The summer of 1983 was a bit of a turning point for me. It was my first year of junior high, that pivotal time when school and social circles become more cutthroat and you start to realize that you're not much of a kid anymore. Return Of The Jedi had just come out--concluding an obsession that lasted nearly half my life--and for the first time I was more aware of the zippers in the back of the Ewok costumes than the massive space battles I beheld. I was fat and nerdy, not sure how I fit into a world where everyone was suddenly trying to moonwalk. And unbeknownst to me, the final salvo of a childhood of quarter-filled pockets was unleashed.One of my great pleasures was visiting the local roller rinks, pizza parlors, and bowling alleys, because that's where the video games were. We didn't have an Atari at home, so I would save up my change and wait for an invitation or a ride to anywhere a stray Battle Zone or Dig Dug machine was. I generally sucked at most of them (I particularly remember regularly embarrassing myself with Joust), but by 1983 I'd begun tiring of them. The old classics were still around--Frogger, Q*Bert, Donkey Kong Jr.--but it was harder and harder for them to compete with
Until, that is, I saw Dragon's Lair.
