Arcade

the best game ever: Ikari Warriors

Chris Williams — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:38:34 GMT

I played the hell out of this game, back in high school...

...and now it's mine! Yay! Thank you eBay.

Description:
Rambo meets Front Line in this popular classic that spawned several similar games, like Heavy Barrel, Time Soldiers, and Guerrilla War. The game could either be played by a single player or by two players simultaneously. The goal was to reach the village of Ikari.

Preventing the player from reaching the village were a slew of enemies like soldiers, tanks, helicopters, super tanks, and the terribly annoying "kamikaze soldiers" that walked right up to you and blew themselves (and you) up. Each soldier was equipped with a different weapon like a semi-automatic machine gun, an automatic machine gun, grenades, and super grenades.

To assist the player(s) in their struggle were a number of power-ups that extended the players shots, allowed the player to shoot over obstacles, and super grenades. And since the player's munitions were depletable, additional ammo/grenades had to be picked up along the way. The player(s) could also drive tanks and do neat things like run over the enemy soldiers.

Gameworks

Chris Williams — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:09:53 GMT

So... what did you do last night?

I spent my evening killing zombies and keeping the world safe for democracy.

My awesome employer, Magenic, decided we hadn't had a decent party in a while... so off we went to Gameworks. I spent about 3 1/2 hours pumping bullets into a neverending supply of Zombies and Giant Spiders (House of the Dead III) and fighting spies and terrorists (Time Crisis II.) There was also some Zombie game that featured a shotgun, but the pump kept sticking, so I didn't survive that one, unfortunately.

I also managed to play some two handed air hockey, which was quite interesting... especially with 3-4 pucks on the table at once. This location didn't have quite the assortment of retro-games that the Seattle one does, but it does have 8-10 lanes of bowling, which is very cool.

I'd have to say, this one is a lot nicer than the Seattle location, since the last time I was there, they had converted a big chunk of their game space into more bar space, and put in a TON of crane games and rhythm games that only spoke/displayed in Japanese.

So, a big thank you to Magenic for being an awesome place to work... and did I mention we're hiring in pretty much all locations? (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis & San Francisco) Drop me a line if you want to talk about it.

Arcade for sale

Chris Williams — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 02:36:13 GMT

I put two of my arcade machines up on ebay: Donkey Kong 3 and Crystal Castles.

If you're in the Twin Cities area, take a look. I won't ship or deliver (because I don't own a truck) so if you're interested, we can make arrangements for you to come by and get them.

I guess you could say this is part of my "Less Clutter Initiative" although honestly, I'm probably just making room for more stuff. There's this Joust game I've got my eye on. Just kidding. (No, I'm not.)

Hell will freeze over before I put either of my D&D arcade games up for sale, but I might put my Championship Shootout game on the market before too long... we'll see.

If I don't get my stupid pinball machine fixed and working soon, you might see it on ebay too. It hasn't worked right since I got it, and the guy that sold it to me owes me a service call or a refund. One or the other...

new addition

Chris Williams — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 05:18:31 GMT

I spent the last few days watching a few arcade auctions. Seems like Minneapolis is pretty saturated with them.

I (reluctantly) passed on a Darkstalkers, a Pole Position and a Neo Geo 1 slot machine, all of which were at or under $150 ea. I'm kind of bummed about the Darkstalkers for two reasons, because I liked the game and the theme, and because it was a CPS2 setup, which means kinda like the NeoGeo I could drop other games in fairly inexpensively and quickly without any rewiring.

I did manage to score a full size Crystal Castles game, with nice sideart and the glowing trackball, etc... for $150. Some of you may remember I had a cabaret sized Crystal Castles a while back but I never could get it to work right, so I sold it (for roughly twice what I paid for it, even nonworking) about a year ago.

The downside is that the ol gameroom is getting a bit full, so I'm a little hard pressed to figure out where this one is going. I can always move some stuff around, because I definitely do not want to stick it in the garage. I'm not sure it would survive the winter.

the big move

Chris Williams — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 16:10:41 GMT

So far, pretty much everything survived the big move intact.

ARCADES: Donkey Kong 3 & Championship Shootout made it ok. I have powered up the MAME cabinet yet, but my D&D Tower of Doom cabinet didn't survive. Initial attempts to turn it on have resulted in gibberish on the screen. I haven't had time to really play with it much, but I'm not optimistic.

RPG: My D&D collection made it ok. A few crushed boxes here and there had me worried, but the contents all look ok... so that's a relief. I have most of it shelved now, only a few stragglers here and there.

GAME SYSTEMS: I brought the 360 in the jeep with me, so I know it's ok... I haven't actually seen the box with all the other stuff yet, but I'll probably get to it this weekend. The projector rode with me as well, so I know it's ok too.

Speaking of projector, the previous owners of the house had a ceiling mounted projector (which they took, of course, and left me 4 oddly placed bolts sticking out of the ceiling. Apparently he made the mount himself, so I don't think it will actually line up with anything... so I'll be making my own as well I guess. Looks like I'll be hitting Lowes this weekend. Fortunately I found an article that covers a lot of what I need, here.

PETS: All the critters survived. 2 Cats, 1 Iguana, 1 Leopard Gecko, 3 Frogs, 1 Toad, 1 ZombieFish, 1 Newt and apparently we have wild rabbits in the back yard.

Everything made it ok, as far as I know. I'm pretty bummed about the D&D Arcade, but I might be able to fix it. I just haven't had time to really dig into it. On the upside, I finally got a 4 player cabinet for my other D&D game: Shadow Over Mystara, so I have a nice little garage project to work on.

we got two kinds of sinners here... video gamers and them D&D players!

Chris Williams — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 10:58:00 GMT

I normally don't pay much attention to voyeuristic crap like this, but the title mentioned blogging and murder. So I figured I'd take a peek.

Then... I got to this part:

“Radel had also dated Rachelle at one time. He was known around town as a pied-piper of sorts who gathered high schoolers to his computer shop where they played video games and dungeons and dragons. It didn't take police long to suspect that Radel... Arrant... or both men had something to do with the murder.”

Ummm... I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

“a pied-piper of sorts who gathered high schoolers to his computer shop where they played video games and dungeons and dragons”

Ok, seriously? Are we as a nation still so close-minded and intellectually backwards that the fact that they were playing video games and Dungeons & Dragons after school is somehow deemed relevant to this case? This MURDER case? This “I hate my mom... would you kill her“ case?

“where they played video games and dungeons and dragons”

*sigh*

“dungeons and dragons”

Unbelievable.

playing with my balls

Chris Williams — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 19:29:00 GMT

I pulled the trackball out of the Crystal Castles cabinet today, disconnected everything and took a good long look...

TOP:

BOTTOM:

You can't really see it in the picture, but the idler shaft and roller shafts have some pretty significant grooves worn into them. When I roll the ball in the trackball assembly, I can see the encoding wheel does NOT move smoothly and consistently in time with the trackball movement.

Since it appears that I just need the shafts (and probably bearings), I can order a "trackball repair kit' from Happ with the 3 shafts and 6 bearings for $35. That definitely beats paying $100 for a new Happ trackball or $55 plus shipping for a rebuilt one from TNT.

So... I'm going to give it a try myself and see if I can do it. If I screw it up, I can still order the rebuilt one cheaper than buying a new one... although it will be close in the long run.

Crystal Castles update

Chris Williams — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 23:21:00 GMT

So I've been looking for a new trackball assembly for my crystal castles machine...

Happ has them for about $93 + tax, which is damn near what I paid for the whole machine. So I also talked to an outfit (TNT Amusements) that will rebuild the trackball assembly I have for about $40-ish plus shipping. Guess I'll be going with them instead.

life as we know it...

Chris Williams — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 23:42:00 GMT

Sorry for not posting more frequently, been pretty slammed with work (although I'm digging it.)

Been working on my mame cocktail cabinet a fair amount lately. The guy who sold it to me didn't take great care of it and it has some issues. We've narrowed down most of them, so I'm swapping out cables and parts here and there trying to get it back up to speed.

Also working on my standup Crystal Castles game. The board and monitor work fine, but the trackball is crap. (I knew this when I bought it.) The cabinet is also a little rough, so I'll probably be stripping it and redoing it. Gonna grab a new lightup trackball assembly via Happ (~$50) when I have some extra cash then I should be all set.

Finally got the D&D Tower of Doom game in the house (from the garage) so I have all 4 arcades up and running in my game room. Once my Mystara boardset and stuff get here, I've got an empty 4 player cabinet waiting for it. I am pretty excited. The boardset is coming from Italy, and includes an extra Tower of Doom set that I don't really need so I'll be selling it to recoup some expenses.

What else? Hmmm still unpacking. Work is good, life is good. Things are definitely better than they were.

Weekend Update

Chris Williams — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 13:56:00 GMT

The move is done, the new job started. Initial thoughts...

I love the new house. It's significantly bigger than my previous residence (over double) for basically the same (within $50) monthly. The cost of living here is much lower and there are mountains (and I'm on one of them.) I also have all my arcade games in one place now, instead of in different rooms and houses (Mom and Dad were "hosting" the Tower of Doom game for a bit.)

Also, picked up some new machines during the move (literally mid-move.) Specifically, a Crystal Castles mini cabinet and a cocktail MAME cabinet. Both need some work. The Crystal Castles needs a new trackball assembly and the MAME cabinet mostly just needs some serious TLC. The previous owner didn't take very good care of it (IMO.)

Ahh, but what about the job? Well... first impressions are good. Quite good actually. It's a C# shop instead of VB.NET so there's that. Most of you know I've been dabbling with C# for a while now but hadn't had a real reason to dive in headfirst until now. As for the company itself, I'm really liking it. Everyone is very friendly and very helpful. I'm pleased to say there are no prima donnas here (that I've encountered.) It's also a smaller (< 100) company than my previous one (> 850), but not TOO small (< 5 - been there, done that, hated it.)

All of that is well and good, but the biggest reason I'm happy is that it's so... well... structured. I've never been anywhere other than the DoD that generated so much project documentation. I'm not a tree hugger, by any means, but even I was like "damn that's a lot of printed documentation." I'm a big believer in knowing exactly what it is I'm supposed to be doing, what's expected of me, where I'm going, etc... I handle change just fine, mind you, but I don't like working on a project that exists primarily on a white board, a few cocktail napkins and in someone's head. (Unless that person happens to actually be me of course... see HA! for an example of that.)

lest you think I'm completely inflexible... I do appreciate that developing from "inspired chaos" can work quite well, and if you come in at the ground floor of it you can be part of an amazing thing. Coming in to the middle of it can be pretty frustrating. When it succeeds, you're a "rock star" though...

So anyway, I think I'm going to like it here...

Other news:
The post I made earlier about DDO has been getting some responses, some good, some not. I have opted to NOT sign up at this point, even though the game is out of beta. (Ok, well it's released... whether it's out of beta is questionable.) One guy referred to my post as a bunch of lies... which I found humorous, until I followed his link and realized he was apparently a developer of some sort on the DDO project. Then it went from humorous to sadly pathetic. Also, if the comment about the Level 10 cap is accurate... that totally sucks!!

...and I just realized I missed last nights SNL w/ Natalie Portman. Did anybody happen to catch it? SNL is so hit or miss that I rarely allocate time to watch it, and tend to forget when they have a host I'm actually interested in seeing.