Last time I was in San Fransisco, there was an 'old machines and curiosities' place (full of all sorts of contraptions) near the Jeremiah O'Brien, which had a fair selection of old arcades, mostly stuff before my time. They had a *really* cool one, a helicopter game where you had this large cabinet with a helicopter on a counterweighted stick, and had to fly it around doing rescues to rack up a score. It worked by real aerodynamics - you had to actually fly the rotor to climb, descend go forwards and backwards.
They also had that tanks game that was like Rommel's Revenge on the Speccy, but all true vector graphics (ie. the display was a true vector display, not a raster image mimicing a vector display).
Quality! reminds me of our school, we had a vacuum molding machine at school, we used to make remote control car bodys using it - then sell them for a sky high profit to the local RC car club - aah happy days!
I think an old school 50p made of Ice was just the right weight, I would empty the cash tray and it would be full of water.
yeah we had one of them. we used to use clear plastic to make those games with ball bearings.
yeah we had one of them. we used to use clear plastic to make those games with ball bearings.
My school was boring, we made crap stuff like ergonically designed litter scoopers, and just different types of joints on wooden boxes. They wouldn't even let us melt metal anymore cos' some kid almost destroyed his hand (apparently).
Only thing I ever got to heat shrink was a fountain pen that we had to make, we had to design it, and any graphics that would go on it design the packaging, and then build the pen up from scratch, once it was finished we got to heat shrink it so it looked like a real pen you'd buy in a shop. Absolute crap!
Told you it was boring.
I melted some citadel minitures when I was younger to make shady quids with, still got one of them back home somewhere, although the gold spraypaint has long since flaked away :lol:
My school was boring, we made crap stuff like ergonically designed litter scoopers, and just different types of joints on wooden boxes. They wouldn't even let us melt metal anymore cos' some kid almost destroyed his hand (apparently).
i bet you spent all your time making shivs! or knuckle dusters.
I made ninja throwing stars to go with the ninja outfit I made in textiles. That is until they asked me if I'd rather do more experimental science with the older kids.
I think I may have scared the teacher somewhat. Well when I say me it was more a combination of me and some of the other kids. They had some wicked ideas (flame throwers, air cannons, general pyro devices with timers on, just typical kids stuff) but like most 12 and 13 year olds didn't have the knowledge and skills to pull them off so I told them what bits needed to go together in what order. It wasn't that I was a danger (to anybody but myself) it was just in combination with certain others I could be a threat to the security of the school :)
The next year that teacher had retired and a much cooler teacher replaced him. Not only did he let me play with all the cool toys in the various CDT rooms unsupervised he also supplied me with copies of The Artist II and The Quill :)
I remeber going on holiday to some camp site (we used to borrow my grandads caravan) in Pevensey Bay. It was was my first introduction to an 'Arcade' was probably about 6 or 7 - my dad gave me a 30p! 3 whole games!!! I played kung fu master and Asteroids - was totally hooked from then on in. (do you remember the wooden crates - so you could actually be tall enough to play the machine?)
I was in a pub in brighton about a year ago and they had a really old style arcade game - Galaga?? it had three buttons left, right and fire. I Impressed my mates with the 'cross hand' style and I was playing for ages. They had a go and were rubbish. It was like being the big kid in the Arcade of old, the ring master, the gamer delux - the Messiah.........which is pretty sad seeing as im nearly 31 now!
you just described me nearly finishing virtua cop a couple of years ago... the kids first went "woaaw" then some of them said "no wonder he's finishing it, he's old!"... and that's when I lost the dam game :D and i'm just 28...but that does seem pretty old for 14/15 year old kids...
there was an arcade near my office, but 2 months ago they changed it in to a dam gourmet supermarket...
i bet you spent all your time making shivs! or knuckle dusters.
I did make myself a small club on the lathe, but teach confiscated it as soon as I hammered a nail into it :D
I also Put a copper block on a chain, that one came home with me. But my gran found it and threw it away, crap thing is I actually needed it one night. There was a bunch of charvas, who had been threatening to do us in. We used to get grief off them all the time, so we all decided right well actually stand and fight them instead of running. I went to my weapons cache and found my gran had removed them all :(
I was gonna batter someone with my copper ball n' chain. Actually now that I think back it's probably just as well my gran threw all my pain givers away. If I'd used any of them I'd probably have killed somebody.
Anyway I went to the place unarmed, and low and behold later on that night the divvies turned up. So instead of running we ran at them. Like typical charvas, they turned and ran. Same old crap, bullies often do fold when they don't think they have the upper hand anymore.
I did make myself a small club on the lathe, but teach confiscated it as soon as I hammered a nail into it :D
I also Put a copper block on a chain, that one came home with me. But my gran found it and threw it away, crap thing is I actually needed it one night. There was a bunch of charvas, who had been threatening to do us in. We used to get grief off them all the time, so we all decided right well actually stand and fight them instead of running. I went to my weapons cache and found my gran had removed them all :(
I was gonna batter someone with my copper ball n' chain. Actually now that I think back it's probably just as well my gran threw all my pain givers away. If I'd used any of them I'd probably have killed somebody.
Anyway I went to the place unarmed, and low and behold later on that night the divvies turned up. So instead of running we ran at them. Like typical charvas, they turned and ran. Same old crap, bullies often do fold when they don't think they have the upper hand anymore.
sunderland certainly doesn't sound like the safest place to grow up.
Last time I was in San Fransisco, there was an 'old machines and curiosities' place (full of all sorts of contraptions) near the Jeremiah O'Brien, which had a fair selection of old arcades, mostly stuff before my time. .
I've been there I think, I'm not sure about the Jeremiah O'Brian bit, but it's an arcade museum in a big hangar type building, it's near the bay where all the shellfish can be bought for extortionate prices right? They had a bunch of real old 40s up till 90s arcade type games. It was very interesting but it was great that they had some real classic arcade games like Spy Hunter & Joust etc there to play.
I do miss the original arcades, used to go to Clacton in the summer and it was great to check out the arcades to see the new games that had come out since the last time you were there, I can still hear them if I think about it, the fair that came to town also had a good selection.
Came back from a weekend away in Cornwall last night. While me and my mates were over there, we checked out the local arcades. Still some great games about, our favourite was the 2-player Big Buck Safari... never seen it until Friday, bloody good laugh.
There was also this wierd horse racing game (complete with horse), which we couldn't figure out how to play properly (or we were just really really crap at), but that was a good chuckle too. Played House Of The Dead 4 (didn't even know there was a third one), Time Crisis 4 and a pool arcade with an actual cue and ball, all very good games.
It seems that maybe there's still hope for the arcade scene, even if it's only for games with props!!
Came back from a weekend away in Cornwall last night. While me and my mates were over there, we checked out the local arcades. Still some great games about, our favourite was the 2-player Big Buck Safari... never seen it until Friday, bloody good laugh.
There was also this wierd horse racing game (complete with horse), which we couldn't figure out how to play properly (or we were just really really crap at), but that was a good chuckle too. Played House Of The Dead 4 (didn't even know there was a third one), Time Crisis 4 and a pool arcade with an actual cue and ball, all very good games.
It seems that maybe there's still hope for the arcade scene, even if it's only for games with props!!
This thread just reminded me of something, I was going to say the Walmart in Booneville (which probably means nothing to anybody on here :lol:) has the Big Game Hunter or whatever it's called, but it's in the kiddies area so I've never wanted to play it incase security thought I was a lurker.
But the Pizza Hut I went to eat lunch at the other day Has one of those Old Neo-Geo Megaplay 100's or whatever they were called. I felt truly nostalgic when I saw it, I dunno what games it had on it, but it was running the demo for Metal Slug as I went in.
Forgot to look on the way out.
Made me feel all warm and fuzzy though, when I was young those things were in every arcade, and they always had the first Fatal Fury game on them, often coupled with Sen Go Ku, League Bowling, Magician Lord, or maybe Ninja Combat or Mutation Nation.
D'you know what? I've never ever played one... EVER!! I remember the Play-Choice NES ones, they were seen a lot in Spanish bars and clubs. I'd love to see one in action again, that'd bring back some memories.
I kept an eye out over the weekend for retro arcades, the most retro we got was Sega Rally (still had a go though).
I think you're talking about a Neo-Geo MVS (Multi Video System). The most games they can play are 6. I think you must of seen the "100 MEGA SHOCK!" screen on one of the titles. This just means that one of the games is over 100meg. They came in 4 different flavors: 1,2,4 and 6 game versions. All the games are completely interchangable as the MVS is just a Neo-Geo console (AVS) with differnet pinouts on the game carts. Some of the supported cabinets had a memory card readers in the front that you could use if you were lucky enough to own an AVS.
I think you're talking about a Neo-Geo MVS (Multi Video System). The most games they can play are 6. I think you must of seen the "100 MEGA SHOCK!" screen on one of the titles. This just means that one of the games is over 100meg. They came in 4 different flavors: 1,2,4 and 6 game versions. All the games are completely interchangable as the MVS is just a Neo-Geo console (AVS) with differnet pinouts on the game carts. Some of the supported cabinets had a memory card readers in the front that you could use if you were lucky enough to own an AVS.
Wasn't the NeoGeo the console that cost ?400 with games sold at ?200 each, all because they were considered arcade quality at the time?
yeah that was the one, i remember someone telling me at school about them, and i thinking he was making it up as no one would be that daft to pay that price for a game. i mean arcade games were about 10p per go, so to get your moneys worth, you'd have to play it a lot.
i think the carts still cost around that much cos they are pretty rare.
It was just before its time. Nowadays they'd call it the Playstation 3.
Hahaha! :lol:
According to my wife the local Pizza Shop, Pizza Chef (independant of Pizza Slut Paphole Johns and Dominhoes, thank fuck!) has a back room near the bar, which is full of old arcade games.
I've never been in there to eat just took away in the past, but I might have to check out the backroom with a pocket full of quarters :D
Apparently it's all the authentic stuff to, Pole Position, Pacman, Donkey Kong, dig Dug, Mr. Do! Space invaders. Apparently the guy who owns it even has the sit down tabletop arcades in there, so I assume that'll be things like Gorf, and Galaxian.
Can't wait to go there, only crap thing is my wife is babysitting her extremely rich friends brat on my night off work! So I guess I won't be going until at least next week. Although it's just along the road from where I get my beer so I could ride the moped there hmmmm. Maybe I will :D
Wonder if there'll be tab burns on the machines, and a smear of blood down one of the screens? That'll make it feel like a real arcade :lol:
Wasn't the NeoGeo the console that cost ?400 with games sold at ?200 each, all because they were considered arcade quality at the time?
The very same, but you have to remember that the games weren't 'arcade quality' they WERE the arcade machine. The Carts that slotted into the AVS were the same ones that went into the arcade machine only with different pinouts. They did this to stop you buying the cheaper arcade version and sticking it into your AVS at home. So basically if you owned a AVS you had a arcade machine in your home. MVS Games are still going from anything between ?5 and ?75+ pounds. Rare games can go for ?500+!! AVS units can go from ?80-?200. An AVS cost around ?350 when new and the games averaged at ?100 each. I think i'm right in saying the AVS was only available in the USA and Japan.
It was available in Europe, if you've got the European Metal Slug it's worth over a grand, not many sold as it was still a new arcade release at the time, and not a popular as it is now, so the unsold copies were sent back to Japan, to be converted into other games.
The Microbyte in Newcastle had one back in about 92/93 (That shop's long gone now though), you could tell it was their pride and joy and they were never going to sell it. I think it was Japanese, and I remember they were asking 175 quid for World Heroes, and almost 200 for Fatal Fury (that's double the price from what the mags back then used to make out).
I wouldn't even pay 175p for World Heroes.
The machine at the time did have a crowd of people around it though, they also had one of the Jap PC Engines in there. But the Neo-Geo finally took the interest away from the PC Engine, which I think they wanted 399 quid for :o
I would still like to get a Turbo-duo, with the CD ROM drive (not the handheld), and since it was supposedly so popular in the US you'd think you'd be able to pick one up somewhere.
Oh crap! that reminds me...hehe. We used to make 10p peices in Metal Work at school by pushign it into a bit of cuttle fish and then pouring aluminium in the 'mold'. Worked on some machines but not others...too light I guess for some.
I remember a trick that alot of people used in one or two of the "grotty" inner London arcaes (you took your life into your own hands just by walking past the doors of some of these places, but they introduced me to games like Crude Busters, P.O.W., The Combatribes, Vendetta etc). I never managed to get the trick to work, but if you took an old style 10p and glued tin foil to the Queens face side and warmed it up, the machines would recognise it as a 50p piece and you'd get the bonus credits.
I live at the sea side and there are only a few arcades that still have games in them. One has quite modern ones (OutRun 2SP in the delux 4 player hydro car format...that's ?1 very well spent, Sega Rally 3 etc) and the only other one has alot of the gun games (Ghost Squad, House of The Dead 4 etc) downstairs and a few older games upstairs (Virtua Striker 2, Time Crisis 1 etc). Sometimes the'll get the latest Tekken, but as soon as it comes out on PS2 or whatever, they get rid of it. Still no sign of a Street Fighter 4 machine yet though. I'll have a look tommrow :D
Haha, just re-read this thread, it's funny to see how much criminal energy some of us had when it came to wanting to play arcade games. These days you'd probably be caught on CCTV if you tried to pull those tricks.
If anyone ever gets to Santa Cruz in California (not too far from San Francisco) which is a popular town because it has a large beach and a boardwalk full of stuff like rollercoasters, check out the arcade there. Loads of old machines from way before the 80s well into the 90s as well as recent games. Pinball machines too. http://beachboardwalk.com/02_casino_arcade.html
Also found a video (looks like dm_boozefreek visited the day the shot it, look at 1:55 ;) ): http://video.aol.com/video-detail/santa-cruz-boardwalk-arcade/411771804
Comments
Cool, I had to do that for my GCSE CDT coursework!!
They also had that tanks game that was like Rommel's Revenge on the Speccy, but all true vector graphics (ie. the display was a true vector display, not a raster image mimicing a vector display).
yeah we had one of them. we used to use clear plastic to make those games with ball bearings.
My school was boring, we made crap stuff like ergonically designed litter scoopers, and just different types of joints on wooden boxes. They wouldn't even let us melt metal anymore cos' some kid almost destroyed his hand (apparently).
Only thing I ever got to heat shrink was a fountain pen that we had to make, we had to design it, and any graphics that would go on it design the packaging, and then build the pen up from scratch, once it was finished we got to heat shrink it so it looked like a real pen you'd buy in a shop. Absolute crap!
Told you it was boring.
I melted some citadel minitures when I was younger to make shady quids with, still got one of them back home somewhere, although the gold spraypaint has long since flaked away :lol:
i bet you spent all your time making shivs! or knuckle dusters.
I think I may have scared the teacher somewhat. Well when I say me it was more a combination of me and some of the other kids. They had some wicked ideas (flame throwers, air cannons, general pyro devices with timers on, just typical kids stuff) but like most 12 and 13 year olds didn't have the knowledge and skills to pull them off so I told them what bits needed to go together in what order. It wasn't that I was a danger (to anybody but myself) it was just in combination with certain others I could be a threat to the security of the school :)
The next year that teacher had retired and a much cooler teacher replaced him. Not only did he let me play with all the cool toys in the various CDT rooms unsupervised he also supplied me with copies of The Artist II and The Quill :)
you just described me nearly finishing virtua cop a couple of years ago... the kids first went "woaaw" then some of them said "no wonder he's finishing it, he's old!"... and that's when I lost the dam game :D and i'm just 28...but that does seem pretty old for 14/15 year old kids...
there was an arcade near my office, but 2 months ago they changed it in to a dam gourmet supermarket...
I did make myself a small club on the lathe, but teach confiscated it as soon as I hammered a nail into it :D
I also Put a copper block on a chain, that one came home with me. But my gran found it and threw it away, crap thing is I actually needed it one night. There was a bunch of charvas, who had been threatening to do us in. We used to get grief off them all the time, so we all decided right well actually stand and fight them instead of running. I went to my weapons cache and found my gran had removed them all :(
I was gonna batter someone with my copper ball n' chain. Actually now that I think back it's probably just as well my gran threw all my pain givers away. If I'd used any of them I'd probably have killed somebody.
Anyway I went to the place unarmed, and low and behold later on that night the divvies turned up. So instead of running we ran at them. Like typical charvas, they turned and ran. Same old crap, bullies often do fold when they don't think they have the upper hand anymore.
sunderland certainly doesn't sound like the safest place to grow up.
I'm NOT a Maccum :evil:
no you're right, you are a gaylord. :razz:
You're the uber-gaylord, and a gluesniffer :D
I've been there I think, I'm not sure about the Jeremiah O'Brian bit, but it's an arcade museum in a big hangar type building, it's near the bay where all the shellfish can be bought for extortionate prices right? They had a bunch of real old 40s up till 90s arcade type games. It was very interesting but it was great that they had some real classic arcade games like Spy Hunter & Joust etc there to play.
I do miss the original arcades, used to go to Clacton in the summer and it was great to check out the arcades to see the new games that had come out since the last time you were there, I can still hear them if I think about it, the fair that came to town also had a good selection.
See. Hacking works (I've hacked Winston's reply). Winston was really describing Choplifter!!
Sorry Winston!
There was also this wierd horse racing game (complete with horse), which we couldn't figure out how to play properly (or we were just really really crap at), but that was a good chuckle too. Played House Of The Dead 4 (didn't even know there was a third one), Time Crisis 4 and a pool arcade with an actual cue and ball, all very good games.
It seems that maybe there's still hope for the arcade scene, even if it's only for games with props!!
those are really good news!
This thread just reminded me of something, I was going to say the Walmart in Booneville (which probably means nothing to anybody on here :lol:) has the Big Game Hunter or whatever it's called, but it's in the kiddies area so I've never wanted to play it incase security thought I was a lurker.
But the Pizza Hut I went to eat lunch at the other day Has one of those Old Neo-Geo Megaplay 100's or whatever they were called. I felt truly nostalgic when I saw it, I dunno what games it had on it, but it was running the demo for Metal Slug as I went in.
Forgot to look on the way out.
Made me feel all warm and fuzzy though, when I was young those things were in every arcade, and they always had the first Fatal Fury game on them, often coupled with Sen Go Ku, League Bowling, Magician Lord, or maybe Ninja Combat or Mutation Nation.
D'you know what? I've never ever played one... EVER!! I remember the Play-Choice NES ones, they were seen a lot in Spanish bars and clubs. I'd love to see one in action again, that'd bring back some memories.
I kept an eye out over the weekend for retro arcades, the most retro we got was Sega Rally (still had a go though).
You mean 'rich enough'
Wasn't the NeoGeo the console that cost ?400 with games sold at ?200 each, all because they were considered arcade quality at the time?
It was just before its time. Nowadays they'd call it the Playstation 3.
yeah that was the one, i remember someone telling me at school about them, and i thinking he was making it up as no one would be that daft to pay that price for a game. i mean arcade games were about 10p per go, so to get your moneys worth, you'd have to play it a lot.
i think the carts still cost around that much cos they are pretty rare.
Hahaha! :lol:
According to my wife the local Pizza Shop, Pizza Chef (independant of Pizza Slut Paphole Johns and Dominhoes, thank fuck!) has a back room near the bar, which is full of old arcade games.
I've never been in there to eat just took away in the past, but I might have to check out the backroom with a pocket full of quarters :D
Apparently it's all the authentic stuff to, Pole Position, Pacman, Donkey Kong, dig Dug, Mr. Do! Space invaders. Apparently the guy who owns it even has the sit down tabletop arcades in there, so I assume that'll be things like Gorf, and Galaxian.
Can't wait to go there, only crap thing is my wife is babysitting her extremely rich friends brat on my night off work! So I guess I won't be going until at least next week. Although it's just along the road from where I get my beer so I could ride the moped there hmmmm. Maybe I will :D
Wonder if there'll be tab burns on the machines, and a smear of blood down one of the screens? That'll make it feel like a real arcade :lol:
The very same, but you have to remember that the games weren't 'arcade quality' they WERE the arcade machine. The Carts that slotted into the AVS were the same ones that went into the arcade machine only with different pinouts. They did this to stop you buying the cheaper arcade version and sticking it into your AVS at home. So basically if you owned a AVS you had a arcade machine in your home. MVS Games are still going from anything between ?5 and ?75+ pounds. Rare games can go for ?500+!! AVS units can go from ?80-?200. An AVS cost around ?350 when new and the games averaged at ?100 each. I think i'm right in saying the AVS was only available in the USA and Japan.
I wouldn't even pay 175p for World Heroes.
The machine at the time did have a crowd of people around it though, they also had one of the Jap PC Engines in there. But the Neo-Geo finally took the interest away from the PC Engine, which I think they wanted 399 quid for :o
I would still like to get a Turbo-duo, with the CD ROM drive (not the handheld), and since it was supposedly so popular in the US you'd think you'd be able to pick one up somewhere.
Surprisingly I have never seen one? :(
I remember a trick that alot of people used in one or two of the "grotty" inner London arcaes (you took your life into your own hands just by walking past the doors of some of these places, but they introduced me to games like Crude Busters, P.O.W., The Combatribes, Vendetta etc). I never managed to get the trick to work, but if you took an old style 10p and glued tin foil to the Queens face side and warmed it up, the machines would recognise it as a 50p piece and you'd get the bonus credits.
I live at the sea side and there are only a few arcades that still have games in them. One has quite modern ones (OutRun 2SP in the delux 4 player hydro car format...that's ?1 very well spent, Sega Rally 3 etc) and the only other one has alot of the gun games (Ghost Squad, House of The Dead 4 etc) downstairs and a few older games upstairs (Virtua Striker 2, Time Crisis 1 etc). Sometimes the'll get the latest Tekken, but as soon as it comes out on PS2 or whatever, they get rid of it. Still no sign of a Street Fighter 4 machine yet though. I'll have a look tommrow :D
All the proper scums used to use em' in fruit machines, I suppose it was a score even if you won more foilies back out of the machine :D
If anyone ever gets to Santa Cruz in California (not too far from San Francisco) which is a popular town because it has a large beach and a boardwalk full of stuff like rollercoasters, check out the arcade there. Loads of old machines from way before the 80s well into the 90s as well as recent games. Pinball machines too.
http://beachboardwalk.com/02_casino_arcade.html
Also found a video (looks like dm_boozefreek visited the day the shot it, look at 1:55 ;) ):
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/santa-cruz-boardwalk-arcade/411771804