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Arcade: One time, when I was in band camp..
Thu, 17 May 2007

This memory came up in IRC, so I thought I would record it here for the longer term.

Back when I was a fairly motivated coin-operated-machine collector, I knew a lot of folks either in the industry (bar owners, arcade operators, etc) or other collectors. It can be a strange hobby since you're either a leach trying for the cheapest price at an auction or lording over a destitute and bankrupt former-bar-owner. That or driving all over the countryside looking in shitty shops with rusty Coca Cola signs for filthy machines featuring silver ownership stickers with phone numbers you can call^h^h^h^hharass. Or bumping into 12 year olds whose cool old Dad had given him a rare Joust 2 machine worth thousands but finding out the kid painted black over the artwork and put a copy-board of Street Fighter 2 in. Anyway, thats another story, but suffice to say you call and bug people enough, and eventually you find some cool old codger with a 20 year old junked motorhome half buried in his backyard, stuffed to the brim with PCB-gold.

This one old fellah I used to bump into regularly at the local coin-op auction had a whole farm of treasures; he claimed to have hung around with The Beatles back in the day, and sure had a party bus buried in his backyard stuffed with one armed bandits and other awesome junk. His whole house was decked with classy gadgetry, but that too is another story.

My tunnel vision, after side-stepping his muddy guard dogs, focused clearly on his Barn. An entire barn stuffed with arcade cabinets and gear from when he ran a route and collected from the auctions over a decade or two. GOLD. The entire main floor were just cabs, as he was fond of removing the PCB (the game gutts) or collecting original cabs and putting PCBs into them. These weren't "generic cabs" but "deds" (dedicated cabs). (A Pacman machine had a Pacman cabinet, where as many later games were just generic cabinets with the decals laid on.) There was no space to walk, and everything was covered with a sheen of dust, and you could smell the .. musty barnyard odours everywhere. It was awesome, like Indiana Jones laying eyes on the gold idol. Wtih so little space, to get around one climbed up atop the machines and worked slowly across by hopping machine to machine, and as anyone whose every been to an arcade can remind you -- the tops are not flat. I distinctly recall loosing my footing and nearly falling through between a swift (?) of Star Trek (a classy vector game IIRC) cabinets.

Anyway, we worked our way across the mosaic of cabinets until reaching a wooden ladder for climing up to the open second floor, where a hill of PCBs (the game brains) lied piled atop each other willy nilly. Being a geek I tend to keep my work area orderly, and my electronics far too clean. (Ask anyone with greasy palms who goes near my PDAs and game consoles..) Seeing a stack of hundreds of PCBs just lieing around in the open air hurts the soul. After taking it all in, with rays of light piercing through holes in the wooden ceiling, I noticed a distinct pile aside the others, all neatly in a tower. They were just Atari vector PCBs (which are unmistakable to any who've seen them.) A stack of some 20 or 30 of them. Now, I mention all of this since it is burned ito my mind -- if you can see your way, lit by holes in the ceiling, you already know that the rain has been in. All of these PCBs were seeping a nice rusty puddle and surely most were ruined.

Brutal.

Anyway, he did have mounds of cool stuff that functioned, so I had picked up a dozen various game PCBs for my collection; he even somehow foisted a box of unknown boards on me so I could rip out the chips and find out which games they were. (Like fingerprint reading from the code on the chips.) Fine. He wasn't cheap either since he knew collectors were interested in this stuff, but he gave me an alright bulk deal.

The reason I write all of this is here; I don't recall if this event was the same day or another day, as I did drop by a couple of times total, but nomatter. This one occasion, he (call him Bob, since that was his name) asked, friendly-like -- "Any particlar game you've been looking for and not found? I've probably got it..."

So, says I, "Quartet." Its not really rare, but its certainly uncommon and over all the thousands of boards I'd seen I've never encountered one in the wild.

Bob, without even breaking eye contact (this is how I remember it ;), reaches over to his right into a set of slots on the wall (a customized PCB breeding area I'm sure) and draws out a mint condition Quartet 2 game PCB.

It was gorramned Kreskin.

The best, the absolute best, was the shit eating grin he had. Knowing I'd just driven an hour into the farmland boons and cralwed around a filthy barn, and he had a game he knew I'd searched for on and off for a couple years. He thought he had it.

Well, fuck him I thought; I had a game he'd been looking for a couple years for too, and it was dirt common and he didn't know that. Asshole wasn't going to give me a reacharound that day.

But for a minute, he thought he was The King.

But I was the sandwhich.

Later, he showed me where he got rid of the machines deemed to be of no use.. no value for resale, or too much trouble to fix or move. He'd fire them. He was more businessman than collector, like I, so it hurt.

We were negotiating the value and price of the things I'd picked from his Unibomber-like stockpiles. He had the advantage, for while I was the greasy sammich of his destruction, he was the guy with a Space Duel cabinet on fire, burning away behind him while I merely looked on over his shoulder.

That was my #2 game, that I'd always wanted.

Asshole.

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Baalzebush: Is this for real? Stunning. Just awesome. Awesome to the max.
Thu, 17 May 2007

I heard a quote, and wasn't sure so headed onto our friend Google (obviously the prime tool for terrorasts.) I'm sure this is a real site, I mean, Teh Real Whitehouse, because you just can't make up this stuff

They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

Dubya. You da man.

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Live: <Gurgle> Evil Dead, Musical?
Thu, 17 May 2007

So much to say and that should've been said about being a new dad and loving life and never sleeping, but with life so busy that stuff is all so easily passed by. But this. This.

Evil Dead - The Musical I have no mouth, and I must scream.

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Quotes: One from ol' Berty
Sun, 06 May 2007

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

Bertrand Russell

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Gaming: Where are the old school RPGs?
Sun, 06 May 2007

The baby is keeping us pretty busy so not so many posts of late, but I just have to squeeze this one in. Got five hours of sleep last night (not bad!) but taking a break from baby laundry and vacuuming to listen in on the new Rush album ('Snakes and Arrows') so I've got a moment to type. I've got the late-night shift and hate to sleep in bite-sized chunks so just stay up through two or through a.m. then go for a good coma before work. During that a.m. shift if the baby is sleeping nicely I can usually catch a bit of low volume TV but occasionally my brain is functional enough to debug my new game a little bit, or better still.. play a game. Rare pleasures indeed! This is where the PSP and such has turned in handy.. instant on and off.

Anyway, I find myself looking for a good single player old-school RPG. I've mentioned before there being at least two schools of this sort of game -- Japanese style (or J-RPG) and Everyone Else style. I'm not so into J-RPGs where you're walking a predetermined story and have overworld versus tactical turn based isometric combat. I'm a dungeon crawler. To this very day I miss Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Wizardry, you name it. Back in the day there were dozens of RPGs at any given moment.

Not that long ago we had a lot of great titles .. Baldur's Gate, heck even Wizardry 8 and the Might and Magic games. The latest Elder Scrolls game - Oblivion - looked like a recent game to scratch the dungeon romping stat-managing equipment gathering itch, but alas it puts too high a demand on my meagre machine (during real time combat, even with Oldblivion mod) for me to much get into it. There are the Neverwinter Nights games as well I suppose, so there are a couple of notable RPG entries of late. I suppose Thief III needs mentioning; not an RPG per se, but you do get to sneak around in first person stealing wallets from the unwary. Not bad.

I worry the MMORPG industry is really hurting the solo RPG one; not all of us have time (anymore ;) for such games that are designed to require real investments of life (thousands of hours very literally), yet they do have crazy stat management and gathering going on, appealing to our gamer inner core. You just can't solo a dungeon therein.

Anyway, I suppose I've half defeated my question but something is missing. No more Ultima? No more Wizardry with Sir-Tech long gone under. No more Eye of the Beholder. I refuse to see the truth, that the days of manually clicking on inventory slots in your solo backpack are gone. I like crawling through a dank dungeon, looking for secret buttons to open passage sinto the lairs of Crom-only-knows-what seeking better lootz. I want The Sword of Fargoal Undieing Firestrength to grant my Strength +10 damnit.

Given a two year old laptop, any good RPGs out there? (Yes as a retro nutjob, I know very well I can run games from just a few years ago, to a couple decades back. Now while PC gaming is down (and on a rebirth in my humble opinion!), we still have Civilization and Galactic Civilization waving the strategy flags; Dawn of War and Warhammer and good ol' Command and Conquer for RTS.)

Anyway, I'm just rambling away; sorry about that.. not nearly enough sleep the last little while :) (And I know I know, we should get a Wii and/or XBox 360 for our game fixes. Too bad, we're cheap :)

So if you can .. riddle me this -- where are the old school RPGs?

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