I Suck at Games: My Mother Does Not

In 1984 my parents owned and operated an arcade in a small town in Michigan. At age seven I was spending time after school pumping quarters into video game machines, mostly Pac Man, Dig-Dug, Berserk, Space Invaders, Joust, and Donkey Kong Junior. My memory fails me as to whether or not that Popeye game was out at that time, but it eventually became one of my favorites.

The Midway classics... I was exposed to them nice and early. And for that I am thankful.

One game always eluded me... or rather, I eluded it. I could never quite get 25 cents worth of gameplay out of it. It is known as one of the most challenging arcade games ever assembled: Defender.


"Back off, kid... I'm not your mother"

This just blows my mind. Not that my mother played video games, or that she was good at them. But she was good at Defender, yo.

To this day she's still pretty proud of having one game that she can hold over my head and tease me about.

And I take it gracefully.