The headphones work a treat and I have mocked up the auto-fire too. Here’s a glimpse of them. I’ll put up a full article when I finish.

Headphones: I did this video for a friend, when I say microphone I mean headphones!

 AutoFire: Video also done for the same friend

First off I have given my room a subtitle: Ramcade!

I got a replacement monitor for my Power Drift, only to then find a stack more problems. After weeks of trying I eventually got it working. Then promptly sold it! I had to make way for…

The Egret 2 that I bought. It came on Sunday this week, and let me tell you, it’s ace. I’ve used it with DDP DFK and Metal Slug. It’s so good I’m considering getting a second one.

I also managed to source a Hyper Sports dedicated cabinet so hopefully that will show up in a couple of weeks.

I’ll be posting some articles with pictures and video over the coming weekend.

Oh, and Supcom 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 have been sucking my time  away. I also got into Empire: Total War, but I had to delete it because it was too addictive!

Avaguddun!

Mission Control V4

9th February 2010:  EEEEEeeeeeeeekkkkk!  No other words needed!

Shift the Smash T.V.

Slide it carefully into its new home

OI! Go and play on your Wii. Pesky kids!

Move the powerdrift into its new home

Insert Dragon’s Lair 2

Not much room left

But I still have room to get to my PC so it’s all good!

Only one more to delivery to come, and that’s the controversial Space Ace. I need to make more room somewhere. Anybody know advanced TARDIS physics?

Wah we wah we wahhh: The Powerdrift was damaged internally. The monitor control PCB had fallen off its shelf and pulled the back of the monitor off. I tried to fix it, clipping back the PCB where it should go, replacing some ROMs that had fallen off the main PCB and replacing the back of the monitor (it looked like it it just clipped back on). Turned on the power, nothing. A bit of fault finding later and I found that the wires inside the plug had come out of their connectors. I fixed that, plugged it back in, flicked the power switch. “Bang! Flash!”, exclaimed the monitor. I suppose I can take heart in that I sussed out the power problem. To check the state of the newly exploded monitor I need to take it out of the cabinet and I can’t do that until I get a tamper proof screwdriver for the tamper proof screws that it’s held together with.

Wah we wah we wahhh. The courier that was taking my Cinematronics Space Ace to Italy finally managed to set off once the snow had melted. He was due to deliver the machine today, but instead has been involved in a really bad crash in Belgium. The van overturned and is a mess. Most of the contents, including the Space Ace, have been badly damaged. I now need to refund a grand  {that I have already spent} to the buyer and hope that the insurance pays up {as I’ve been assured it will}. Apparently the remains of what was once a proud video game are being brought back to England and when they arrive I will need to go and inspect the body and arrange the insurance claim with the courier.

I’ll post pictures as soon as I have some.

I sold it a few days ago and the  time arrived where I had to prepare to move my Cinematronics Space Ace ready for removal by a courier.  As it happened it was Sunday, 3rd January and I had the motivation to move it. I wasn’t expecting the courier for another week or so.

Time to wiggle it out of its orifice.

For a man of my stature, that was knackering!

Well, being as I’ve finished mifligating it, I have to test it obviously. You know… just one go…

So that was that, until Monday morning… when the phone rang… and the courier was on the other end… “You have until 3.00pm to pack the machine, we’re coming for it”, they said. “But I only get an hour  at most for my dinner”, I said. “Tough”, they said. “Gulp”, I said

12.00! Time to panic! Time to Pack! More haste, less speed!

It’s ready! Ciao!

Sent my Space Ace out today to a lucky owner in Italy. So I have no cabs in my room! My life is empty and will be until the snow disappears. I have loads of pictures of packing it up, I’ll post them shortly.

Obviously my plan to own my own dog’s nadgers arcade room thingy has to begin somewhere. Today it was to arrange delivery of my existing Space Ace to Italy and to sort out a second job.

Seriously… A second job. Well not so much a job as a way of raising funds to buy more arcade games. Let’s call it a hobby to support a hobby.

There’s simply no way at the moment that I can afford to sustain a hobby where the games regularly break 1000 sovs each, it’s a large step up from anything I’ve done before.   I’ve managed to scrimp enough together to get myself a Dragon’s Lair, Smash TV and also get them delivered by selling all my other game related stuff, but to do any more is going to take some serious moolah.

So a hobby to sustain a hobby it is. I have some spare cash to set myself up and believe me, I spent hours agonizing over whether I should possibly waste a grand on a possibly futile exercise to support a hobby or just buy a Ketsui.  I reckon if I don’t give it a go though, I’ll never know. You’ll be able to tell how successful I am by how many games get added to this blog!

Double bonus is that I’ll need a trailer, so in future I can pick up my own cabs

The Space Ace delivery to Italy goes out in the next couple of weeks, so I have to pack it up. Call back to find out how it goes!

Cheers

Lee

There I was one day, reading some discussions at shmups.com, when I noticed a discussion about arcades. It’s a topic close to my heart because I go to Blackpool every year for a couple of days specifically to visit the arcades. The only things that interrupt my mini arcade fest are McDonalds and beer. The simple fact is though that Blackpool’s arcades are a shadow of their former selves.

Gone are all the games that you actually wanted to play, the ’80s has long gone. Now it is full of games that simply want your money, and they don’t even say “Give me your money!!!” in a particularly cool way that makes you want to put your money in like The Black Night 2000 pinball did. No, these days its just put in a quid play for 60 seconds, put in another quid. Beat ‘em ups, Racers and Dance Games are all that remain in this tired old town.

Yet still, every year, Wallsy and I make the trip in the hope that something has changed for the better. The simple fact is that the last game we really really enjoyed playing was the two player, full sized, sit down, tilting version of Powerdrift. Except for Point Blank, obviously… And the Time Crisises, but you get what I mean…

I’ve tried the reasonably local arcades in the seaside towns of Redcar and Scarborough, but the arcade games in these towns generally have broken joysticks or knackered screens and charge you a quid for the privilege of the coin slot not activating the game.

Just about the best place to play a reasonably modern arcade game is the local multiplex picture house, the games are all a quid a go but at least the games actually work.

Apart from the odd Space Invaders cabinet a common factor amongst every arcade I have been to in the last 5 to 10 years is a severe lack of shoot ‘em ups. There was a time where they were the prominent genre, but no more.

So I was very interested when one of the posts in the arcade thread at shmups.com mentioned an arcade in Goodge St, London that had some shoot ‘em ups in it. I visit London every now and again for work purposes. Unfortunately I rarely stay there and come straight home after whatever business I was in London for has finished. I decided though to write “Goodge St” in a document on the desktop of my work computer, just in case I ever stayed in London.

It just so happened that this week I was going to a meeting in London and then was traveling back to Birmingham for a meeting the next day. This meant I could stay in London for an hour or two before it got too late to be catching trains to Birmingham. As I was sat in the meeting in London I noticed the document on my desktop, thought AHA! today could be the day, and asked a colleague who knows London how far away Goodge St was. “You know the road just outside this building?” he said, “just follow it and it turns into Goodge St, it will take about ten minutes to walk”.

The meeting finished and I was on my way to Goodge St. I was a bit worried that I was heading for a rather dodgy part of town as I passed the “adult” shop , and I was more than a little surprised when I got to the end of Goodge St and hadn’t seen anything remotely like an arcade. I noticed though that around the corner to my left was Goodge ST Tube Station and just in front of it was an establishment which had “CASINO” on its sign. As I walked up to it I noticed that there were some video games. This must be it I thought.

In I went and my first impression was that it was quite big, but then I realised that the right hand side of the “casino” was actually one big mirror. Looking around I didn’t really notice any games of any worth. There was a Virtua Cop 3 amongst some other games, some pinball tables and some One Armed Bandits at the back, but nothing shmuppy. At the front of the “casino” I had entered was what looked like the black hole of doom with some steps leading downwards. A neon sign above the stairs had and arrow pointing down the stairs with the word “video games” on it (at least I think that’s what it said). So down I went.

I was a bit nervous because what you have to remember is that I am 33, fat, in a suit with a bag on wheels that looks severely petite (I have to wheel it about because I have a bad back, I try not to carry it as much as possible) with a computer in it, sweating my bollocks off because it’s about a million degrees outside and I’ve just walked for more than three steps to my car. I am definitely not the type of person you would expect to find in an arcade full of young males. Which is, as I discovered when I got to the bottom of the stairs, exactly what the patrons of the arcade were. “Turn around” my Brain said, “go home and play your consoles, that’s where you belong”.. “No!” said my eyes.

I noticed what looked like a shoot ‘em up. I couldn’t quite believe it. It was about half way through the arcade on the left… It couldn’t be what my eyes though they saw, could it? I noticed that there were a load of sit down cabinets playing various beat ‘em ups like Capcom Vs SNK, but my feet beat a hefty path to the shmup, hands dragging this stupid bag behind me.

The game was DoDonPachi Bee Storm, the only DDPachi I hadn’t ever seen. All of a sudden the game started, it was a bit of shock to see that my hand had already put the money in and pressed start…. 4 Credits for a Quid? That can’t be right? It is Right!! Wahoo. The Price is Right.. Come on Down!!!

I must tell you before I go any further that I have read that Bee Storm is crap, but I loved it.

Once I got over the initial shock I got into the game and finished my credits, starting the game afresh each credit. I looked around and noticed a Raiden Fighters machine next to it. OMG! Money in and 4 more credits! The Price is Right, Come on down!!

BUT… The screen was fecked, somehow the left had side of the screen was too far to the left and wrapped back around towards the middle of the screen in a layer over the main play area. No matter, the game was ace.

When I finished I noticed a Raiden Fighters across the room!! OMG!! BUT… The colours were too bright so the bullets were the same colour as the background, basically everything was almost white. No matter, I put in a quid, 4 credits! The price is right, Come on down!

When I finished I noticed a 1940 something, I can’t remember which one, BUT.. the screen was fecked because it had stretched and squashed sides and corners. By now I was getting pretty pissed off with playing on fecked screens, I was getting extremely pissed of with putting my bag down and it getting completely in the way of my legs so I couldn’t stand comfortably. I couldn’t move it to the side in case someone nicked it. I was also getting pissed of with having to stand up at the machines because the screens were too vertical which meant you were too close and couldn’t concentrate on the bottom of them. You needed to be sat down really.

So I decided not to play the 1940 whatever it was game. There was also a ProGear that looked perfect, but I just couldn’t be bothered by now, I made a B-line (excuse the pun!) back to Bee Storm. That was when I noticed that the red electron gun was knackered on the screen. I played another 4 credits though.

On my way out I noticed that the vast majority of the beat ‘em ups had perfect screens. It pissed me off rather a lot that I had found an arcade with some superb shmups at the right price all with working joysticks and buttons, but the screens were all knackered. It was too much to hope for after all… shmups that worked properly. Come on Goodge St Casino, sort them out! You know it’s the right thing to do.

So I guess the question is will I ever go back. Well, of course I will, knackered shmups are better than no shmups, only next time it will be without my fecking bag and without a suit on.

Leeram.