The game was surprisingly detailed for an arcade standup, particularily one this old. Andrew had expected maybe two or three preset playable characters, but he was presented with a full-blown character creation screen like in an RPG. Surveying his options, the thing that struck him was the harpy race, which could fly and were pretty fast, but had no hands (and therefore could not use weapons) and severe armor restrictions. But he also noticed a martial artist class that had many of the same armor restrictions anyway, and offered bonuses to unarmed combat, including a strong bonus to kicking that he expected would mesh nicely with the harpy's taloned feet. It wasn't one of the martial artist classes that got the stereotypical "ki" abilities, but with the other advantages, that really shouldn't matter. And that speed bonus couldn't hurt either.
Given how much of an advantage flight was in most video games, especially side-scrollers, Andrew decided that the choice was obvious. He picked a harpy martial artist, and was asked to choose his character's sex. He thought about it for a while, then chose female. After all, if he was going to be looking at this character for the entire game, it might as well be a character worth looking at. He was a little surprised to see that characters with no armor equipped were portrayed as naked, but he figured there was probably a DIP switch for it somewhere; he recalled reading about a couple other old arcade games that had nude options. And he wasn't complaining.
At any rate, character creation was almost finished. He selected his character colors and was prompted to buy starting equipment. Unfortunately, because of the armor restrictions, the only thing he could both use and afford was a little amulet that served as a light source; handy, to be sure, since his character couldn't carry a lantern, but it cost most of his starting money. Shrugging, he selected the "START GAME" option...and the machine exploded in a shower of sparks and acrid electrical smoke, knocking him unconscious.