Famicom Blues Part II: Gaming Cabinets

As I was totally blown away by the graphics of such games in the arcades, I was curious as what they would play at home. I didn't have a NES at the time, but heading to arcades was probably the most memorable time of my youth. There was one arcade in particular that I remembered going to which was called "Bam Bam" with the popular Flintstones character next to the name. That place was a magical world of gaming. That's one of the first places I was able to play such games as Xmen, TMNT, and Gijoe. I even remember playing against tourists as they were trying to work as a team. One would tell me to not use the missiles in Gijoe and to save them for the boss, but my finger would slip and I would just use them all up, then die at the boss fight. I probably should've listened to him. Either way, I had so much fun as those were the days that arcades were still outdoing the home console market, of course, that's not the case nowadays. 
The arcade trip would be something that would happen almost every week. But the day finally would come where I would get my own home console.... just not yet. So at school, the conversation would all be about Nintendo, sorry Sega, you didn't exist in my childhood as they weren't popular at all in my country. Speaking of which, they were and are still quite popular in Brazil due to a company called Tectoy which promoted their consoles even to this day, that's a very interesting story. Either way, lunch time was the time to converse and talk about the games and the arcades. My friend Mauricio didn't attended my school so I wouldn't be able to talk to him or even ask him if I could come over. I wanted another round of Double Dragon after all! I did end up making a couple of new friends especially one that I knew since kinder garden, but this was the first grade and things were getting serious. Yes, we did not have any console wars of any kind around here, everything was Nintendo and the rumors about a new console coming out. I was just thinking, "Man, I don't even have the NES and a new one is already rumored? I'm behind!" but those were just rumors. Even the magazines released at the time didn't have any information about it and believe me, that was the only way to get information back in the day. There was no such thing as the internet for the public. 
After speculating and talking and trading tips on certain games, there was nothing more to be said and done. Back home where I would dream of Nintendo and hope I would get a trip the arcade. The faithful day of getting a video game console ought to be coming right? One sure hoped so. In the meantime, I was off to visit my friend once again and play his two games. So while playing, he mentioned something called "cabinas de juegos" which translated to gaming cabinets which is a place where you would play video games for the amount of time you paid. Lets say, there is a NES there with certain games, well, you would pay for an hour of gaming and could pick different games to play. Think of it as renting a spot to game on. This was extremely popular during those days and I believe there are some left back in my home country. So we decided to split the bill and go game! This was definitely going to open my mind into other video games and I just couldn't wait to get there...except...