Journey

Based on a couple screen shots I've had this game on my list for quite some time. Keeping an eye out for a release date and more details on the gameplay etc. It finally came out a few weeks ago and I eventually caved in and bought it.... Then last night I played it. What a fantastic game!

It's really short, has little action or real difficulty but similar to Ico there is art and an experience here! The game only took maybe 2 hours to go through, but I will go through again, absolutely.

I will say that this is definitely an acquired taste, it's also likely dangerous to go in with expectations too high.... I guess I'm not helping that at all.....

Any way, go play this game, well worth it, just make sure you play it at night, in the dark, with the sound turned up and fully play through the whole thing in one sitting.

...or not...

So, I was ready to take the busted Blast apart and send out the monitor chassis for repair and then.... Suddenly.. it sold.

Ive gone from 3 Blasts to 1 very quickly, but the New Net City's are working out really well.... and I'm quite pleased as now the game room has room to move again! Quite happy with the set up though there are a good number of projects ahead if me.

Repairs

Sadly repairs are part of the arcade world, not as much as with pinball (thank God) but still they are part of this hobby. I've done many repairs on wiring and even some ugly but successful soldering.... The scary place for me is MONITOR REPAIR.
So, when a chassis on my Blast City died a while ago I was quite upset.... and a bit lost. There are options, I started with some basics like visual inspection and replacing fuses but no luck. Then I spoke with a monitor expert and likely know what the problem is, but honestly the fix is beyond my skill.
After a couple months of not selling a busted cab, I've got a place that will do the repair! Now I take it all apart and prepare to ship it off! Fingers crossed!




In other news I got a Playstation Vita! Very nice machine! Quite pleased with it so far and I plan on trying to stick with all digital downloads... Wipeout 2048 is my favorite so far, just a beautiful and excellent game!

Importing!

A RECOVERED POST! They finally fixed the app.... Sorry for the duplicate info...

I have this habit of foolishly asking questions. See a guy selling something cool, ask if he has something cooler. Usually it doesn't lead anywhere, but this time it sure did!



What you see here are the 2 New Net City cans that FINALLY arrived! It took an eternity because of problems with the wire transfer then problems with customs cause the shipper made a lot of errors that resulted in conflicting paperwork. Customs seems to not like that.

I can't complain now though, they are here and in the basement and they are beautiful. There are less than 6,000 plays on both, monitors are crisp and new, honestly no complaints at all.

So yes, lots of headaches to get them here but they are the jewels of the room. I'm very happy! If only I had more time to actually play them......

New App

So yeah, using a new app for these posts, the results are interesting...

Finally!

So the importing experience has been a challenge.... Between issues with wiring the cash and the bank and customs forms and the delay some foolishness there caused weeks just ticked by.

But, I have the cabs now, they are totally worth it and the minimal work they needed is going very well. The monitors on these are literally insane.

Import - Export

This arcade stuff is not easy. With the little man in our lives now there is no real free time so I've been focusing on some buying and selling with very little playing. Thankfully Ted makes it over some times for a couple hours!

Recent purchases like Asterix, Stone Ball and Bomberman world get little play but we have managed some fantastic matches in Fist of the North Star which looks and plays wonderfully.

Also new is a system 246 board that works.... Sometimes. This ended up being true, but I think its not a tough fix. We'll see!

I'll be selling a couple cabs to make room for something .... wonderful!

Oops

I should re-name this my neglected blog, but then readers wouldn't know which I was referring to I guess.




The gaming world keeps on spinning despite very little time to play games! Fortunately things are looking up as my protege may have seen the light!!

After quite some time buying a few very nice bulk deals I finally started to sell off the surplus or extra pieces that I'm not really into, so far so good and it should help fund the next round.... BEGIN!!




I finally managed to source a proper CP for my Progear overlay! Still need sticks and buttons but man, it will look good!

Restore continues...

Well I successfully managed to seal the extra holes in the panel. I think it looks great now! Still need to source a CPO and more clean up, but the little cab is looking good!

Game room updates

It's been way to long since I updated, do I have any readers left?




First up is the new cab! Neo 25, quite rare, very nice little machine. Planning to restore it a bit and put a Neo Geo 4 slot in it. Big jobs are to restore the control panel (next pic) and then do something about the marquee.

New Art!

So the basement arcade has been busy lately, I've been trying to take care of as many projects as possible since time is in short supply.... Best one this week was that I finally sorted out an audio problem with the Blast City cabs. Also picked up some awesome art work.... all of it is original side art and in great shape.

I've also been refocusing my arcade collection.... selling off the games I don't really play and buying a few of the ones that have been elusive.




The other big project lately was rotating the monitor on the Naomi Universal. My GOD that was a huge pain in the butt!! There was a huge metal cage around the monitor and a few cables were too short to actually allow rotation! But, it's done and it is good.

Quite surprised to find that someone was making reproduction marquees for the New Astros. Originals are impossible to find and never in good shape so this service is quite needed and I assume the guy is doing well with it. What I really enjoy about it is showing off the art for the games and it really completes the look of the cabs. The 3rd Astro has one too, but I'm waiting for some art for it.

Wow, has it really been that long? How did that happen?

Oh right......




So yeah, not as many games being played lately. But I still have stuff to talk about! I want to make it more of a priority!

So, 2011.... Curious what the year will bring for games and I, Stanley will be too young for me to use him as an excuse to buy stuff, so I'll need to keep saving for some of the last arcade boards I'm interested in. Will get off my butt and sell the remaining stuff I'm selling as well.

In the industry, I guess there is the PSP phone and PSP 2 on the way, curious if they will be compatible or not, my guess is no and that Sony will regret it.

Nintendo's 3D handheld looks neat, very curious to see it, but would I buy one? Hmmm, thinking no.

I suppose Apple will continue to take a bite out of the gaming $$$, curious to see how long they can keep up the hardware redesign/upgrade/release rate they are
on, is there no end??

Location:October?

Cabs

It's been a busy arcade basement time! Been selling stuff and rearranging the games room to ensure things are easy to get to and play, also to make sure it's a bit more baby proof.... Or baby resistant.




While all this was going on I got a cool CPO, all I need now is a blank CP to apply it to.

Nothing really new on the news front, been slowing on the 360 lately, the arcade stuff has all my attention!

Shooter

Well I'm still getting caught reading about a new 'shooter' only to fund it's a FPS instead of a shooter shooter, guess I need to adjust to the shmup term.... and fast.

Not a lot to chat about right now, should be getting another Blast City cab in a bit, that'll be sweet and almost finish off the basement/arcade/cave of joy.

Hmmm been playing a bit of Limbo lately on XBLA, very good game! Also just got Scott Pilgrim vs the World... Retro goodness!

Seems I'm playing more small games rather than full games lately.

Death Smiles?? Really??

So.... my love affair with shooters continues, sorry... shooters seems to have been a name taken over by FPS fans, so I guess I should say that my love affair with SHMUPS continues.

The latest one is Death Smiles. I decided to get this for the 360 instead of the arcade and this choice saved me like $1000 (no, literally).

This one is also made by Cave, they are pretty much the place to go for over the top screen full of bullets shooters. Although slightly pervy... I gotta say that I am not a huge fan of the theme. These are young teen girls/witches who fly around blowing stuff up. I'd prefer space ships and military stuff I suppose.... just makes more sense to me. Also I don't like how the characters are standing quite vertically in the air when they fly, seems weird to me.

Gameplay wise this one is TOPS and I am pleased to get to play it!!

On the arcade side there hasn't been too much new, bit of cool art and I re-purchased Dimahoo (another shooter). I guess shooters is what happens when you buy all the fighters you really want.

Shooters!

It's been a while since I got into a good or modern shooter since I tend to stick to fighting games. Then a strange thing happened, I bought most of my favorite fighters and suddenly shooters started to take hold...

It started with Sidearms, a favorite from high school days and hitting the Broken Cue. Great game and one that I actually finished back in the day on one quarter. I have not yet repeated that feat, but still pretty cool stuff. Other notables are R-Type and In the Hunt, all had a place in my past and all really cool.

I have recently started to play Progear, from 2001 I think as well as DoDonPachi 2. Both are more modern shooters and fall into the bullet he'll style as the screen fills with nice paterns of bullets that you must dodge as you fire back, they are insane.

Progear in particular is quite amazing, beautiful game with accesable yet rewarding gameplay... SO GOOD. The above pic is from that game.

One thing I am trying to do with both games is to avoid pushing continue ever, this way I must learn the game and I'll most likely get my $$'s worth.

Bulk Deals

Man do I love the bulk deal. If you have the cash it's a great way to get some cool games at a slightly reduced price. The downside is getting some crap along with the cool stuff, but there are always people out there who are completists who gotta have one of everything, so therefore everything has a market.

Beyond the very nice stack of games in the pic I also got a bunch of ZN2 games recently, only one motherboard but thankfuly they swap out easy enough, and it's great to play these games again! Many had been porter to the DC back in the day after all.

Toronto Trip!

Well, this was my 4th trip to Toronto for games that involved driving there and back the same day.
Turns out it was also almost exactly a year since Ted and I last man the trip. Obviously a big thanks goes to Ted for the assist and to Paul for the loan of some materials.

I'll have to expand on the details of the trip soon, for now here are some pics.

Coffee Table

Well, thanks to Lynne and her glass connections I now have a very respectable nerd coffee table. The centre piece of the soon to be redesigned basement (more news and pics soon!) this table looks pretty good in person.

Sadly life has been quite busy lately so it's tough to get the time I might like to play more games, but I squeeze it in when I can.

The Battle of the Consoles

Check this out....(click thepic to make it bigger).... these stats are quite interesting, especially when compared to how things were 5 or 10 years ago. The video game market place has changed A LOT. The most surprising thing in my mind is how the average age of the gamer is now 32. Back when I started playing games I imagine that the average age was closer to 15. It's great to see that even with more households than ever playing games that the ones who started it all are still at it. Yeehaw!! Old Gamers!!

The number of gamer girls is also refreshing to see, clearly there is no longer a significant gender divide.

I am also jealous of the 18 hours a week people get to play games.... 18 hours a week??!?!? I wish.

Street Fighter IV!

Ok, I've owned the game for a while now and just recently started to play it again..... Why? Well it all has to do with the Internet. By the power of xbox live and the voodoo contained within Ted and I can play quality rounds of SFIV against Scott in Japan! Sweet.

It turns out that the game is WAY better in two player than it is against the computer and playing against and talking to Scott makes it much cooler as well.

It will not replace SFA2..... But it is way better than expected!

Nerd Blog!

Been way too long since I posted (again) and for that I am sorry.

I even have some good nerd stuff to blog about too, not the least of which is that I'm writing this on my phone now.... and it actually work pretty well!

Actually the iPhone in general has been pretty sweet so far. There really is an "app for that" it turns out and the thing is slick.

On the home arcade (home-cade??) front things are going well, been selling off the console stuff slowly but surely to both pay off and fund purchases. It's going really well. It turns out I'm awesome at cps2 battery swaps, the last one took only 10 minutes and was a success, yeehaw, my skilz improve!

Next up on the big project list is doing a cap kit on a monitor chassis for one of the New Astro's and holy moly is that daunting.

Check out some street art from Montreal, above and some pics from an actual arcade in Montreal! SF3:TS, SFIV, Tekken 5 and 6, Virtua Tennis 3 in a Naomi cab.... All very nice.

ok, I totally suck... it's been way too long and I've completely neglected the blog. I have no excure REALLY other than this.

Yep... the iPhone.

Is it the most amazing phone in the history of the world.....? maybe.... is there an app for that? YES. yes there is. Ok, so the thing REALLY needs a flash, really needs to be able to have more than one app open at a time, and somehow be smudge proof.

The games on it are actually pretty good, but you have to choose wisely. Galcon and Geo Defense are the stand out favorites and are very cool. I guess I don't have much more to say on this, yet.... it's still the first week and I'm all nerd happy with it, probably not objective at all.

In game and arcade news, Super Street Fighter IV has been announced... I guess that is not a surprise. The gaming council and I (sorry Scott and Ted, that's what I've now decided to call it) have decided that SFIV was/is broken and actually requires an update. It really should have been better.

Other stuff I have my eyes on....

Muramasa, Tatsunoka vs Capcom, Front Mission Evolved, The Last Guardian and maybe Castlevania: Lord of Shodow... though I am scared of the possible Castlevania: God of War that it may turn out to be.

ok, that's all I got right now. Update entered..... superficial promise of more frequent updates applied.

Mr. Chuck E. Cheese

History lesson for all.... I never got to go to Chuck E. Cheese as a kid. The folks thought it was crappy and always shot down my suggestion to go to the nice family eatery. Years go by and I would sometimes see a Chuck E. Cheese at the side of the highway or something, but never at the right time or anywhere close to where I lived. It was really upsetting.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a Chuck E. Cheese close to me... at long last a sore point from my childhood would be addressed, I was even hungry for pizza!! Amazing... the stars were aligning, this was really going to happen.

To get there was a long walk, but I was brave... I was also getting more and more hungry.... and the weather was starting to look bad, the wind was picking up and things were starting to look sketchy. Because of where the place was I decided not to change and drop off my computer bag, this was a bit of a bummer cause I REALLY wanted to go there wearing my Atari logo t-shirt... You see Nolan Bushnell, who started Atari, sold all his shares at some point and opened Chuck E. Cheese, I thought it would be a fitting tribute.

The good news is that I got there! I have to say I was a little surprised at the set up. I thought this was a restaurant that had games, it's actually an arcade and kids play land that has pizza... AND if you go there on your own as a man over the age of 12, you feel kind of weird.

So, I got over being totally out of place and looked around, not a bad selection of games actually, I was surprised in particular at these ones:
Metal Slug 6!! The Sega Firefighter game!! So cool.....











At this point I decided I needed some tokens... and I was still starving so I ordered some pizza too. As soon as I got my tokens......

...this happens. Black out, HUGE rain and lightening storm started up, little kids were screaming and it was dark in there. I later found out that there were many reports of multiple tornados, 1 person died, power lines were pulled from the ground and roofs were ripped off houses!! I just wanted my pizza...

Fortunately the worst of the storm was not right above Chuck E. Cheese but man... there was a lot of lightening and the rain came down in buckets. Once the power came back on all was good (other than 20 minutes of the fire alarm going off right after a huge and close lightening strike)

So, I ate my pizza, which was like a cross between Pizza Pizza and Pizza Hut, and played some games.... all in all a good time. Not sure if I'll be eager to go back soon, but it was a crazy experience.

Below are some more pics, the oddest of them was the Namco "Flamin' Finger" game. I was very confused by the choice to add a game with this name to a kids arcade.... =)

what's this? another post so soon after the last one?? Yes. It's true.

So... control panels... these have been such a money pit, new sticks new buttons new overlays new harnesses blah blah $ $ $. This time I got a good deal, actually a very good deal.

What you see in the pic is a Sega made 2L16B CP (2 player, 8 buttons each) for the New Astro City and I think it's quite rare. When these cabs were new the Sega Saturn was around and Sega didn't miss an opportunity to exploit the popularity of the cabs. They created a 2 player joystick that included this panel and had a New Astro City style dedicated fibre glass casing. These things were EXPENSIVE and they are still very collectible.

But despite this someone broke theirs apart!! Out of that I got the CP and the Saturn connectors/wires. These were pretty easy to take apart and then I just put the CP into the cabinet. This CP will allow me to keep the cab it's for looking like the others but also provide an extra level of flexibility. SWEET!

Another new thing in my world of arcade enjoyment is NOS side art. NOS stands for New, Old Stock. SO this stuff is factory original just never used. The side art is the big sticker that they would attach to the side of the arcade machines back in the day. I think I may start to collect some of this cause it's really nerd-beautiful! The one I got is not the best one ever, but it's really fun and it's for a VERY fun game. I'll post pics if I come across any more of this....

Playdium!!

I rarely go to a real arcade, but if I do I really need to take some pics and take some notes. This time I did both... sort of.

First some observations. For a business owned, at least partially, by Sega..why are there no Sega branded toys shirts or anything for sale?? These guys have tons of characters and loads of products around the world, yet none in the arcade. Total RIP OFF. I almost cried, almost.


I wandered the floor of the place and found very little of real interest. I saw a Namco/Pac Man coin game, which was cool and a Sonic and Tails spinner thing which was sweet!! Sadly it was hidden behind a pole. ???












I have to admit I entered with high expectations....so I should not be surprised that they were not met. There were no really sweet cabs there, the closest would be the Tekken 6 cab, which was decent, the pic id not turn out well though, sorry about that.

Street Fighter IV should have been the highlight and centre point of the arcade, but it was in some weird new version of a Showcase cab but with LCD's... the LCD's were a decent size but ended up looking tiny and weak.... as well as weird. The control panel area may have been some strange factory original I really couldn't tell. At least there was some nice art on it, but too many people around for me to get a pic with the flash.













What the place did have was a lot of gun games and a lot of racers, some very new and potentially very cool. The gun ones all had big fat machine guns on them mostly attached as though they were a turret or were mounted on a jeep....neat and all, but I was not in the mood I guess. Maybe next time!!