Friend was having his 12th birthday party and we went to this 3 story video arcade and go cart track. Everyone brought some cash and his parents bought like $100 in tokens. We messed around half the day on go carts and what amounted to a driving simulator, which ate up the majority of our tokenage. Eventually I lose track of the other three guys. Later, I come around a corner and see this freakin huge machine set up then end of a bank of machines. It was this game and all three friends were playing. They yell at me to get over there quick and jump in. I picked the human fighter, since he was the only one left.
We spent the rest of the time at the arcade on this game. It took a bit to figure out the best combos and when to use each characters specials, and we were constantly discussing how to advance each character or who should pick up the mana vials and health pots ect.
We mash our way through some mountains and a swamp with a black dragon. Eventually work our way into a mountain and out onto this bridge that spans a chasm. Then this giant of a red dragon swoops over the screen and just starts laying waste to us. We were getting low on quarters at this point and everyone kept "standing in the fire", until finally we were just out of money and dead. Except me.
The dragon was pretty low on health at this point. I had managed to get fairly good at dodging the breath attacks, but was still getting beat up pretty hard. So it comes right down to it, I have no tokens left and like a quarter life and it looks like I am going to get blasted for good when I used a consumable I think, was a potion bomb or throwing knife or something really weeny, but it does the trick and you can't even hear the dragon's death roar because my friends are jumping up and down and yelling so much. There was even some applause from a few onlookers.
So my friend's dad had been watching us and was standing next to a token machine. When he sees that the dragon is dead he's just like... "oh well now you gotta finish it." I am trying to stall for as long as possible at the next screen, was it a path choice or a vendor... can't remember. But I think every screen had a timer on it. So they are all rushing to get at least a single token to hop back in.
Anyways we plowed our way to the end and actually finished the damn thing. The last fight is in no way, shape, or form fair. Was a lich that kept floating around the screen spamming aoe magic attacks. It amounted to a zerg fest for us I think. Still it was an awesome time and easily one of the best arcade memories I have.
