Cola Wars Of Gaming Consoles

Your traditional arcade is a rarity now, particularly in Australia, where they seem confined to cobwebbed rooms astride communal coin laundries on coastal campsites – something for the kids not yet old enough to appreciate nature.Besides these relics the majority of our arcades are Timezones, Intencitys, or equivalents persuing a similarly epilepsy unfriendly oversaturation of the senses – all the flashing lights and sounds of a PG13 Vegas.

As with any intimate partner, early interactions are cursory, exploratory, guarded and cautious and fumbling

When you become familiar game like this you have purpose, motivation, and the ultimate glory of arcades is within your reach – the highscore screen. While there may be some healthy and heated competition between you and your housemates for the best lap time on Mariokart time trial, at the end of the day your glory is still confined to the decrepit walls of your sharehouse. Arcade games are like tagging, except that in order to leave you bastardised abbreviated moniker on the wall you need a skill-set that extends beyond sneaking out and chucking robbos at the paint section of your local Bunnings.

Your name on the high score screen of an arcade game is a unique and unparalleled achievement. There are other ways to display ones name in public, certainly, but all pale in comparison. Peeing your name into snow, graffitiing an empty train, writing your name in a hotel guest book, the signature you give when buying a case of Dr Pepper on credit… Etching your name into a school desk with a compass doesn't come close. Hell, even having it embossed in gold on the honour board in the main hall doesn't compare.
This is the perfect mix of genuine achievement and recreation. When you've accomplished this yourself, been faced with three Capitol As, the first flashing, you'll realise this three letter handle is perhaps more important than your own initials, even when they happen to be the same, the former holds more significance.The origin of my handle is a complicated one. In short, during my formative years I headed the formation of an elite club not dissimilar to the Flying Hellfish (though not sharing their war torn origins) called the Mrs Gan Clan. While largely inactive currently – we are in the midst of an occultation – I pay tribute to the organization through my attempts to proliferate high score screens with three letters: GAN.

What makes me qualified to write about all this? Until recently GAN graced the top spot on the Metal Slug 2 machine at Petersham Bowling Club. It has since been relegated to second place, beaten comprehensively by someone who committed the cardinal sin of impatiently pushing buttons at the game's end rendering their achievement as little more than accident, the triple AAA handle as good as anonymous. But I welcome the challenge. The opportunity to better myself. A reason to reinstate the piggy bank. And I'd wager that the hours spent standing before that machine in attempts to reclaim my glory will be better for my fitness than any Wii or Xbox Kinect exercise game.