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Although I had the Philips Videopac G7000 cartridge system at home, I came into contact with table arcade games very often as a child. They were very common in restaurants in the late 1970s and early 1980s, much to the chagrin of my parents. In some corner, usually also near the one gambling machine that was also often found in restaurants, there was such a table with one or two stools. As a child, you registered it immediately and of course you wanted to play. A game cost Fr. 1.- and that was already very expensive at that time (it still is today). As a child, you had to struggle until you could get a franc from your parents. They always pointed out that it was too pricey, that it would be over much too quickly, and that you already had a console system at home. Nevertheless, as a child, you kept on agonizing until the franc was finally pulled out of their wallet. And indeed, the three lives that one bought for it were also used up far too quickly. The learning effect never set in that it wasn't worth it at all, and you could never master the games with just one or maybe one more franc. Every time we saw such tables, we wanted to play them. 

There was already Pac Man and Space Invaders and Donkey Kong at that time. One game in particular has stayed in my memory: Wonder Boy. It was a jump-and-run game in which a Stone Age boy had to fight all kinds of enemies like snails, wasps, spiders and snakes with a stone hammer. To do this, he had to jump over various gaps. The scenery changed from forest to sea, where you had to jump on clouds. As a special feature, he could also grab a skateboard at a certain point in the game. As a kid, I couldn't make it past the first level with the three lives. But the game fascinated me so much that I kept pushing every time that you could go to this cafe. And once I succeeded, and we were there, it didn't take long for me to beg for the change I needed to finally play.