One of the items in my personal gift guide is a homebrew arcade machine. I have a feeling that it’s going to be my “midlife crisis” acquisition (though I’m hoping midlife won’t hit me for another thirty years). I didn’t really grow up inside arcades, but arcades certainly grew up with and around me. I still remember walking into Happy Joe’s pizza parlour and begging Dad to let us play a few rounds of Donkey Kong.

So, while I was surfing around for the ultimate home arcade game cabinet, I stumbled across Starcade.tv. What a blast from the past! If you never watched the show, you can view a few of the episodes in this archive. Starcade was one of my favorite TV programs when I was a kid – right after G.I. Joe and The Transformers, of course. I wonder what happened to all those old Starcade contestants? Did they ever get proper haircuts? I remember watching them play Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace, thinking that video games couldn’t get any better than that.