Ode to joystick Arcade machines from the past make their way into modern popular culture and are welcomed with open arms and a pocket full of quarters

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In the beginning, there was Space Invaders, and it was good.

On the second day, technical wizards created Asteroids, and it, too, was good. On the third day came teens with glazed-over eyes, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Arcade junkies have long been known to go to great lengths for the purpose of a video game fix.

For this group – fading away since the end of the upright video game heyday of the 1980s – there is no substitute for warding off Space Invaders, eating all four Pac-Man ghosts on the strength of one power pellet, or careening out of control through hyperspace.

Pedaling to and from the establishments on a BMX bicycle and barely getting home in time for dinner used to make for great lengths indeed. But traveling 1,900 miles to Nebraska?

Chip Carson found a calling in his formative years, baptized by crossfire on an Asteroids machine. So when a dozen old-school game machines became available through an online auction, Carson did what any sensible arcade addict would have done: He rented a Ryder truck and drove to the great cornfields and rescued a piece of his childhood.

Carson, a Bangor resident and owner of Qwik Stop Video, has parlayed his childhood habit into a spinoff career.

Carson recently opened Blast From The Past Arcade and Fun Center at Bangor’s Airport Mall. It’s an arcade to beat all arcades, harkening back to the days of Q*Bert – a veritable mecca of Mario.

“Older games are really hard to find,” Carson said recently, “but I decided I’d give it a shot. It’s turned out really good.”

If the time and energy he spends on making the arcade a success in any way mirrors the number of quarters he’s pumped into machines in his life, Bangor may have an empire on its hands.

Carson’s prowess with a joystick and buttons became the stuff of legend several years ago. Although he can’t remember the specifics of the situation, he once had his picture in the Bangor Daily News for playing a single game of Asteroids for at least eight hours.

Ho-hum, you say? A waste of time and money? Ha. He did it all on a single quarter.

A stroll around the dimly lit game room at Blast From The Past elicits a gasp from almost anyone who grew up in the ’80s. People walking around the arcade are prone to trail off when they speak.

“Oh my … I haven’t seen that since …,” they’ll say, half out of fear of dating themselves and half out of disbelieving approval.

But fear not, ye of the parachute-pants generation, for everything comes back around in due time. If Mr. T has returned to pitying fools, then it’s time for Frogger to again make his way through rush-hour traffic.

Although Carson is a longtime lover of video games, the evolution of the machines and their at-home counterparts has never really grasped his attention.

A disparity in the cost of new machines compared with the cost of the retrofitting job he’s done in Bangor, and now Presque Isle, makes it hard to have much interest. Carson has stocked Blast From The Past with a few up-to-date machines. However, one game carries a price tag of $14,000, and expecting the bank to wait for 56,000 quarters to come pouring in to cover a loan isn’t very realistic.

The cost isn’t the only maddening aspect about games today for Carson.

“The new machines have 50 buttons and you can’t figure them out,” he said with a laugh.

Although the 50 buttons are what Generation Y has grown up with, he said that doesn’t stop youngsters from paying homage to the forerunners of today’s amazingly realistic games.

“With the graphics today, kids will just look [at the retro games] and laugh,” he said. “Those were huge graphics. That was really big back then.

“One kid came in and said, ‘Space Invaders? What’s that?'”

They can laugh all they want, but they soon learn that steering around a break dancer and his ghetto blaster in a game of Paperboy isn’t all that simple. And if they think that’s tough, then dodging those pesky bouncing spiders on Centipede will prove very difficult.

Carson describes business at the arcade so far as “decent.” He knows he isn’t in a prime location, but it would take too many quarters to pay rent in a more expensive district.

Blast From The Past has brought back everything that was good about arcades from the beginning, while leaving out the bad.

Carson said he used to run into a seedy crowd hanging out at the Dream Machine, a now-defunct arcade formerly of the Airport Mall.

“The Dream Machine was a rough place,” he recalled.

That kind of activity made Airport Mall management skeptical of allowing another video game establishment to enter its premises, Carson said. But, as he’s done all his life, Carson pushed the right buttons because Blast From The Past is off and running.

With his collection always expanding and the lineup within the arcade forever changing, Carson has been able to focus on what’s really important in his business: The games.

“When I was younger, everybody wanted to master the games,” he said. “And you’d use as many quarters as it took. Once the final stage was hit, most moved on to the next game.”

Blast From The Past will serve as a trip down memory lane for some, and a hands-on museum for others. But it still makes for a great bonding exercise to bridge the generation gap.

Don’t worry. The reflexes will come back in no time. So cut loose. Put down the Rubix Cube, turn off the “L.A. Law” reruns, toss your Van Halen “1984” cassette into the tape player and reintroduce yourself to Donkey Kong.

Carson will be sure to reciprocate your smile – if he’s not off opening another branch of his graphics gold mine, as he’s just done in Presque Isle.

“The smiles are what make me feel the best,” he said. “Everyone gets a smile on their face. They haven’t seen the games in so long.”

But they should have no fear of the arcade going anywhere; Carson said Blast From The Past is here to stay.

And why not? As long as there are galaxies to be saved, there always will be someone willing to take a chance for a quarter – even if it means being late for dinner.