...there you are." -- B. Banzai
> Other_Quote:	"You speak treason!" "Fluently!" 	  -- The Doctor
> ARPA:		gts@wjh12 [preferred] OR samson%h-sc4@harvard
> USMail:		Lowell N-43, Harvard U., Cambridge, MA 02138
> 
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------


	Sorry, but that "Other_Quote" belongs to Errol Flynn playing
Robin Hood in the 1938 film "The Adventures of Robin Hood". The good
Doctor has obviously been around!

	Stephen Trutiak

	allegra!utcsri!alias!steve

PS It's a great film, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it.