In this awesome pic of the Golden Mile, some fantastic cabs can be seen in Circus Circus. The sit-down driver is Final Lap R, released by Namco in 1993 and one of the only games to run on the System FL hardware.
To the left of Final Lap R there appears to be a Star Wars cockpit and to the right the Taito Bubble Car!
I played Chase H.Q. in one of these, and remember the chain guard around the cab, and my grandparents helping me get in and out. I seem to recall it being black, but my memory is hazy. Oh how I would love to have a few credits on this again! It’s strange how times change. Back in the day I thought these would be about forever, and the thought of owning machines seemed inconceivable.
Barrons
Barrons always had a special charm, with its heady smell of fried onions at the hotdog stall by the entrance, and the lure of Rad Mobile DLX and Nemesis in an old generic wood grain cab. They had these games well into the nineties. The arcade always seemed dated, even back in the day, and that’s why it was so awesome. After all, we were spoilt with having the latest games in the other arcades up and down the seafront
Behind these two gents there is an awesome and incredibly rare After Burner Commander, a sort of scaled down version of the DLX model. The cab looks incredibly cool and is another one I’d love to play.
In this pic there is an Electrocoin ZX-2000 to the left.
I believe this was a generic driving environmental cab, with the game marquee displayed on the back. The ones I’ve seen had Konami GT installed. Behind this there appears to be another cab, orange and white with sharp angles. This one is a complete mystery to me. If anyone knows what it might be please get in touch.
To the left the front end of Thunder Blade DLX can be seen.
A couple more interior shots, showing the bingo kiosk and a shell suit in all its eighties glory.
The Marine Centre Amusements
Last year the Marina Centre was demolished to make way for a new leisure complex. With this, and the fire and subsequent demolition of the bowling alley, Regent Superbowl, it almost feels like my youth is slowly being chipped away and disappearing.
I think there were amusements inside the main complex, as well as amusements accessible from the sea front. I rarely ventured into the main complex back in the day and can only really remember the latter, from around the mid-nineties. They had some modern machines for the time, which weren’t anywhere else down the seafront, and I put a lot of credits in Konami’s Crypt Killers and Sega’s Fighting Vipers. Virtua Fighter was a massive deal in Japan, but never seemed to harness the same popularity over here. Fighting Vipers took the same great gameplay, but with characters and themes geared more towards the West. I loved it, smashing the opponent out of the caged arena never got old. The cab featured full art and was the same type as that used for Virtua Fighter 2 and Virtua Striker. I have never seen another in the UK.
Here are some pics of the amusements from 1988.
It looks a little sparse, but on the right there is Hang-On DLX, complete with a custom ‘Super Bike’ arch. They had a similar one to this at the Flamingo.
The Chuckle Brothers* posing in front of Hang-On DLX, complete with the cool ‘Super Bike’ arch. Also on the left you can just make out Space Harrier DLX, with the blue Sega logo and red triangles at the top of the chair. It’s a shame there isn’t a bit more on show!
In this pic of the left side of the arcade you can see even more Sega goodness, Thunder Blade DLX and Super Hang-On just behind it. Progress was rapid, with new awesome machines seemingly coming out every season. Sega were at the forefront and really did own the arcades back then, continuously pushing boundaries and making fun, innovative games which were a joy to play.
Absolute classics you hardly ever see anymore. How I’d love to go back and spend the day there. There also appears to be a row of machines at the back of the arcade, but they are unidentifiable.
Operation Wolf, another absolute classic.
The rows of Electrocoin Goliaths they had in the seafront arcades were a sight to behold. Arcade Club have done an awesome job recreating this, but I’d love to find some pics of them from back in the day. For now I’ll have to make do with this solitary Goliath, hiding behind the change desk.
Now let’s travel back a few more years to the Marina Centre in the early eighties, the era of the dedicated cabs. What a fantastic pic!
The games from left to right are Pole Position, Armor Attack, Star Castle and Defender. Pole Position takes me back, with the unmistakable ‘beep, beep, beep beeeeep.’ I had to look up Armor Attack and Star Castle. These two are vector graphics multidirectional shooters, released by Cinematronics in 1980. The era of the dedicateds was a bit before my time, and I remember the arcades having a good mix of dedicateds and generic Jamma cabs. As Jamma became an industry standard, generic cabs became a popular choice with Ops. Once earnings from a game started to decline, they could change the PCB and marquee and have a new game, negating the need for a new machine, thus saving money.
