Other than a brief mention in this writeup, I really haven't addressed the music played in the arena at Star Laser Force. I tried to work out a partial list about five years ago, but with little success. My own memory is unfortunately tainted by watching the VHS tape of Rendez-vous Houston too many times while shopping at Radio Shack, where they apparently had it on endless loop.
Jean-Michel Jarre was definitely a big part of it; this blog post agrees. So far I believe these are all correct:
After that, I'm stuck. Hit me up if you think of any others.
I worked there much of 1985-late 86 while in high school. The music was probably JMJ with laser sounds and stuff throughout. It was on a loop pretty much, but on some late night weekends, we played a few other things, depending on crowd make-up. I remember playing Boston quite a bit. The speakers were huge and super-powerful industrial sized 80s boomers with plenty of old-school watts driving them.
ReplyDeleteThe blastoff track was like a 30-second loop tape player in one of the two staging rooms. There were only two tapes. One was a continuous rocket engine after a brief countdown, loud, but no real ending climax except open the door and run out onto planet xenon. We preferred the other cassette, a loop of the Mission Impossible theme (pre-Tom Cruise version…he was still fresh from dancing in underwear and flying F-4s). Mission Impossible set up the exit onto the planet with some classic panache.
The suits were so rugged. I remember the pads on them were cloth covered; and as the night progressed, they would get pretty wet and, uh, a bit stinky. It was, after all, a run-legal arena with some pretty aggressive play. I MIGHT have selected the sweatiest suit to put on the occasional loud-mouth, aggressive jerky player. Maybe…maybe not. No, definitely. Hey, dealers choice… (I probably set him up with the gun that had longest charge time between shots as well… I can still hear the little capacitor charging up)
But for protection on the equally non-hygienic helmets (with internal padding) were the infamous “space-baggies” that were placed on all heads. I’m not sure Lysol was even available…but the objective for Star Patrol was get the suits plugged in and charging a bit cause the next game was gonna need them soon.
So many memories, long afternoons with birthday parties, late nights (friggin closed at 1…), staff Gauntlet games (Wizard needs food, badly…), and after-closing staff games 1:1 or 2:2 usually, and for way longer than the usual 10 minutes. Those games were real action, and super competitive. It was such a cool place to work and play (all for $3.35/hr).