Earlier today, I searched the website for a game with "fatty bear" in the title.  I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find the arcade game whose title is in the description of this thread.  It, along with classics such as "Carebear," had a whopping zero plays racked up, so I thought it would be neat to give it a shot and take some sorely-lacking screen shots.  When I started it up, I was surprised to find it was made as early as 1984.  Then again, why was I expecting some SNES-quality graphics from a game about some children's book characters?

The game wasn't bad, but I'm not the type to rate simple arcade games, being a child of the modern era.  It's a simple game wherein the player has to walk through a winding cave and avoid obstacles.


But then I looked up the game on Google. Not many sites have detailed info on this game, and only one picture of the arcade cabinet is floating around the Internet. Arcade History sez: "The only known cabinet of this game was at Harborview Hospital in the 80s. It is no longer there. There is one cabinet in the private collection of a collector in California..."
And Everything2 had some intriguing things to say:

"Moppet Video was an arcade game manufacturer back in the early 1980s. Their story is a sad one indeed.

Moppet made games for young children. They made beautiful looking, fun games in little four foot tall arcade machines that were shaped just like the big ones that adults and older kids play. They made a few thousand copies of each of their games, and they were fairly popular with little kids back in the early 1980s.

But they sold all their games to Chuck E. Cheese. Now Chuck E. Cheese has a rather draconian policy for getting rid of their old games. They do not sell them, or give them away to employees, or even throw them away like so many other companies do. Instead they destroy them at the component level. That way they can write them off on their taxes, and they don't have to worry about their old machines showing up in a competitors place (this policy was apparently instituted by Nolan Bushnell, who was the founder of both Atari and Chuck E. Cheese).

Today there are only two of them left, a Pirate Treasure and a Leprechaun. Thats it, the other ones have all been destroyed or have otherwise vanished. Now there may be a few more that no one knows about, but as I write this today, those two games are the only ones known to be left.

That really pisses me off. A stupid corporate tax policy has completely destroyed the first video games ever designed for young children. You can't buy one of these to put into your basement for the little ones, nor will you ever see one at your local pizza shop. They are all gone because of Nolan Bushnell's greediness, and that coming from a man who helped to get the whole video game industry started. You think he would have cared a little bit more. I guess not."

From another person on the same page:

"...I remember going to Harborview Hospital in Seattle, in the maternity area... And in the little kids' area with the thick cardboard books, the building blocks, and the various similar toys, tucked against a wall and with a small stool in front of it was Big Paw's Cave...

Probably one of very few Moppet Video titles that is actually difficult at some point. I know I really enjoyed it when I first saw it."

So...yep.  I just thought these were neat.  Nowadays, I'd bet every Chuck E. Cheese's has the same modern games as all the rest of them, the stuff I played on the few occasions I went there years ago.  Wouldn't it be so cool if they actually kept some of those old cabinets?  The guy who went to that hospital's bringing to mind a good point, this IS a pretty good game for kids.  You can still play some old arcade games at various places, though.  I remember recently going to a place I thought had closed down where they had some great games like TMNT...and it was still open, with higher attendance than ever - and with both old and new games!  I guess I just think it's nice that even old games have their place today.

Did I just end up using this topic to discuss arcade games in general?  Meh, oh well, it's posted now.  My point is that something as simple as playing Big Paw's Cave got me thinking about arcade cabinets, now and then.  Do you have any thoughts to share, maybe about your own experiences?