British 90s nostalgia and shite

When I was a kid, my family would go on holiday to a caravan park in Wales. (Though whether this qualifies as a holiday is debatable.)

The main place we went to was called Trecco Bay. It had an arcade where my siblings and I wasted quite a bit of my dad's money. The arcade smelled of cigarettes and had stains on the floor.

Here are some of the games you could find in the arcade.

Horse racing

The horse racing game is great. There are five plastic horses that race against each other and you have to bet on which one will win. And the whole thing is automated, so you just put a 10 pence coin in the slot and away you go.

The first two horses must have been on steroids because they won almost all the time. However, they did also pay out shit money (you might get your 10 pence back plus another 10 pence).

The last horse must have been old and knackered because he would win only once in a blue moon, but if you bet on him and won, then you won so much money that you and your family could retire on the winnings.

My sister said she figured out "the pattern" but I doubt the manufacturers of these machines would program them with a predictable pattern, especially a pattern that could be learned in the space of ten minutes by a child.

I was pretty good at this game, or as good as you can get at a game of pure chance. I won five times in a row once and my dad thought I was an autistic savant. Sadly he was only half-right.

Air hockey

Air hockey is fun. It involves quick reflexes and getting mentally 'in the zone' to stop the other bastard from scoring goals against you.

And what's more, it's usually coloured with special neon light or glow in the dark paint, making you feel like you're in a game in the futuristic world of Tron and not a holiday park in Wales.

However, because air hockey machines are made by mean-spirited people, it only lets you play up to ten points, after which the machine keeps the puck and you have to pay another pound to see it again. A POUND.

This is no good for kids like me who had poor hand-to-eye coordination. I scored more own goals than actual goals and the games were ofter over in less than a couple of minutes.

If I owned an arcade, then I'd make sure that the air hockey machine would let you play up to 100 points. In fact, I would force you to play to 100 points, even if you didn't want to. If you tried to escape then a hand would come out and taze you. That would be my way of balancing out the universe.

Luxor

Luxor sounds like a cross between Lex Luthor and Gamblor (the gambling monster from The Simpsons) but it's actually a game you can play in holiday park arcades.

The game involves shooting ten pence coins at a spinning table, and if the coin lands on one of the prizes then you win that amount

But 99.9% of the time, the coin lands half on a prize and half on the green, which means you won nothing. The coin has to achieve the improbable feat of landing EXACTLY within the borders of the prize. Otherwise, you win nothing.

This game was so hard that I don't think anyone ever won money at it. It's one of those games that teases you with the promise of untold riches when in reality all it does in rob you blind.

Only idiots play this game. And as proof of this, here's a photo of me playing it:

2p machines

Probably the best thing at arcades at the 2 pence machines. These machines were great because they only cost 2 pence to play, unlike literally everything else which cost more.

BUT you have to time your drop just right so that your coin fall NEXT to coins in the machine, instead of on top of them. You would think this would be obvious, but my brother and younger sister wasted a lot of coins like that.

The coins right at the edge would always be hanging precipitously off like Ethan Hunt climbing a rockface. It gave the illusion that all you needed to do to knock them off was put in just one more coin. And then one more. And then one more.

If all fails, you can always do what Mr Bean did and hit the machine.

Big Bertha

A game where you have to put your balls into a woman's gob. Whoever came up with it was a genius.

Big Bertha herself is slightly scary, but that didn't stop me from putting my balls in her mouth. There were tickets to be won after all, and as the arcade games go, Big Bertha was quite generous with them. You would win up to fifty tickets at a single game. Though maybe this was just a ploy by Big Bertha to get young boys to put balls in her mouth.

Basketball

Some arcades had basketball games where you had to throw a never-ending supply of basketballs through a hoop. The more balls you got through the hoop, the more tickets you won.

I was shit at the basketball games, as I was with any game that required skill, co-ordination or ability. You can see this for yourself in the video below.

You'll also notice that my sister was bad at it too. Being bad at sports runs in our family. We think it might be a curse that a gypsy once cast on one of our ancestors.

If you're tall then you can cheat by leaning into the machine. As long as the Nazi arcade staff aren't watching, that is. Otherwise, they might see you and take all ten of your tickets away.

Tickets

Some of the games spat out tickets which you could then trade in at a booth for prizes.

But the good prizes cost like a million tickets. All I only ever had enough tickets for the crappest, lowest denomination prizes - things that even Syria would send back.

These included:

• A shit rubber that didn't even work, it just destroyed your paper
• Plastic crudely-shaped animals
• The world's smallest bouncy ball

I googled it and I could only find one other person on the internet complaining about this first-world problem. Here's what she says:

I took my daughter to a restaurant for lunch yesterday. The one where you can play TONS of games before or after you eat. Just buy a power card, and throw some money down and away you go. Then you play games, and out comes tickets. Throw them in a bucket, then after two hours, and 40 bucks later, you can go cash them in for an item from the prize store. 389 tickets, and all she could get was a tiny tiny plastic gumball machine with 5 small gumballs. That was 350 tickets, and with the remaining 39, she couldn't even get a hot ball. [...] Oh yeah, you can get an ipad three for only 120,000 tickets!

I'm not sure what a 'hot ball' is but it doesn't sound good. It probably burns your hands if you try to play with it.

Conclusion

Arcades are all a bit of a scam really - like a casino but for kids - but at the end of the day, where else can you throw balls into a big woman's gob?