Patrick County High School - Archive Yearbook (Stuart, VA)

Page 33 text:

John Shockley and Randy Law¬ less take a moment out from the computer challengers to clown around at the Family Ar¬ cade. Senior Deborah Collins guides her spaceship safely through space while avoiding hazardous flying objects. Though Aster¬ oids lacks the color screen, the popularity of the game is not lacking. Arcade 29

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THE ARCADIAN CHALLENGES Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Missle Command The adrenalin flows, your heart begins to speed up, and you find a surge of formerly buried energy begin to rise within you. Your senses are tuning in—your hearing is in¬ vaded by resounding sounds from space—computerized sounds of crash, bleeps and blips, and the terminal kaboom of having your last spacecraft blown to smithereens. Your eyes are bombarded with an array of brightly col¬ ored flashing lights as the chal¬ lenge continues to rise. Excite¬ ment mounts as the patterned sounds speed and the frequen¬ cy of light flashes quickens. You’ve almost lost touch with the outside pressures of life that surround you all day with a burdening weight that lays heavy on your mind, and for a brief moment, you revel in the frivolity of finding yourself in the arcade. Games surround you, each with their enticing gimmicks to lure you to them. The challenge is upon you the moment you walk through the door. You are surrounded and you quickly dig through your pockets for the quarter that it takes to accept the chal¬ lenge. Midway Division’s Pac-Man, the most current of the sizzling successes, and Space Invad¬ ers, the all-time champ of com¬ puter games lead in popularity among eager boys, curious girls, and interested adults. Space Invaders challenges the player with alien hordes that attack in close-order sui¬ cide formation. With seductive simplicity, the game leads you to believe that with only a few more quarters, you will be a master zapper. It’s you or them. Pac-Man appeals to all age groups and particularly to fe¬ males, perhaps because of its “cuteness”. The colorful screen displays a maze lined with dots that must be de¬ voured by Pac-Man. Simple? Hardly. All the while, you are attempting to negotiate the labyrinth, a gang of little fiends are giving chase. The brightly colored characters and the sound effects are interesting as well as amusing. Atari’s Missle Command and Asteroids are also popular with arcadians. Asteroids, sim¬ plified, is no more than a trian¬ gular ship that dodges or blasts large rocks. There are no color effects in this game, yet its appeal is due to the versatil¬ ity of the controllabel space¬ ship. For your quarter, Missle Command gives you the re¬ sponsibility of protecting six cities by destroying enemy missies with missies of your own. As long as one of your cities survives, the game con¬ tinues. Controversy surrounds the new video craze as vendors cash in on the popularity of the games. Critics complain that the games take away from study time as well as allowances. There is controver¬ sy too, over the games that tend to glorify violence, yet, computer game advocates claim that the contests require both strategy and endurance. “I think it helps your re¬ flexes,” states eighth grader Mike Hiatt, ‘‘but, it’s a waste of money.” The challenge is there, though. All you need to do is walk through the doors to arcadia, and reach into your pocket. Pac-Man’s popularity does not stop with the boys. Junior Jackie Mitchell tries her hand at maneuvering the cute “dot” through the maze. 28 Arcade

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Concerts Provide Escape from Student Routine Alabama, Barry Manilow, the Statler Brothers, REO Speedwagon, Blackfoot, Rod Stewart, Styx, Mickey Gilley, the Commodores, and the list goes on of entertainers who have toured in our area during the last year. Live concerts are very popu¬ lar with students no matter what their taste in music is— whether it be country, soul, jazz, pop, hard rock, or even punk rock. Students in our school have widely varying preferences in music as is evi¬ denced the day following a con¬ cert. It has become a tradition to wear one’s concert T-shirt to school on the day following a concert. Concert expenses take a big chunk out of a student’s allowance. The initial cost is, of course, for the tickets, which range in price from $2.00 (once inside the amuse¬ ment park) to as much as $15- 20 dollars (at a coliseum). The costs do not end here. Other expenses include the cost of transportation to and from the concert, souvenirs, and a meal before or after the concert. Live concerts often provide an outlet for a student’s emo¬ tions. Here, it is customary to hear lots of screams, and other emotional outbursts. While, on the other hand, concerts such as Barry Manilow or Neil Dia¬ mond provide a mellow, easy feeling. For a mixture of both, the Commodores concert of¬ fers a combination of soft and hard rock and soul sounds. No matter what your taste in music, concerts provide a get¬ away from the usual. Most peo¬ ple agree; there is nothing quite like attending a live concert. KC and the Sunshine Band “get down and groove” at an outdoor concert given at Carowinds Amusement Park in Charlotte, N. C. Ticket stubs are but one momento from a concert. This is only a few of the many entertainers that performed in our area during the past year. Randy Owen, lead singer for Alabama, croons a love song to the fans. 30 Concerts