![]() In fact, the search brought him to the ultimate kind of Spy Hunter. In Tim's case, Fast & Friendlies eventually moved on from the arcade craze, but that didn't mean giving up on his favorite game. 007 may have been terminated, but the 80s Spy vibe remained along with a retooled soundtrack around an electronic arrangement of Henry Mancini's theme for the American private eye television series Peter Gunn. The title was originally planned as a James Bond release with the famous Bond theme playing through the game, but difficulties in securing a licensing deal prompted George and Tom to literally shift gears. The loss of all vehicles ends the mission. ![]() After an initial period where the supply of Interceptors is unlimited, the game reverts to a "limited lives" format where the player has a finite number of cars. The Interceptor finds the Weapons Van ĭuring the game, players can periodically summon a "Weapon's Van" that outfits the Interceptor with advanced offensive capabilities. In other portions of the game, the Interceptor can change into a go-fast boat to navigate washed out bridges and danger-filled waterways. Armed with an array of weapons at your fingertips, your mission is to steer your vehicle through a vertical-scrolling terrain destroying or avoiding a cast of vehicular enemies with names like Enforcer, Switch Blade, and Mad Bomber. "Playing Spy Hunter in that location was what got me hooked for life," he said.Ĭreated by fabled game designers George Gomez and Tom Loen, the 1983 Bally Midway arcade release Spy Hunter puts the player in control of a slick and futuristic car known as the G-6155 Interceptor. But among those Fast & Friendlies games, one stood out from the rest. What else was a kid supposed to do except round up his friends with their BMXs and head to the mini-mart all summer along? So off Tim went, trading quarters for gobstoppers and games like Excitebike, Rampage, Gauntlet, and Cheyenne. They had a little game area of around six to eight games and a tremendous penny candy section." "Hooked for life": Timothy Kinkead and Bally/Midway's Spy Hunter "Above all others," recalled Tim, "was the local mini-mart called Fast & Friendlies. The arcade landscape of that time offered plenty of opportunities for the video-game obsessed - the local mall had an arcade, and store owners were happy to split the profits with route operators who placed games in all of the mini-marts throughout town. More modestly, he was the type that hunted for the best arcade games in 1980s suburban Pittsburgh. In case there was any doubt, Tim is not the kind of spy hunter found in a 1960s John le Carré espionage novel. His own recent progress on his favorite game was approaching 900,000 points, piquing his interest in what qualified as a world record.Īll he had to do was crack a 35 year old mystery first. That interest, in turn, brought him to Twin Galaxies where he found records stretching back to the era of Ronald Reagan, neon colors, and spandex. After years in the proverbial wilderness, Tim found his way back to arcade games. Not that Tim's pasttime is a state secret. Perhaps it's fitting, then, that his students are completely unware that their teacher is also a Spy Hunter himself. When Timonthy Kinkead surveys 20th century history in his high school social studies class, discussions of the Cold War invariably conjure images of cloaked spies working behind the Iron Curtain in a cat-and-mouse game to steal state secrets or decipher coded communiques in the name of US or Soviet supremacy.
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