I did not, lol. More just that I had multiple starts, plus the fact that I obsessively loot and inventory manage both my own game and our joint game (because I have free time and he does not, so it was lucky that I was the host), and the fact that my current Durge character is a solo druid with prodigious amounts of save scumming (though the plan is to pick up Minthara for a duo finish when I finally get the opportunity in Act 2).
I loved the vibe but I was a thrifty wee fella and 20c is big money, so I never spent all that much. Was terrible at the fighting games but I have fond memories of Galaxian.
My formative years were spent in many an arcade blowing quarters and tokens on games that I loved. The first one that I ever played was Shinobi and I was awful at it.
I found Legend of Grimrock I interesting. But its got grid based movement with real time, so you are kinda sliding left, forward, turn right attack, repeat to stay out of the monsters front squares and it got to be quite the annoying dance.
It was expensive for me too. I remember walking around the places for lord knows how long, trying to decide on what games to spend my money. Also, questions like: do you spend all your money on the same game (boring ?) in an attempt to get good at it, or do you spend your money on all different games (exciting ?) but never get good at any of them ? I was terrible at the fighting games too (and I preferred Mortal Kombat over Street Fighter). I just randomly banged on the buttons and moved the stick in random directions to see if the character did any cool special moves.
I wasn't really good at most of the games, as I really did not have enough money to spend on them to get any good. The ones I loved the most were the (moving) sit-in/sit-on cabinets, like Out Run, Afterburner, and Super Hang On. You just could not replicate that same experience on the (what I guess you would now call) 'consoles' at home (with things like our Atari 2600, ColecoVision, and later our Commodore C64).
Kinda reminds me of how I used to play MMORPGs. Back when a bunch of us started WoW around the same time, by the time everyone else was closing in on max levels and talking about the great mounts they had and the endgame content they were exploring, I was still in the 20s to 30s level-wise, because I'd started characters of practically every race (well, every race in the Horde) and was playing through with them concurrently.
Very few people, including myself, were good at them, which was the point. You will continue sinking your money in over and over playing the games that you are not very good at, as opposed to playing in on one token. I don't think the vast majority of people noticed the patterns they needed to in order to get that good. I think they would simply be console classics. My friend had the ColecoVision that he got for cleaning out his neighbors backyard in the late 90's. Fun fact it is the system that AOl began its business venture on. We found that out by wondering why it had a phone jack on it and looked it up.
(Dungeons & Dragons)
Rulebook featuring "high magic" options, including a host of new spells.
