While I was growing up, I subscribed to Tips & Tricks magazine. Like most kids I was drawn in with the last half of magazine being dedicated to cheat codes and hints for all my games. Even better was when they pushed out one of their “Code Books” which ditched every written article entirely to house just these cheats. While I was a fan of the codes, I would pretty much read the magazine front to back because there wasn’t any internet in our house to occupy my time otherwise, so this was my only means of gaming related news each month. Being into fighting games since Mortal Kombat II, I was attracted to the one or two page monthly feature ranking the best fighting game players in the US and the rest of the world. These were names that you still hear today, like Ricky Ortiz, Justin Wong, and the phenomenon that is Daigo Umehara. One thing I noticed about some of these players was their location: California. Specifically Sunnyvale, California. In my mind I pegged the cute sounding city as a Mecca for video game arcade fighting. As luck would have it, I happened to fall in love with a girl who lives five minutes away from Sunnyvale, and on top of that we’re looking to move to that exact city! On a recent visit I was able to stop in an arcade that has been on my radar since the Tips & Tricks days as a place the pros played: Golfland USA. The arcade scene is not what it used to be in the 90s and early 2000s, but Golfland has done its best to retain the good ol’ years of the video arcade. (more…)