I was lucky enough to stumble across the old “Captain American and the Avengers,” arcade game.

A lot of arcade games from my youth turn out to be a lot less sophisticated than I remember. Honestly, I discovered an old copy of Centipede a while ago and when the game started I just stood there and said, “So am I, like, that little red square?” Fortunately, the Avengers game was just as beautiful as I can remember. They had well drawn characters and really swell hand-painted backgrounds.

The gameplay was the same; easy enough to enjoy yourself, but hard enough to keep you pumping your life savings of quarters into it. The people that made the best games really knew how to get our money.

A funny thing that never caught my attention until now was the fact that everything explodes.

It’s easy to imagine a vending machine exploding after Iron Man hurls it at a villain. It’s not much of a stretch to figure that a barrel must be filled with volatile fluids because it explodes when Captain America throws it across the screen. It’s a little difficult to imagine why each bad guy explodes after you knock him out; I guess it must be all the high tech equipment they’re wearing. But, someone’s got to explain to me why a park bench and a plastic garbage can explode when hit. And I’m not saying that they just go “poof,” in a cloud of dust; they burst into flame with a fiery “WABOOM!” (and if you know the game, you know the letters “WABOOM!” actually appear on the screen).

Oh well.