Didn’t Kaneda burn someone for payment?

i wouldn't disagree - i'm not hating on WIW (fun movie) or even FiF (fun in its own right); Disney shapes culture in surprisingly powerful ways and i kinda wonder (among many other events) if WIW was the spark that kicked off this OMG RETRO popculture tangent that drew in the wealthy collectors that probably had no business being in a hobby with old fragile electronics (Kaneda et al)

Thanks a lot Disney :( THEY RUINED MERMAIDS FOR ME TOO, AND I WILL NEVER FORGIVE THEM 🧜‍♀️😭

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I agree with you 100% but i will say that on the other side of the token people absolutely love to play this game. I've setup numerous fix it felix cabinets for operators in my state and have helped dozens of other operators install the kit i make. Normies both young and older play the living hell out of this game. For those that don't know, the original FIF game also has an april fools prank. If you play the game on April 1 the screen rotates non-stop all day until the game is re-launched the following day. I can't tell you how many times I've received calls and texts from operators having full blown panic attacks over this.

Like it or not, Fix it Felix is this generation's iconic arcade game. Everyone knows it. Everyone recognizes it.
 
...that drew in the wealthy collectors that probably had no business being in a hobby with old fragile electronics
I feel like every hobby goes through this cycle. It's certainly true with cars and motorcycles. The guys that are wrenching on their '68 Camaro resent the wealthy collector that drops stupid money on a fully restored whatever, and can't repair it when it breaks down.

I, for one, am a fan of the wealthy collector. As they buy, the value of our collection grows, and the games I bought ten years ago have more than tripled in value. I'm not saying arcade cabinets are a solid investment vehicle, but at least I haven't LOST money.
 
I was lurking around the hobby a good bit since the 90s but didn't end up buying a game until 2010. By 2010 things were definitely bubbling up but it was more of a home-grown thing where the experienced collectors and repair guys were having arcade parties and the newbs could learn about the games and get repair tips and whatnot. The industry guys from back in the day (ops and mechanics) and long-time collectors were the guys everyone on KLOV seemed to admire because they had the knowledge and experience. I remember it being very hard for me to find games on location at that time. For the most part, if you wanted to play nice working games you had to know a collector. And I was frankly shocked at how open collectors were to inviting people into their homes to play games. At the parties back then I didn't witness any egos, or social medial type guys trying to build a reputation off the hobby. Everyone seemed to be focused solely on the hobby, which had been quietly existing for a long long time before I ever knew people were building arcades in their houses.

Even then though, a good amount of outsiders seemed to start paying closer attention to the hobby. There were news stories about Peter Hershberger's arcade "Luna City" and people were starting to map out places where you could play games in public. There were a number of documentaries on classic arcade gaming. King of Kong being the big one, but there was Chasing Ghosts too. Still, it all seemed pretty close knit to me and there weren't a lot of average joes buying games because they didn't know how to fix them.

Within a few years I stared seeing "barcades" pop up. Wreck it Ralph came out in 2012 but that seemed to be part of the larger wave of outside interest in classic games. There were even more documentaries showing up. Then we started to see the "Arcade-Guy Personality" thing. Guys with YouTube channels who did not have extensive technical knowledge. That seemed to be the turning point for me. People would latch on to the personalities as much as the games. It wasn't just the newcomers either. A lot of people on KLOV would fawn over the arcade personality types. In some ways those types of videos were cool because I think they gave people some confidence to repair games ("if he can do it, I can do it") but the focus seemed to shift from the true experts to these guys who had YouTube channels and podcasts. Then you started to see guys on here "branding", with their own custom logos and whatnot.

Anywho, all this was happening long before whatshisname showed up. He was just one of the worst examples of this kind of mentality. John was always cool because he was a collector at heart who happened to have his channel blow up vs the guys who are really just trying to use the hobby as a personality crutch.
 
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