LET’S TALK ABOUT THE BOULEVARD.

 

It’s the 1980’s, unemployment, synth wave, choose your own adventure books, Ninjas and arcade machines are in fashion.

Kids in the 80’s loved the 80’s. Old people in their 80‘s living in the 80’s, hated kids in the 80’s, but they liked Margaret Thatcher, who hated 80’s kids so much she stole their milk. She also, for reasons best known to herself, hated the Welsh.

Even with the terrifying AIDS adverts on TV and billboards reminding you of your immediate and irreversible plummet into death (should you even think about looking at another human you may find attractive) the 80’s are fondly remembered as carefree days with red hot summers, long snowy winters and currency that came in half-pences. You could buy hard candy sticks with dyed red tips that looked like a lit cigarette, combine some of those with a flat-top and mullet combo, stone washed double denim jeans and jacket, and you had a serious 80’s look that scared old ladies and made every 10 year old feel like the bees-knees. No wonder they hated us, we looked like Pricks.

Ahh the 80’s. No f*cks were given. If a drink-driver hit you doing 60 in a 30 zone, it was probably your fault for not looking both ways properly and you knew it. Great days.

I imagine you now have a pretty strong sense of what the 80’s were like from that description. Onward!

    COME IN AND SPEND YOUR MONEY, BUT DON’T SIT ON MY F*CKING WALL!

THE BOULEVARD (AKA THE ‘BOULY’) WAS THE CLOSEST ARCADE TO MY HOUSE. A 15 minute walk or 5 minute bike ride to central Oulton Broad, it had a prime location, looking out (as it still does) onto the bridge which demarcates the end of the fresh water broads as they evolve into the short brackish river that leads to the fully briny North Sea. YES! You did just feel the excitement of a description of gradual salination of water ladies and gentlemen.

In the 80’s, arcade machines were everywhere…lurking in chip shops, behind bins and in bushes, luring you in with the promise of five minutes of mindless adrenaline fuelled fun, begging you to pump their eager glowing slots full of cold hard currency. The Bouly was an oasis for the laser loving youth of north east Suffolk, hosting as it did, in TARDIS like fashion, an impossibly large selection of video game cabs vs its square footage.

It was the crucible in which the love of arcade games was forged. Lock your bike up on the railings in the adjacent car park, and run to the door as fast as your white canvas Reeboks would take you! God damn you could hear Space Harrier booming out long before you could see it through the sizable, always open and welcoming entrance.

The Bouly building was split in half. Two double doors on the left (as you look at it) lead to arcade heaven. The door on the right was probably a Café or swingers bar – I just don’t know – for all the years I attended the school of Boule I didn't bother going in the other door. Weird huh.

The interior of the Bouly was dark + neon. Any exposed wall surface you could see had a rough nobbly texture, painted with a dour reddish brown gloss paint, the carpet, typical of the era, was dark, slightly sticky in areas and had a glorious orange geometric pattern.

When I first attended class at the school of Boule, it was mainly video games i’d be learning about, but over the years ‘Fruities’ became more common place on the curriculum, for some reason I remember the name of one of the more popular Fruity machines – Snappy Viper, which had pictures of snakes on it. Hold your melons and nudge your plums people. It was 2p a go, with a jackpot north of one English pound.

Anyway let’s talk about some of the video arcade machines they had in the Bouly, some of the larger ones were often on fortnightly/monthly rotation so when you turned up with some loose change you’d cobbled together, you never knew which machines you’d get to play.

I already mentioned Space harrier. The Bouly had the stand-up version, so it was difficult to get a good firing rate without using the fire button on the machine rather than the yoke buttons. This felt like patting your head and rubbing your stomach, but actually it probably wasn’t that hard. Awesome game though.

Although limited in space, the Bouly had two sit down cabs for a while. Firefox, a laser disc game based on the OK Clint Eastwood flick, had realistic looking visuals straight from the movie. It blew minds back in the day, but blew / sucked hard in gameplay terms. Also, it was an expensive game to play being 50p a pop. Fudge that!

The other sit down was Spy Hunter, which I used to find amusing back then, but playing it now is a joyless task. These two didn’t put me off attending the school of Boule, they were just my least favourite lessons.

Along the entrance wall on the right, you would typically find a row of cabs that included Space Harrier (first cab by the door) Tokio (which was/is a slightly obscure vertical shooter), and Salamander (furthest away tucked into a corner). These 3 games were the highlights of this row of 6 or 7 cabs for a good couple of years, they were later joined by SNK’s Prehistoric Isle, which was and still is a great shooter.

Along the entrance wall to the left were the old school cabs, mixed in with some fruit machines, we are talking Tempest, Asteroids, Warlords that kind of thing. I didn’t spend much time on those machines, as the newer flashier raster based games were more my bag back then. Oddly, I don’t remember the Bouly having a Space Invaders cab, but they must’ve had one – everywhere did.

Four player Gauntlet dominated the floor space near the entrance for a while. I remember it being a massive cab, but then I was small with a small man complex, therefore I always chose the Warrior, which is a mistake. Great game, although the dip switch settings for health per coin seemed to be firmly set at ‘Thatcher’ to get maximum coinage out of the youth of the day. Gauntlet was later replaced by 4 player Hotrod, a top down racing game by Sega, which was a lot of fun, it had four steering wheels on top which would endlessly spin without locking, and spin them we did, even when not playing the game. My mate Stu was particularly good at Hotrod. I seem to remember I was shite at it.

The rest of the entrance area was full of fruit machines so not super interesting. The interior of the Bouly was set out in an ‘L’ shape, so after these first rows of cabs you took a right turn and a wider floor space opened up before you, in here, over the years some real gems would appear.

In the early days, they had Bomb Jack, Ghosts n goblins, Track and Field and 1942 all quality games to while away a dreary East Anglian mid-winter Saturday. A little later Flying Shark turned up and it was verified as cool. Alongside this a sit down version of Sega’s Enduro Racer appeared, and I’ve never seen another of these in any arcade in the area. It’s probably now worth a huge amount of money, like the hydraulic Turbo Outrun cab I used to play at the Claremont pier (another story), unfortunately Enduro Racer wasn’t a great game and I never saw a single human playing it. The owners probably 'skipped' the cab in the mid to late 90’s thinking it was worthless.

The original Street Fighter with pressure pad controls reared it's face one summer, again not a great game, POW by SNK and Altered Beast which I enjoyed immensely, also came to the Bouly party. the area these games sat in also had Capcom's Trojan in a generic cab, a game i played once and avoided thereafter. 

There was also a Konami top down racer just by the rear entrance, I think it was called Super GT. It didn’t, as far as I know, receive any home port, but it was a cracking kinetic feeling game back then, and I used to shovel money into it. I wonder if it’s aged poorly.

Then IT landed in 1989. In another generic cab no less. Final Fight. A graphics whore, I immediately fell in love with it's massive sprites creating chaos in overwhelming hard core man on man fist fighting action,  A love affair that lasts to this day was formed the first time I got to play with Haggar. That mustache! Swoon!

A little later the Bouly also dabbled in pin tables, and got the frankly awesome Star Trek: The Next Generation table in for the nerds. I played that bad boy to death, I was crap at it, but I couldn’t get enough of the next gen characters feeding me compliments. Thank you Mr.Data!

Other notable games that appeared, mainly because of their obscurity, poor quality or baffling inclusion over much better, similar games were titles like:

Ninja Warriors - two screen cab, expensive to play, Dip switches set to ‘Miser’ - 50p a go…no thanks mate. Taito. RECOMMENDATION...they should've Just got Vigilante in instead.

Primal Rage – shite game with unusual visuals. Massive dedicated cab. Don’t know why they went with this over Street Fighter 2 or even Mortal Kombat – both of which to my knowledge, did not appear in the Bouly. Can’t remember the developer for Primal Rage. I bet the arcade owners regretted buying that sack of shit.

TimeKillers – Shite game with shite visuals. Again mystifying why they went with this over SF2. Can’t remember the developer of this one, but whomever they are, they should be ashamed.

Bucky ‘O Hare – cool sort of fighting / shooting game from Konami. Not converted to home machines. Worth a dabble.

COWboys of Moo Mesa – I didn’t play this one, but I remember it was there, and no one talks about it… I don’t know if it’s actually obscure, but to me it is. Again Konami.

So that’s the Bouly as it was. I can't possibly remember all the cabs / games that came and went...Terra cresta, Pheonix..... I spent many, many hours and many, many pounds in that place, and to be fair I don’t regret it one bit. Sure I could’ve spent the time doing something like learning the Lute, or training to become a real Ninja - but that’s kids for you, don’t know they’re born. Commando. Rolling Thunder.

The Bouly is still there, but the soul has gone – it’s a shell of an arcade compared to its 80’s heyday. Last time I was in Oulton Broad I ventured to go in, I felt the excitement as I approached, I could almost hear the Space Harrier cab with its signature sound effects calling me across time…but actually, it was full of Fruities, and those shitty coin pushing things and that was about it. Bollocks.

 I remember you as you were Bouly, you’ll always be beautiful to me.