When I was visiting the east coast I found my way to a retro toy store that happened to have a few arcade machines in the front lobby. These are always cool for me to see. One game, in particular, brought back some great memories about the arcade we had in our Yakima Mall.
Growing up in the 80s/90s in Yakima the Jolly Joker was my favorite place in the entire world. It was your classic video game arcade where for 25 cents you could be whisked away to Outerspace to defend Earth from space aliens, rescue your girlfriend from a giant beast or, simply, help a frog cross the road. Some games seem to be more interactive than others and, though it was an older game, the original Sprint was one I loved to play at Jolly Joker.
Simple by design, you're looking down on an overhead track that you have to race through as fast as you can while trying to avoid crashing into the walls and beat the other driver to the finish line after so many laps. Even better with both players. And the fact that this game had a steering wheel, gear shift and foot pedals make it for a 'realistic' driving experience.
Though even for its time they had several other driving games and some that were far more realistic I always went back to this one. Not sure why but it was more my style I suppose.
So happy to see this arcade machine again. Now we can play arcade games at home through emulation and what-not but nothing will top those steering wheels.
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