by Steve Fulton
I doodle on my PeeChee folder at Foster A. Begg.
Inspired by my current obsessions.
Uninspired in Mr. Genario’s math class.
I create an alter-ego.
A hard edged, video game character.
With the name: “Punker Pac-Man.”
An amalgamation of the music sisters listen to.
And video games l play at The Guild Drug.
By early 1982, America is awash.
A moral panic over Pac-Man.
They say the kids are “Slack-jawed.”
“Mesmerized.”
“Hypnotized.”
By video games.
Articles in America’s newspaper.
The New York Times.
“The Battle For America’s Youth.”
“Suddenly they are everywhere, in our mall, the shopping center, pizza places,
movie theaters..…we hear unacceptable language and see antisocial behavior in these arcades.
Only bad kids go to them.
I don’t feel like “a bad kid.”
But I sure do love video games.
And I want to play them any chance I get.
Another letter to the New York Times declares video game playing kids my age as “A Generation of mindless, Ill tempered, adolescents”
The entire generation?
Ill tempered?
Mindless?
The Guild Drug refuge
The Guild Drug is about 1 mile away.
Within walking distance from our house.
The trek takes my brother and I through the heart of the Redondo Villa tract.
The “soil section” of Manhattan Beach.
It sits in a shopping center on the far south edge of Manhattan Beach.
There is also a McDonald’s, Burger World, a beauty shop, a Photomat, Coast Federal Savings, a Safeway, and a hidden second floor office complex.
I won’t notice that until sometime near the 21st Century.
Many of these stores have video games in their foyer.
80’s teen nirvana in strip-mall form.
—
There are no video game arcades in Manhattan Beach.
They are outlawed.
Relegated to the far reaches of neighbors Redondo, Hermosa, and Torrance.
This is challenged in December 1981 at a city council meeting.
SEGA is a video game company based in Redondo.
They want to open an arcade.
Next to the new Mann-6 theaters in the new Manhattan Village.
SEGA calls it a “Family Entertainment Center.”
The City Council sees right through this ruse Eagle-eyed protectors of Manhattan Beach youth.
City Planning Commissioner David Wachfogel: “Family Entertainment, that’s rubbish. It’s no more family entertainment than a garbage collector is a ‘sanitation engineer.’”
He claims that kids get “too engrossed” in the machines.
There is grave, serious concern that we will be hypnotized by video games.
—
Guild Drug has a little bit of everything.
Owned by The Guild Family, long-time South Bay residents, It’s my family’s go-to store.
Cap gun caps? Check.
Zories flip flops? Check.
Antifreeze? Check.
KIP antibiotic ointment? Check.
Greeting cards? Check.
Potholders? Check.
Replacement Christmas bulbs? Check.
Easter baskets? Check.
A screwdriver? Check.
2 cent candy? Check.
A set of those scented markers? Check.
We go there at least 5 times a week.
Maybe more.
Arcades Banned!
We are consumers of all The Guild has on offer.
The city council’s concern?
Drugs and swearing will follow the SEGA arcade into Manhattan Beach.
Where there have never been drugs or swearing.
Pristine MB.
It will burst the bubble.
It will infect the kids.
Councilman Bob Holmes dissents: “I spend a lot of time at the beach, where there is a surprising amount of both drugs and swearing.”
But irony cannot break the status quo.
The arcade is not approved.
We will not be lured into a life of crime after watching Fast Times At Ridgemont High and Nightmare On Elm Street next door at the Mann 6.
The youth of Manhattan Beach are saved.
City Councilman Russ Lesser adds a caveat.
A small saving grace that sparks our treks to The Guild Drug.
“Two or three electronic games in liquor stores or markets are acceptable.”
So instead of a single location.
Video games are spread all across the city.
Kid’s line-up to play them.
Quarters stashed on the marquee to show who is up next.
For us, on a South Bay Summer day.
The games are within walking distance.
—
Up the hill of First street.
Across Peck Ave.
Through Pennekamp School.
Down through a swamp locally named “polliwog” (but not the official one).
Up the dirt hill to the Mira Costa track.
West across the pole vault pits.
North through the abandoned volleyball courts.
Over the baseball field.
Down the stairs to Meadows Ave.
Through the church grounds.
Up the alley past McDonald’s.
Over by Manhattan Liquors.
And into the Guild Drug.
I was worried when The Guild Drug caught fire in June of 1974.
Where would my mom get her flip-flops?
But it bounced back quickly.
Soon we were back, many times a week.
The next year my mom bought me my first “real” costume there.
A fire-retardant, vinyl, devil costume with a plastic pitchfork.
It came in a cardboard box with a cellophane window.
I wore it in the Pennekamp kindergarten Halloween parade.
By 1982, Guild Drug also has Pac-Man.
It’s there, at the front, on the east wall.
A coin operated arcade machine.
A “Wizard Of Wor” Atari game sits next to it.
The games wait together.
For someone to come and play.
Silicon, circuit boards, and wires.
Breathed to life as you insert a coin.
Begging kids to take a chance.
—
I’m enthralled by Pac-Man in 6th grade in 1982.
Just like Asteroids before it.
And Galaga after it.
For the first time in my life I know who I want to be.
I want to be a video game programmer when I grow-up.
I want to go to college.
I want to learn computer programming.
I fill the graph paper my dad takes from Hughes Aircraft.
With designs of little pixelated characters.
I want to work for Atari.
The king of video games in Silicon Valley.
It’s pretty much all I think about.
I wait for my turn at Pac-Man.
The guy playing before me has reached the first blue key.
In my best game, I’ve only ever reached the Apple.
I get my chance.
My quarter goes into the slot.
The little theme song plays, and I’m off.
I hold the joystick with my right hand.
My left arm falls to my side.
I fall into my game “stance.”
Everyone has one.
Knees bent a bit.
Neck straight.
Eyes lasered onto the game screen.
The moral crusaders think we are “hypnotized” while playing.
But it is the “flow state” they are seeing.
The ability to shut everything else out and concentrate.
The same skill I will one day use to write computer software.
Some adults hate video games the same way some adults once hated pinball, comic books, TV, jukeboxes, punk rock, and D&D.
All things once suggested as ominous gateways.
Away from morals.
Into a life of crime, vice, violent behavior.
My grandparent’s generation was enthralled by the movies.
Some adults hated them too.
They said they were corrupting the youth into a life of crime.
“I am convinced that not a little of the petty pilfering which has become so alarming among young children is the outgrowth of this fondness for the ‘movies’. The children become infatuated with drama and under this strong influence think it but a small thing to steal ten cents and stay away from school to go.”
-Judge Coquet, Montreal Canada, “Moving Pictures Forbidden to Children, The Daily Telegraph Oct 22, 1913.
But they didn’t invent the movies.
Just like we didn’t invent video games.
The generations before us did.
Generations passing down to the next.
—
I maneuver Pac-Man through the maze eating as many dots as possible.
Chased by my ghosts I consume a power pill.
Inky, Blinky Pinky and Clyde change their colors.
I can now consume them.
I clear the level without dying.
I feel transcendent.
I think about all the games I want to make.
All the things I want to do.
I’m only 12 years old.
But I’m filled with optimism.
Drive.
Hope.
A Dream.
A Goal.
A reason “why.”
I think I can see my future.
—
Pac-Man is a game of consumption.
Eat the dots, the ghosts, the fruit, and the power-ups.
Success at the game is both alluring and satisfying.
In 7th grade Evan Pershing, my brother, and I design Punker-Pac-Man cartoons instead of doing English assignments.
We think we are hilarious.
We imagine Punker Pac-Man wants to consume other things.
Like chicken.
Or Hot Dogs.
Our hypnotized, mesmerized, slack-jawed moral corruption is complete.
We embrace our fate.
To be The Mindless Generation.
—
After playing Pac-Man at The Guild Drug, we go next door to Manhattan Liquors.
I watch some heavy metal guys play Atari’s Tempest, attempting to spell
I O R N . M A I D. E N .
On the high score table.
The guy playing Tempest stuffs chewing tobacco in his lip between every death.
He says to no one in particular but also to us: “Don’t mess up my high scores or I’ll kick your ass!”
Another guy walks behind us with a Jack Daniels in a paper bag.
He’s swigging before he reaches the door.
I stand next to the cigar case.
The sweet smell of tobacco and wet grass fills the air.
The long racks of cigarettes further behind.
I wonder what it’s like to smoke.
My sister smokes Larks.
I buy a pack of baseball cards.
Then we slip over to the Safeway.
To play games of Asteroids and Star Castle.
—
From PTA to PTA all across America.
In just a year’s time.
The moral panic over video games spreads.
The Surgeon General himself C. Everett Coop calls video games “an obvious problem.”
By the end 1982, 100’s of laws are passed.
To limit access to video games across America.
The crusaders win the battle.
By 1983, the entire USA video game industry struggles.
By 1984, local companies, like Mattel Electronics shut-down.
Dozens of South Bay families are affected.
Atari falls-apart later that year too.
Imploding in the great video game crash.
And so goes my dream of ever working for them making video games.
My future becomes cloudy.
It will be more than 20 years before I find my way.
—
The Guild Drug is not there any more.
Replaced in the ‘80s by Hillside Pharmacy.
Then Thrifty Jr.
I apply for a job at Thrifty Jr, in High School.
But they tell me they don’t hire kids from East of Sepulveda.
“The bad kids.”
Too “slack jawed and hypnotized” by Pac-Man to do the job, right?
Thrifty’s stops selling flip-flops.
My mom is at a loss where to find them.
In time, I forget about “Punker Pac-Man?”
He gets filed away for 40 years.
In a box my mom marked with a Sharpie.
“Steve’s School Work.”
—
After a game of Asteroids.
We buy Shasta Cola and chocolate pies.
Our pre-teen Safeway staple.
And then start on the suburban path home.
From The Guild Strip Mall to our house on First Street.
Pockets empty of quarters.
I look at every house on the block as I pass.
I know each better than anything I’ll ever know again in my life.
The canopy of Eucalyptus trees.
The acorns under my feet.
Front-yard gardens.
Ice plant waves.
Ivy waterfalls.
Yards with no sidewalks.
In just a few years, this will end.
People move out.
Houses come down.
Minimal Traditionals and Ranches.
Eaten by McMansions.
McMansions devoured by New Colonials.
And even though I hang out in liquor and drug stores.
Next to the cigars and cigarettes.
Slack-jawed, mesmerized and hypnotized by Pac-Man.
Hanging with foul mouthed kids who love Iron Maiden.
Video Games stay my only “vice.”
When they lose their early allure.
I dive into computers.
Coding becomes my drug of choice.
I teach myself everything I will ever need to know.
Scapegoat Narrative
A few years ago I found Punker Pac-Man and the cartoons we made in 7th grade.
It reminded me of the kids we were in the ‘80’s.
“Mesmerized.”
“Hypnotized.”
“Ill tempered.”
“Bad kids.”
The “mindless generation?”
Pushed to violence by playing Pac-Man?
Research now supports the opposite: “In short, current medical research and scholarship have not found any causal link between playing video games and gun violence in real life……a causal relationship has been carefully crafted as part of a larger scapegoat narrative by vested interests for decades.” (Fortune, May 3, 2023)
For me, instead, it always was: “Enthralled” and “Inspired.”
To learn to program computers.
Then later, to help build the internet and maybe change the world.
And yet many people think the next generation is at risk too.
Because of “Fortnite,” Tik Tok, and equal rights.
They talk of banning all sorts of things they don’t understand.
Worried the new kids will turn into their own “mindless generation?”
But the kids didn’t invent those things.
The generations before them did.
Generations passing down to the next.
The kids will find their way through.
Just like we did.
The Safeway is now gone.
A tanning bed sits where I played Asteroids.
A coffee shop where I played Star Castle.
Manhattan Liquors is now a wine store.
There is no Defender or Tempest.
There is no good reason for any kid to be inside any more.
The Thrifty Jr. is now a Goodwill.
I go there with my own kids.
Kids who are smarter and more aware than I will ever hope to be.
They look for old clothes to remake.
The next generation making their new out of our old.
I wander through the racks.
I imagine the video games that were once in the foyer.
The promise they held for my future.
I imagine myself putting in a quarter.
Starting a game.
Moving the joystick.
Controlling Pac-Man.
Eating a power pill.
Chasing the ghosts.
Ghost of our walks through streets of Manhattan Beach.
Ghosts of the Guild Drug.
Ghosts of Halloween costumes.
Ghosts of 2 cent candy.
Ghosts of mom’s flip flops.
Ghosts Of Punker Pac-Man And the Mindless Generation.
I consume them.
