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For more than thirty years, Litwak's Family Fun Center had been entertaining children. Two generations of kids knew that if you wanted to play the best video games, Litwak's was the place to go.
The atmosphere in the arcade was one of ringing bell and electronic beeps. Kids raced between rows of fighting, dancing, racing, and first person shooter game consoles, testing their skills against various video characters.
The arcade even had a few original 8-bit games from way back in the 1980s. The characters in those games were pixilated and looked more like clumps of little colored dots than the movie-like realism found in modern games, but they were classics!
One of those original games was called Fix-It Felix Jr .
The game's official Good Guy was a little fellow named Fix-It Felix, outfitted with work gloves, a tool belt, and a gleaming gold magic hammer.
But Felix wasn't the most exciting character in the game.
That honor belonged to the game's Bad Guy, Wreck-It Ralph.
Whenever a kid put a coin into the game console, Ralph leaped on screen with huge fists, torn overalls, and a furious attitude, yelling, "I'M GONNA WRECK IT!" As each game started, Ralph climbed up the side of a pixilated apartment building in a place called Niceland and smashed the structure to pieces. Bricks rained down while frightened Nicelanders peered out from the windows.
"FIX IT, FELIX!" The Nicelanders would shout.
Then Felix would show up, cheerful and calm, holding his magic hammer. If a player handled the joystick skillfully enough, Felix would follow Ralph up the side of the apartment building, fixing all the broken windows and loose bricks.
Once Felix fixed the entire building and reached the roof, the player won! On the screen, the Nicelanders cheered as they presented Felix with a shiny gold medal. But what about Ralph, the Bad Guy? Game after game, the Nicelanders hoisted him up and tossed him off the roof. He always landed face down in the mud at the bottom of the building.
For kids, there was something simple and fun about the story of Ralph and Felix. That's why the game was still popular after many years, despite its old fashioned style.
In fact, every video game in Litwak's arcade had a story embedded in it. But the stories weren't exactly what Mr. Litwak and the kids thought they were. Every night, when the video arcade closed... there an action started.