On Tuesday, April 26th at 5:30 PM, we will be holding a tournament on Pac Man Battle royale, with the winner to recieve your choice of a Pac Man or Galaga ornament (shown below. Action figures not included). There will be no entry fee, beyond the cost of games played.
The new Namco arcade game Pac Man Battle Royale is now in the…store. Yup, Dan has agreed to let us place the game up front and center, because we really wanted to get this amazing multi-player game, and had no clue how to re-arrange the arcade to make it fit.
Forgot to post a picture of Rampage, so here it is on location:
Upcoming events and tournaments:
This evening (Feb. 14th) starting at 10 PM, Docking Bay 93 will be hosting a release event for Marvel vs. Capcom 3. For more details, contact the store. We should be adding MvC3 to the LAN soon, watch this blog or the Facebook page for updates.
Sunday, February 20th, Pac Man Battle Royale tournament. No entry fee, just the cost of games played (3-5 at 50 cents each, depending on number of participants), first prize will be a vintage trucker-style Pac Man hat and a card for some free games.
My mouse is randomly clicking, which is making this…fun…to type, so more updates in the next few days.
There have been several big changes to the arcade that you might like to know about.
First, Guitar Hero has sadly left the arcade. There are a variety of reasons for this, and I will try to sum them up in a later post (no promises). Primarily, without the online feature and new songs promised when it came out, it wasn’t making as much money as it needed to.
Second, we knew we needed a big game to physically fill the void Guitar Hero left. Deep in the dark corners of my garage, there lurked just such a game. The first game we ever bought, which died BEFORE the store opened. The game that almost killed Scott W.* Rampage!
Of course, there was a tiny little problem. Not only did it not work, but we had traded away the parts long ago, leaving the cabinet behind as an empty shell. While sorting through our spare game boards, we found we still had the non-working Rampage board we had picked up for parts. We kludged some wiring up, piggybacking from a second game’s power and monitor, and found out that the dead board (mostly) worked. After around 16 years, I can finally say that after some minor repairs, a few more parts, and a LOT or wiring, RAMPAGE LIVES!
There is a third big change, but that will be posted later this evening.
Finally, Marble Madness has been removed. Again. It will not return until we are absolutely sure it is fixed, and would like to thank everyone who played it for your patience. Thanks to it being in the arcade, we _think_ we have figured out why it worked in my shop, but not on location, but are making absolutely no promises on when it will return. Especially since I have an Atari vector monitor ahead of it on the repair list…anyone who knows which games that could go to, keep your fingers crossed!
*He was removing the power chassis from the unplugged game, and somehow it shocked him. Badly. No permanent damage, but he had a small burn and numb hand, and I heard the zap from across the room. Always be careful when working with electronics!
Out second tournament for HALO: Reach will be Tuesday, October 26th. Pricing and start time will be posted later.
This tournament will have a first prize consisting of HALO: 2600 and (tentatively) an ATARI 2600 to play it on.
Updates coming soon!
Posting this a little closer to the event than I would like, but we are having our first HALO: Reach tournament on October 12th, starting at 6PM.
Tentatively, we are planning to have two or three tournaments a month on the LAN. The next HALO tournament will be in a few weeks, and have a first prize consisting of HALO 2600, and an Atari 2600 to play it on (tentatively. I have to verify that the 2600 works first).
Interested in more tournaments? Besides playing in the tournament (and playing on the LAN and in the arcade outside of tournaments), please let Dan know what you are interested in. And if you want to volunteer to run a tournament or two, we’d be interested in hearing what you have in mind!
(side note, I know I am …er… a _little_ late with the updates promised in the last post. Life got rather spectacularly more in the way than I expected. No guarantees, but an update should be coming soon)
A quick note to say Happy Birthday to what was started 15 years ago as a small toy store by two people who had absolutely no clue what they were doing! A larger post will go up this week-end, with some photos of the various stages of the arcade (regrettably, it took us a while to realize we might want to take pictures, so there will be no photographs of the arcade being only Donkey Kong 3, Xenon, and Discs of Tron).
To everyone who has supported the store and arcade, whether for 15 years or one day, I’m sure we speak for Dan as well as ourselves when we say THANK YOU!!!
In catching-up news, some major upheaval in our lives has put this blog on the back-burner, as well as all the project games into storage (Addams Family…>sigh<), but rest assured we are getting back into things finally, and I _should_ have news about the future of the arcade to post over the week-end. Thank you for your perpetual patience!
Phoenix Nest Classic Video arcade is happy to announce that we have added the newest Stern pinball machine, Iron Man, to the arcade!
This is a multi-ball oriented game, featuring two magnets and a large Iron Monger toy that rises out of the center of the playfield during play. I was pleasantly surprised that Stern was able to release this game before the movie came out, and hope that this continues for movie licenses.
The other pinball machines were all given a basic cleaning and had some lights changed and minor repairs done, so they should all be playing a lot better now. I currently plan to rotate through them giving them a thorough cleaning and maintenance check when I’m done restoring Addams Family.
First, the BIG news. We have installed a 4 X-Box lan center (licensed through iGames) in the gaming area. Cost to play is $4 per hour per person or $8 per hour per console for multi-player games. Currently available and licensed games are Hal Wars and Command and Conquer 4: Modern Warfare 2. Coming soon will be Halo 3: ODST and Forza 3, as well as wired controllers. How fast we add titles will depend on what people want to play, whether or not we can license the game, and how much the lan gets used.
Second, a subtle hint that if you enjoy the Episode 1 pinball machine, you should get your fill of playing it now. It is soon to be rotated out of the arcade in favor of…well, let me keep some suprises, although if you follow news on the pinball industry it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out...
Trying to figure out if the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 board is worth sending out for repair. Whatever is wrong with it is beyond my abilities (it uses surface-mount components, which I am not good enough with a soldering iron to work on beyond the big parts.) Will update when I know more.
Been working on Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Game had stopped working, so ran a few tests. Monitor is only displaying a line across the screen, and the game doesn’t boot. Recapped the monitor, checked it over, everything looks fine. Had a part on the game board that was corroded, waited several days for the part I needed to arrive in the mail (I miss the days when electronics stores stocked more than just the basic parts and cell phones…), installed it, fired the game up…
Screen is a warped line across the screen. (insert colorful metaphor here)! However, the game booted, so I figure I must have done something right. Try to coin the game up, and no sound. I did exactly nothing that in any way should have been able to affect the sound system. With no picture beyond the thin line, I can’t tell if it took the credit without sound.
So my brain starts chewing on the latest problems. Need to pull the monitor for further testing, and jump the game board to an external monitor and see what I get on the screen. No problem.
Except that my fist won’t unclench. This is what is called ‘hitting the wall.’ I was actually getting angry at the game for not working. I’ve got several difficult projects going currently (needing to learn playfield repair for Addams Family, among other things. I didn’t post about the small fire in one of the pins I’m working on, did I? Hmm, next post, then) and really thought Marvel vs. Capcom 2 would be easy.
So to make a long story short, I’m taking a break. I love arcade games and pinball. I LOVE working on them. I spend a heck of a lot of time reading about arcade repair and restoration. In a few days, I’ll go back to work on the game, and post an update.
Now that the game is back in the arcade (and I have no idea where the screw that jammed the Gollum/Gimli upkicker came from…sigh…), I wanted to make a post about the changes that have been made to the game.
First, LED lighting has been installed, and for the most part I like it. The general illumination lighting is noticeably ‘colder’ than with incandescent lights (which is why we kept incandescent lights on the back arch of the game), but I don’t think it looks bad. I LOVE the bright colors produced by putting colored LEDs under the playfield inserts, and am looking forward to rarely having to change a bulb (there are a couple lights out right now, which is caused by the new bulbs not being an exact fit. This should be easy to correct).
Second, as was done on the Simpsons pinball machine, we switched the side rails to the newer kind that covers the flipper area, which both looks and feels better. Sadly, the newest pinball machine, Big Buck Hunter Pro, is shipping with the older side rails. I understand the need to keep production cost down, but personally don’t believe this is the place to do it.
(sorry the after picture is so dark)
Third, we installed Pinbits plastic protectors to help prevent the playfield plastics from becoming broken. I love the protectors, having had to replace plastics on Lord of the Rings and Spiderman that would never have broken if I’d installed these first. Given that the replacement parts are more expensive than the protectors, I consider them money VERY well spent.
And forth, the new product that will be installed in all of the pinball machines at the shop. A DMD glare filter. The before and after picture should say everything for me (or looking at the pin in person, then looking at the pin next to it). Glare on the upper playfield from the DMD is something that I, as a player, hate, and this product is easy to install and eliminates the problem.
And now I can FINALLY get back to work on the Addams Family, figure out what is wrong with Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and get to work on our not-so-secret project (hint, it includes the letter x, the word box, and the abbreviation LAN. And that’s all the clues I’m giving…)
