My earliest memory of any arcade machine must have been before I was five... the arcade in the Albion Centre in Etobicoke had a
Fire Truck machine.
After that, arcades were still prevalent in most malls but I think the most time I spent with them as I got older was in the various bowleramas (where I got to enjoy such thrills as Roadblasters, Bad Dudes), the Balm Beach arcade (
High Speed (the pinball table) and Operation Wolf), the arcade at the go-kart track (Bump n' Jump, 1942, Monaco GP) and especially Video Invasion which was a hugely popular arcade on Bathurst Ave. Oh, and the huge billiard hall (Metal Slug, Capcom vs Street Fighter, Total Carnage, Race Drivin').
I miss the old days - games were everywhere. Go to get a slice of pizza, there was a SFII:CE machine there. Dad coming back from a business trip so you go to meet him at the airport? There's
Cisco Heat and Hard Drivin' there to entertain you while you wait for his delayed flight.
Hell - holidays were always great because all the sorts of hotels we went to always had loads of machines. The big Holiday Inn Holidome in Beaver Falls, Penn which had
Dead Angle and
P.O.W., or the hotel in Jasper, Alb with
Boot Camp (which I never saw anywhere else), or the Holiday Inn in Lake Placid, NY, which had the utterly sublime
Super Chase HQ and a Terminator 2 machine which was only a quarter a go, meaning I could put in two quarters and use both guns... I could go on forever.
Wow, writing all that brought back a LOT of memories (good) while making me feel really old (bad). It's worth noting, though, that even as I was turning 18 and leaving, there were still a few of the huuuuuuge arcades left on Yonge Street - giant places full of slightly creepy looking people who chain smoked, and stoned teenagers. You could find great stuff - the full size Virtua Fighter 3 cabinets, the actual Cannon Spike arcade machine, and lots of classics. There was also a local game store called Gamerama which would often have a pair of pretty darn new cabinets in. Likewise, in London, SegaCity still existed and was filled with games (as opposed to now, fruit machines)