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He won the 2012 National Magazine Award for profile writing.I’ve got questions. Tim Rogers is the editor of D Magazine in Dallas. The only downside: It doesn’t seem to bother my wife one bit. It is one of the few, maybe only, activities that we enjoy with equal relish. I am reliving my childhood as she delights in hers. When she loses a life and laughs about it, I take the stick, and she, in turn, watches, oohing and giggling as I narrowly escape Inky to eat a banana.
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I grab the top of the cabinet and hover over her as she stands on her tippy toes, leans hard on the joystick, rushing for an energizer to turn the ghosts blue. She continues to play for the love of the game, even though I quintuple her score every time we face off. It’s so beyond his reach that he doesn’t much care and has essentially retired from the game. I taped a $20 bill to the machine, a prize for anyone who could best my score. Our names alternate at the top of the scores column, then it’s all Dad, all the time. So we kept tally on a sheet of paper taped to the side of the machine. But soon enough I was able to wake up the echoes, as it were, and reap the rewards of all those hours invested in arcades during my youth. In the first few months, my son and I had epic battles, our scores being approximate. Pac-Man (the coitus happening off-screen, and quickly). Pac-Man chase each other and eventually produce Jr. As boards are cleared and the pace quickens, nothing else in the world can occupy your mind if you wish to advance and see the next intermission, the scenes in which Pac-Man and Ms. You have to be alert at all times, watching four ghosts simultaneously, understanding their typical behaviors but also constantly preparing for deviations in those behaviors. Pac-Man employs a randomness that defeats rote memorization of patterns. What you might not know: Unlike its male progenitor, Ms. We must have slept and eaten, but otherwise we were standing at that machine, working the joystick, eating pellets, trying to outwit Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Sue. I had to take breaks to go to work, sure. There followed approximately one solid month of nonstop Ms. At which point my 9-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son looked at me like I was the best father in the world, the father they’d always dreamed of but could never let themselves hope for because no way could any father ever be that awesome. I plugged it in, opened the coin door and put 20 credits on the machine. I put the machine in our den, which actually had a perfect space for it (as far as I’m concerned). Pac-Man back to the house in the sober light of the next day. Third, when she finally threatened divorce, I could easily unload the thing, perhaps for a small profit.Ī buddy with a truck helped me cart Ms. Pac-Man machine from the bar would drive my wife positively insane.
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Second, if it did win, bringing home a Ms. So I bid half that, with three thoughts informing my decision. Pac-Man machine in good condition was worth about $1,000. But for what price? A quick search of eBay on my phone suggested that a Ms. So I developed a proficiency - with the games, if not the girls.Īnd there she sat, many years later, after midnight, waiting to be taken home. But I also appreciated versatility, because girls at the roller rink seemed to prefer cute stuff like Donkey Kong and Ms. I was into outer space and lasers and shooting stuff in outer space with lasers. I’d play Defender or Galaga or Vanguard if those machines were open. I spent a good portion of the early 1980s in video game arcades. Pac-Man standup arcade cabinet in back - they could all be had for the right bid, recorded in a spiral notebook. The mishmash of chairs and tables, the Tiffany-style stained-glass Schlitz chandeliers hanging over the bar, the shuffleboard table and, yes, the Ms. So on the last night, they sold everything in the bar, piece by piece, to the highest bidder. A local hedge fund, one that happens to be run by a big-game hunter who has publicly said he enjoys giraffe jerky, had bought the building and raised the rent. My favorite dive bar, a few blocks from White Rock Lake, in my leafy East Dallas neighborhood, was closing forever. Truth be told, I was drunk when I bought the Ms.