I love Mexican food.  Actually, let me qualify that: I love "Mexican" food.  By putting that word in quotes, I can qualify anything from "Dave's Taco Corner" and Taco Bell to the most authentic, regional, traditional Mexican food out there, and lump it all into the same general category.  Not that those two distinct camps taste much like one another, but certainly, in the space between those 2, a logical path can be drawn from the "Enchurito" to something that would be commonplace at the dinner table in some parts of Mexico.  If not there, at least at the dinner table of a traditional Mexican restaurant, run by actual Mexican citizens, or immigrants from Mexico, as happens to be the case with the wonderful lady in my town that runs a local restaurant.  Her food is my version of "comfort food", and I try to give her as much business as my pocketbook will allow. Her food is tasty, and she's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet.  Her brand of spicy agrees with me heartily, because I eat my "Mexican" food by the standard that you know it's good if (GROSS OUT ALERT!) it burns twice as much going out as it did going in.

So why am I talking about "Mexican" food on a video games website?  Because tacos and vidya games go together, dontcha know? 



When I was a kid, there was a small, locally owned "Mexican" restaurant by the name of Taco Stop in my hometown.  My family frequented the establishment a lot, because grandpa's pocketbook dictated that's where we often ate after church on Sunday.  Along with great tacos, burritos, and other such Mexican-inspired cuisine, they had what nearly every restaurant had in the 80's - arcade games!  I anticipated trips to Taco Stop, because I knew I would have opportunities to play whatever arcade games they had, and they always had something fun or interesting in there.  Sadly, Taco Stop was torn down in the early 90's due to poor sales and mismanagement, and all that remains today is a parking lot on the other side of the adjacent Pizza Hut.  I miss my old friend, Taco Stop, and I've been feeling a bit nostalgic for him lately.  As such, I thought I would recount a few gaming experiences I had at this particular establishment.


The first game I'll speak of is Gondomania.  It's a relatively little-known Data East arcade game, but one that uses a now-familiar control scheme: it's one of the games they made with the 8-way rotating joystick, in the same vein as Heavy Barrel and Ikari Warriors.  The difference being that this was an auto-scrolling vertical shoot-em-up, but one where you could aim specifically where you were shooting.  The secondary weapon would normally fire straight ahead of your craft, but that usually had limited ammo or was on a timer.  You had to get good at moving around the playfield while simultaneously aiming your throwing axes, knives, spears, etc. in order to take out foes.  The game is set in a mostly medieval-esque setting, though it has a hovering craft as your means of transportation.  Suspension of disbelief, indeed.  Still, it's a fun game that has that quarter munching, arcade level of difficulty one would expect from mid-late 80's Data East, and I sure had a lot of fun with it as a kid, at least for the short time Taco Stop had it sitting in the corner.


Another lesser-known arcade game, this time from Capcom, that graced the wall adjacent to the cash register counter, was Mad Gear, a top-down battle racing game.  There are no weapons, but your vehicle has the inexplicable ability to jump, so you can land on other racers to take them out, or jump over hazards like falling rocks, piles of used tires, and gaps in the road where the roadway literally drops out to a chasm below.  You had to collect fuel takes along the way to get "Energy!", which you'll hear in that now-familiar "Capcom voice", that most of us know from Street Fighter 2's "Yoga Fire!", "Yoga Flame!", and "Continue!" voice samples.  It's a quirky game that has decent music, fast racing action, and an interesting quasi post-apocalyptic setting that gives the game a slight cyberpunk bend to it.  There's a fun little Easter Egg as well: during the game's attract mode, the game shows off the different competing racers and their vehicles.  One racer in particular has a pair of futuristic sunglasses on.  If you tap the "Jump" button rapidly while his portrait is on screen briefly, you'll cause those sunglasses to fall off his face.  All in all, Mad Gear is a fun little game, and it's a shame Capcom didn't see fit to include it in any of its Classics collections.


The next game I want to highlight is one that will be far more familiar to most people, and that is the venerable Sega classic, Shinobi.  For a period of maybe three or four months, Taco Stop had this awesome game up against the wall near the cash register.  After placing my order at the counter, I would slide over to the machine and watch the attract mode, enthralled by Joe Musashi throwing his "ninja stars" at baddies, rescuing hot-pink-clad hostages, and facing off against "Ken Oh," a villain whose name belied the "oh crap" moment one experienced the first time you faced off with him, and he hurls 2 giant blobs of flame at you.  When I had quarters, I played the game, and always felt a huge rush when I could save my ninja magic long enough to face the first boss, to whittle his hits down enough that I could beat him without having to contend with the flames.  Sadly, I was never very good at the game, and only ever made it to the 3rd mission once or twice.  Still, it was one of the first times I heard reasonably clear speech in a video game, and that first stage music is iconic, and tattooed on my brain.


The final game I want to talk about is one that appeared in the games room that they opened up, which eventually became a games room and VHS rental room, then eventually the arcade games were pushed out in favor of all VHS some months before the place closed down.  That game is Mr. Do's Castle.  This little gem of a game was already a few years old by this time, having been released a good five or six years prior to when Taco Stop made a dedicated arcade room. This game instantly grabbed my attention with its highly colorful graphics, whimsical main character, and simplistic concept: run around and collect stuff, bash stumpy unicorn type monsters in the head with a hammer, and pound blocks.  It's a deceptively simple game with more depth than you might think, given its single-screen approach and casual "whack-a-mole" appearance.  While the original Mr. Do is a fun game, it smacks a bit of Dig Dug, whereas this feels more wholly original by contrast.  I always felt this was the superior experience, and now that I have a ColecoVision, I will definitely be on the lookout for that version of the game.


Sadly, as I mentioned toward the beginning of the article, my beloved Taco Stop closed down, some time in either 1991 or 1992.  They had great food, Americanized though it was, and awesome taco sauce.  I still miss it to this day, in part because it was during a time when my grandmother was still reasonably healthy, my grandpa was alive and was his usual joke-cracking self, I was a carefree kid with no more worries than how many quarters I could collect before my next visit to the restaurant, and I got to eat free "Mexican" food every other Sunday.  I miss going to a restaurant and seeing an arcade cabinet there with a fun game to play, and a new adventure waiting for me every time they changed the cabinet out in favor of a new game.  Though those childhood days of yore are long gone at this point, I can still reminisce, remember the games I played and enjoyed, and know that those experiences had a hand in shaping the gamer I am today.  For that, I'm forever grateful to the young couple who struck out and took a chance to open their restaurant in my hometown.  They had a hand in helping me to make lasting special memories that still impact me, 30 plus years later.

Permalink | Comments [14] | Digg This Article | Tweet