Special Edition: House of Targ

Date played: March 18th
Platform: Arcade

I spent my evening at a local bar, House of Targ with the oldest of my brothers. Part live music venue, part perogies restaurant and part arcade, this place is just perfect of me. After eating some delicious perogies (with bacon!), we spent some time playing arcade games and pinball.

I started with a game by Sega named Turbo. This racing game from 1981 features a steering wheel, a gas pedal and 2 gears. It feels a lot like Super Hang On, except that it was super fucking hard. Next, we played some NBA Jam together, the classic basketball game from 1993. I won by a single point with the Chicago Bulls.

We followed up with some an old Super Chexx bubble dome hockey game, which is similar to foosball. Pitting Canada versus the USA, my brother won 4-3, a tight match. I love playing these types of hockey games, it's so much fun...

Then, I played one of my favorite arcade games ever, San Francisco Rush The Rock from 1996, an awesome racing game where shortcuts are frequent, huge jumps are the norm and shit goes real fucking fast. My brother won the first race and I won the second.

We headed over to the X-Men vs. Street Fighter machine, a 1996 fighting game pitting some Street Fighter characters against some X-Men. This is a tag game, similar to Marvel vs Capcom, where each player picks two characters and can switch between them on the fly. I definitely have more experience with fighting games than my bro, so I won both matches using Ryu and the Hulk. This game was lots of fun, it's very flashy and looks cool.

We also played a pair of beat'em ups, X-Men, the landmark 1992 brawler, and Double Dragon from 1987. These are perfect for arcades, since they are just so easy to jump into and play. Double Dragon is hilarious, challenging and easy to play. I used Wolverine in X-Men and my brother used Cyclops and we even managed to beat the first boss, Pyro.

As we got closer to the live music show, we headed to the pinball area. We played Terminator 2, Iron Man, Genie, Rollergames, Tron Legacy, The Machine Bride of Pin Bot and finally The Walking Dead. Some machines are more fun than others obviously, while some are just cruel, but the best of the night was easily The Walking Dead.

This table is very recent and it shows... It's flashy, well constructed and has a ton of cool moving parts, including a large zombie in the middle and a zombie head hidden inside a barn. What I liked best about it is that the lights would sometimes turn off, creating a short moment of panic as I searched for the ball. It's a cool effect and it adds a lot to the experience. The sound effects are spot on too. I really enjoyed Tron, Pin Bot and Iron Man also.