Casualties of the youth activity in my arcade

jar155

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Last week I had my church's youth group over to my place. About twelve 12-13 year old boys and three leaders showed up, and I had all the pinball machines and arcade machines working and ready to go. By the end of the night, Spy Hunter, APB, and my MAME were down for the count. I was there watching when the Spy Hunter image faded to black (I think when I moved the machine the night before I might have shaken something loose), but the APB was a surprise. Basically the screen was a garbled mess. The MAME has been locking up lately, so the day was coming when it would have some issues.

9/9/09 I have another big party coming. Looks like I have some work to do...
 
Parties can be hard on your babies. We (the collectors, restorers and aficionados)coddle them and go lightly on them, but people who don't understand (or care) how much effort goes into keeping them running feel no qualms about slapping them around. After all they are just arcade games.

A couple of parties ago, my Mata Hari pin went down for the count about 2 hours in. It turned out that someone was shaking the hell out of it (which I would have put a stop to had I seen it) and shook two connectors and one board loose.

The last party, everything stayed up except the little toy candy claw and that was because one of the little monsters was slapping at the controls. It only took about 2 minutes to unjam it, but I took it out of service and put it away to prevent any more damage to it.

Considering that I had 9 video games (Stargate, Joust, Joust, Robotron, Moon Patrol, Mystic Marathon, Karnov, Battlezone & JROK MultiWilliams), 1 Slot Machine (Wild Cherry), 1 pin (Mata Hari), 1 dart board, 2 patchislots and 4 pachinko machines running, losing the candy crane was no big deal. There was still plenty to do, plus the band rocking out all night.

ken
 
I was planning on having the 16 year olds from my youth group over in a few days. Now, I think we will go to Nickel-cade instead. LOL

Maybe I'll make them move a couple of my machines to my basement arcade that are in other locations then reward them with some game play.

I don't need any more projects right now though.
 
I was planning on having the 16 year olds from my youth group over in a few days. Now, I think we will go to Nickel-cade instead. LOL

Maybe I'll make them move a couple of my machines to my basement arcade that are in other locations then reward them with some game play.

I don't need any more projects right now though.

If they're likely to slam them around playing them I don't even want to think about how careless they might be moving one of them. :)

Even just having a couple friends over using my house as the rally point before going out, firing up the Bloodstorm one of them was banging on the buttons so hard they managed to dislodge one of the (admittedly, somewhat loose in that case) spade connectors in the control panel. Thankfully the one likely to get the most use in the future (6-1 with a bunch of SFII in it) is a complete rebuild of the cp with new parts so hopefully the slamming won't result in any breakages. I need to beat people when they do that. :)
 
Wow guys, I've got over 40 machines running at my house and never have had abuse problems, even the kids are chill and respect my games... I have the normal couple of breakdowns during a gameday, but never something damaged that someone slammed or bitch slapped! :) Who are you guys hanging out with anyways?

I always tell the newbies that come over how much time, money and work these things are, and that they're all free for them to play but they have to respect the housecade. After my little 20 second speech I have yet to see a problem. Maybe you guys should talk to them ahead of time... maybe ask them if they want you hanging on their car door handles or sitting on the hood of their cars?

LOL, I'd boot someone's ass out in a heartbeat if I heard or saw of this behavior you guys say is always happening at your arcade parties...
 
Put signs up saying to respect the machines. Local arcades don't give a shit so kids assume its O.K, if you tell them to be gentle they most likely will.
 
A few years ago, I attended a local pinball collector's party. Invite-only, no open house, no one he didn't know. This guy is well known in the area for putting a LOT of time and work into his games, and his lineup for the day reflected that. At one point, as I was being as gentle as possible with my game, the (middle-aged) guy next to me was slamming and shaking a near-perfect Genie so violently that the head was swaying back and forth on the body, and smacking into the wall behind it. No one said anything to him and he played the same way all evening.

Meanwhile, I've had a friend's young sons play my games in the past without incident. Abusive game use has nothing to do with "youth" or age and everything to do with the respect the individual has for others' property.
 
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