Among gamers, there is a hierarchy, and its structure is not always clear. In today's populace, the lines are increasingly blurred, and the demarcations of superiority are often up for debate. Who is cooler -- the hardcore gamer, who knows every secret, beaten every challenge, and spent a lifetime honing his craft, or the casual gamer, who knows which games are best at parties and doesn't "geek out" over every detail? What sort of gamer is worthier of respect?

In every age, though, there has been one clear separation of gamer castes: the simple matter of one's age. It's directly analogous to typical schoolyard divisions and most other social strata -- junior high gamers don't want to hang around with "kids," high school gamers haven't got time for their juniors, college students have no interest in playing with minors, and adult gamers would prefer to keep the company of their mature associates. In an oddly circular bit of hierarchical curiosity, I've even seen a number of young players, in today's online societies, complain about the "old people" who are clogging up their games.

Now, of course, making a snap judgment about a gamer based on their age is asking for trouble: That same pre-teen you just muted over Xbox LIVE for being "immature" is probably going to be the same player who kills you repeatedly and finishes the deathmatch in first place. Gamers can get their start at any stage of life, and the only way to know what caliber of gamer you face is to test your skills against theirs.

In the American arcade, however, the exact opposite was true. Arcade games, after all, were exclusive to actual arcades -- places of business outside the safety of one's home. For a gamer to get in his necessary practice, he had to physically visit the game, and the older you got, the easier it was to do. Where a small child would need to beg permission, funds, and supervision from a parent or guardian, a teenager could probably sneak off with a few friends and burn through some allowance, while a young adult could drive over in his own car, and blow through his entire part-time paycheck.

There was a clear advantage granted by one's age when it came to arcade prowess, and in a world defined by competition and demonstrable expertise, it led to an extremely simple rule: The older you were, the cooler you were.

Today, these schisms are stronger than ever. Thanks to the anonymity and hostility made possible by an endless sea of faceless competitors, gamers are able to assert their dominance without any regard for courtesy or social graces.

Once upon a time, though, there was a place where gamers did everything face-to-face. They fought their battles in person, they witnessed spectacles as a group, and knowledge was not a bitterly guarded commodity, to be flaunted and hoarded -- it was a treasure to be proudly displayed, put on display in a series of personal performances, and then disseminated to the eager gallery.

It was a place where, given the right circumstances, the right games, and a bit of luck, that even a faceless nobody, halfway down the gamer food-chain, could be pushed to the front of the line, and share in the hushed secrets which granted the eldest ones their power.

The Arcade: The Underground, UC Berkeley ASUC Building, Bancroft and Telegraph, Berkeley, CA

Whoever coined the phrase, "Do one thing and do it well," clearly never spoke to the folks who put together The Underground, which was an arcade, a bowling alley, and a pool hall -- and all three parts were awesome. Tucked away underneath UC Berkeley's student union building, The Underground was very easy to miss, simply because it was, in fact, underground. A single door, roughly the size of a closet, stood between a coffee shop and a corridor towards an on-campus convenience store, bearing a beat-up sign which declared it to be the entrance to The Underground. If you dared to peek through the door, you still wouldn't think there was anything there -- all you could see from outside was a grimy staircase, looking like it lead into a maintenance or storage area. Once you braved the stairs, though, The Underground was a massive entertainment complex, its size and selection rivaling nearly any Family Fun Center or Dave & Buster's.

Everything about the place seemed to reaffirm its name; apart from its subterranean location, The Underground had a very forbidden, urban, "indie" feel to it. Despite having enough room for over 20 lanes, the bowling alley was a gritty, hardcore affair (insofar as bowling can be "gritty" or "hardcore," anyway). College students in shredded jeans dashed up and down the lane dividers, picking up loose pins and dislodging the ball-return chutes with swift kicks. There weren't even any scoring computers -- bowlers had to keep score by hand, with pencils -- like animals. I never did shoot any pool at The Underground, but that area, too, was massive yet archaic, like something out of a speakeasy. Lit by a few dingy hanging lamps, over a dozen full-sized billiards tables stood in a grid pattern, to one side of the complex. Had the area been filled to capacity, the pool sharks would have been elbow to elbow; all that was missing were a few rattling score strings.

Then, of course, there was the arcade. The Underground couldn't hold a candle to Starky's, in terms of sheer unwholesomeness, but at first glance, it certainly did its best. The dim, flickering fluorescent lights on the ceiling seemed to be there mostly as a friendly gesture; the arcade area was lit almost entirely by the machines themselves. Arranged in beeping, whirring pathways, the cabinets stood four or five rows deep, containing several dozen titles. Nearly all of the games were brand new offerings, while some others might have been a few years old, but they represented the latest in arcade entertainment.

Most of all, though, what made The Underground exciting and "underground" was its expressly forbidden status: I wasn't supposed to be in there. The Underground, you see, was a college establishment, operated for the entertainment of UC Berkeley students. I was 13 when I discovered The Underground, and without having skipped five years of school, that made it securely off-limits to me. A surly campus employee was posted at the door at all times, checking for student IDs and rejecting ambitious youngsters like myself from passing into the promised land.

My initial foray into The Underground was by pure chance. At the time, I had been enrolled in a summer sports program being offered by the university -- a summer day camp of sorts, in which children of all ages could visit Berkeley's considerable athletic facilities, and engage in three different sports a day. When it came time to sign up for my three sports for the summer, I perused the list dubiously -- I suppose it adheres to a certain stereotype about gamers, but I've never been very athletic, nor carried a large interest in sports. Still, I went over my options, and came up with racquetball, table tennis, and... bowling? Sure, what the hell, bowling. It turned out to be the best decision I made all summer.

I still remember my first time descending into The Underground, being greeted by four brand new NBA Jam cabinets arranged in a noisy circle, endlessly cheering "He's on fire!" and "BOOMshakalaka!" To the right, a bored cashier waited to rent out bowling shoes or make change for anything above a $5 bill. A little ways beyond him, the first line of machines stood ready, including oddball titles like Trog!, Klax, and Ataxx, multiplayer classics like Rampart and Street Fighter II Turbo, and a handful of gun-based games taking up the back row -- including Mad Dog McCree and a shooter based on the movie "Arachnophobia." It existed, I swear.

My young mind was blown. I had no idea an arcade of this magnitude was in my own backyard. What was more, thanks to being part of a university-sanctioned group, I was being personally escorted past the security checkpoint, every weekday. Best of all, by sheer dumb luck, I had signed up for bowling as my last activity of the day, and since I lived nearby, there would be no parent or sibling to come pick me up when it was over: I was expected to ride home on the bus. The counselors knew this, and that meant that when we were done bowling, nobody would have to escort me back to the camp's gathering spot. I was being let in, but nobody was bringing me back out again. It was the perfect storm.

Unsurprisingly, on day two of sports camp, I brought much more than bus fare. Fate had granted me access to a new arcade -- a cool college arcade, full of top-shelf games and gamers -- and given me an entire summer to take advantage of it. I spent every day after camp in that darkened hall, slinging an allowance's worth of quarters into every machine I could find -- mastering some, and enjoying all.

I was a low-ranked gamer in an elite gamer's world, and I relished it. The selection was updated constantly, and the prices were always fantastic. Over the years, The Underground would see bigger and better machines, including linked T-Mek and Daytona cabinets, and even Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game (which was actually terrible, but come on -- interactive Raul Julia). The Underground might not have been a "personal" arcade for me, in the ways that the 7-Eleven or Starky's had been, but it was certainly one of the best in terms of quality. As I grew into a confident, hardcore gamer, I could always count on The Underground for a good time -- and for a few surprises.

The Unforgettable Discovery: Mortal Kombat

By the mid-1990s, it was impossible to walk into an arcade that didn't have a collection of fighting games. Ever since the smash debut of Street Fighter II, arcade manufacturers everywhere were hoping to strike gold a second time. Lesser-known (at the time) titles from SNK like World Heroes and Art of Fighting had already started to appear in a number of arcades, and even Street Fighter II had been re-released twice as Championship and Turbo edition.

As a cocky pre-teen, I had already developed a rather cynical outlook about games I perceived as a "rip-off" -- I admit it; I was in my fanboy phase. It was going to take a serious leap in awesomeness to convince me that there was a fighter worth paying attention to, other than Capcom's incredible franchise. In order to get my quarters, a new fighting game was going to have to really bend over backwards to appeal to my young, hyperactive, violent male sensibilities. Little did I know, upon my first visit to The Underground, that a crafty group of developers had decided to create a game that appealed exclusively to those desires.

Mortal Kombat is a game that doesn't really require explanation. Even if you've never played a game in your life, you've heard of Mortal Kombat, the title that single-handedly created the need for a game ratings system. There had been game violence before Mortal Kombat, to be sure; I'd played NARC back at Starky's, and there was plenty of blood to be had in a game of Smash TV. (Both games, not coincidentally, were also from Midway.)

Nonetheless, I will never forget that first time when, as an excitable 13-year-old gamer, I saw Mortal Kombat being played by a pair of experts. "Okay, so it uses photos as the characters. I guess that's kind of cool. 'Finish Him?' What's that about? What are you doing oh holy crap did you see that guy's head come off?!" When you're 13, you're already in a place you're not really supposed to be, and you've just watched a ninja tear out another ninja's spinal column, there's really no way to describe it. Between the violent blood lust, the enticing presence of forbidden fruit, and the prideful belief that this is what the cool older kids do, it's a rush like none other.

It seems odd, I know, to be listing Mortal Kombat as an "unforgettable" game. The novelty of the game's fatalities, though definitely novel upon one's first experience, would ultimately wear off. Once you got past the outer coating of blood and gore, Mortal Kombat wasn't the best fighter in the world, and it certainly didn't have the staying power of its Capcom contemporary. Today, if I were asked to compose a list of my favorite all-time games, I doubt Mortal Kombat would even crack the top twenty.

It wasn't the fatalities themselves, though, that made Mortal Kombat memorable for me, as an arcade gamer. Bear in mind, this was the early '90s -- an age where gamers still didn't have access to helpful tools like the internet, and strategy guides were few and far between. The only way to carry out one's grisly, gruesome post-match executions was to input a series of arbitrary and counter-intuitive button sequences -- sequences which one had to have prior knowledge of, thanks to an extremely short input window.

Mortal Kombat, in other words, was one of the first games I had seen that contained secrets; a small section of privileged information that separated the good players from the cool players. Just as I had once relied on wiser men to impart the basics of gaming, so too would I need to seek out these secrets to keep my credibility -- and it was in places like The Underground, filled with the keepers of this rare knowledge, that these vital elements of gamer culture were shared.

The Persistent Memory: Joining the Ranks

It's one thing to draw a crowd in an arcade thanks to an excellent display of skill. It's quite another, though, when a group of gamers literally gasp in wonder, and ask just how you did that. I have to imagine it's how a magician feels: For a moment, just one smug, confident moment, you have the wonderful knowledge that you hold power over your audience -- that they are actually jealous of you, because you know something they do not. Of course, unlike those jerkass magicians, gamers will actually reveal their tricks after the initial bout of showmanship.

The Underground, it seemed, was just crawling with these secrets, and a whole horde of friendly gamers eager to teach them. It wasn't just Mortal Kombat -- did you know the original NBA Jam had a 3D tank game in it, like Battlezone? If you held down all of the buttons and joysticks for players 1 and 2, the machine would actually start up a little mini-game, where the tanks exploded to the sound of shattering backboards. You didn't even have to put in any quarters to play it. I swear to you that this is true; I saw it. More importantly, when I went back to other arcades, I was subsequently able to show it to other gamers, eliciting the same bewildered responses.

Game secrets, today, can scarcely be called "secrets" at all. The instant a new title goes on the shelves, every nook and cranny is exposed and posted on GameFAQs, and posted on every gaming site in existence, including our own. Even if you haven't had the easter eggs spoiled by loudmouths like us, sometimes there's just nothing left to discover on your own -- game designers may go so far as to code actual achievements into their games that direct you to experience a specific hidden feature, thus immediately spoiling the surprise by telling you about it.

In the American arcade, however, secrets were precisely that -- secret. They circulated as hushed rumors from gamer to gamer, ranging from the plausible (I heard if you get to level 100 in Pac-Man, the game freezes!) to the outlandish (I heard there's a code that makes Chun Li take her clothes off!), and everywhere in between. Of course, nobody could actually prove these tall tales; everyone had just heard them from an undoubtedly reliable source. So, when you actually met that one gamer, who could get a double flawless victory when the shadow was in front of the moon and fight the secret extra character at the bottom of the spiked pit, it was like witnessing a miracle. Soon, tales of wonder would spring from your own lips to all of your friends, and it would be they who foolishly didn't believe you for a change.

Furthermore, if you could acquire both the knowledge and the skills to execute a gaming secret, suddenly you, too, could step into the role of the mysterious stranger -- the ultimate arcade badass who could appear in the middle of the group, grin knowingly, and say, "Hey, guys -- watch this." The looks of disbelief and awe on your peers' faces was the ultimate testament to one's gamer credibility. Soon, you would be "that guy," the one all the younger gamers spoke of to their friends. "You'll never believe what I saw this guy do," they'd say to their pals, and your legend would live on.

For a 13-year-old to be granted this status -- by college kids, no less -- it was to be a king.

Epilogue

The Underground was a regular haunt of mine for a couple of years, and it never stopped being fantastic. Even in my teenage years, when home consoles had planted their roots in my life, and the SNES reigned supreme, I enjoyed many, many trips to that darkened plaza beneath UC Berkeley. Unfortunately, of course, like so many other arcades I once knew, my life simply led me in new directions. In high school, I discovered new arcades, closer to my new circle of adolescent friends, and The Underground became less of a priority for me. In addition, once I started getting a little too old to be in Sports Camp, but was still too young to pass for a college student, it started getting harder to fool the ID checkpoint with lame excuses. By the time I was of college age, I left the Bay Area to pursue my education and gaming elsewhere, and when I finally returned to Northern California after several years, it was too late.

UC Berkeley opted to close The Underground some time in the late 1990s or early 2000s, but the campus hadn't forsaken its gamer population entirely. The fall of The Underground led to the rise of the BEARcade, in a smaller section of the Student Union building, operated by a crew of dedicated regulars, containing just a few dozen games. The BEARcade would become a haven for the hardcore, frequented by the fierce and loyal players of Berkeley, and would see gamers through the bigger, more elaborate games of the early 21st century, including a healthy selection of fighting cabinets, Bemani machines, and more. Tragically, despite vocal protests and petitions from its fans (which are usually so effective in Berkeley!), UC Berkeley shut down the BEARcade as well in 2005, eliminating the last outpost of arcade gaming from the campus.

Today, where The Underground once hid under the streets of my hometown, I believe the campus bookstore is now located. Where the BEARcade fought to keep the quarters flowing, there's now a gelato shop (despite there being an identical gelato shop merely a block away).

I'm an adult gamer now, and my role in society tells me that I should roll my eyes at college gamers, and shun them for their inferiority. Instead, it breaks my heart to think of a college without an arcade, and to wonder where the next generation will enjoy the open, welcoming world of truly social entertainment -- a world so inviting that those "immature" college gamers were willing to share it with a kid like me. For that, I will never forget that glorious summer when I discovered The Underground.

You can read the final part of Jesse Henning’s retrospective “The American Arcade” right here. For an earlier glimpse into the author's joystick-laden childhood, see parts one and two.

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