Gilbert, AZ vintage arcade project

Mike Valmike

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Donor 2012, 2014
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Hi folks.

I'm a long time reader but only recently joined the board as a poster. I have a bit of a photo gallery to share here and I hope it puts a smile on a few of your faces. I got the idea (to post this) after reading this amazingly awesome thread about the Idaho arcade, which I think is about the coolest thing I've ever heard of due north of where I'm sitting.

So, I was born in 1974 so you can pretty much figure whence came my devotion to the arcade hobby. Back in the 1990s, I spent time working at arcades and usually my main concern was keeping Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Neo Geo machines working properly. I loved the vintage stuff but didn't really get a chance to do lots of hands-on with it. So, I do NOT consider myself an expert at the arcade hobby, and I am learning more and more from you guys every day here and I appreciate very much all the great advice and instruction so freely given.

I work in health care law by day, but have the entrepreneurial itch in my free time, and I've been an eBay hound for my other hobby, trading card games (Magic: the Gathering, etc) for years now, and some friends and I used to do a terrible job running a hobby shop from 1998-2001. So our motley group decided to capitalize a little better this time and use what we actually know about business from experience, my law degree, and the expertise of the rest involved, and open a new game store. But this time... this time I was determined not to let a chance slip by to bring the arcade experience to life here in my stomping grounds.

I live in Chandler, but the area we found in our demographic research that would better support a store was nearby Gilbert. It's a heavily LDS (Mormon) area, and some of our LLC ownership group are LDS, so we had inside voices helping us tailor our store to the community's sensibilities. (Game store owners in other states raise an eyebrow when I explain that we're closed Sundays, for example, but if you were here you'd understand. The locals really do like it better that way. They arrange their social calendars with it already in mind. And yes, they spend more the other six days. It's like Apple: somehow it Just Works.) Anyway, it took us all year so far to plan, months to capitalize and prepare, then a frustratingly long buildout, and finally we soft-opened earlier this month, followed by a grand open last week.

It's a humble beginning, and we have a long way to go and many many more games yet to procure and polish, but I am happy to present the fulfillment of some gamer nerds' dreams:

Desert Sky Games, the Vintage Arcade and Hobby Game Store.

1. Front view:

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2. By night:

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3. The part of the store you guys won't be too interested in, TCG/boardgame/hobby product, plus part of our A/V system that provides an ambient nerd atmosphere.

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Our games:

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Continued...
 
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Continued...

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Letting the local kids test out our hardware:

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Picked this up for next to nothing and planning to convert it to something good:

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And that's it, for now at least!

Our want list is too long to post but in general we are hoping to move toward games where the real arcade experience is substantially better than playing on an emulator. For example if you had a multicade with an arcade monitor and you were running, say, a Neo Geo title, in all honesty your experience would probably be about 98%-99% the same as playing it on the real thing. But you can't play Atari Star Wars with a JOYSTICK. Or at least, you shouldn't. That's my motto. Or it would be, if I had a motto.

So right at the top of the want list would be a multi-Pac/multi-vertical; a multi-Williams; a licensed multicade generally; 720 degrees; STUN runner; EDOT; Tournament Cyberball 2072; Marble Madness; Super/Championship Sprint; Assault; Mortal Kombat II original dedicated; XYBots; Ironman Stewart Off-Road; and I'm just going to stop here because I could keep going for a while.

Yes, there is certainly more restoring work that would improve some of these games. I make an unbounded, open promise that I'll strive to get better at it and incrementally improve every game in DSG's arsenal as time, funds, and hardware permit, on an ongoing basis. :)

Thanks for looking and feedback welcomed!

-Mike
 
What a grand adventure, You and your buddies are going to have.

Some of the games that you are looking for you might want to do a little research on before buying like Stun runners are known to have audio issues that are hard or impossible to fix.

If your arcade collection increases having spare PCB boards and/or power supplies, gives you a chance to send out the parts to get repaired/ or repair them yourself to minimize down time. Customers who travel a long distance to play their favorite game may not return if their favorite game is not running.

If the game is popular having two of the same game is not a bad thing.

Rare games does not always mean it was fun and popular in it's day.

Remember to keep it fun to avoid being burnt out on your new project.
 
What is the address of the place?

DSG is located at 2531 S. Gilbert Rd, Suite 106/107, Gilbert AZ 85295. It's about a mile and a half north of the San Tan 202 freeway on the southeast corner of Gilbert & Williams Field. I can't believe posted a big thing about the arcade and didn't put the address... some promoter I am! haha

I definitely appreciate the game selection tips too. Indeed, most people who come in just want to play common but iconic titles. Especially TRON. We have a new TRON PCB set coming in to fix graphical glitches and I plan to get the existing boardset fixed and keep it as a spare. I learned with a Monaco GP we picked up (and then resold) that even if a game has a high coolness factor and is very vintage (pre-1980), it's not that helpful to us if we can't readily get parts for it. Better to let a collector have that one for home use. I appreciate the STUN runner warning, that must be why the ones I see selling tend to go for so little money. I've been a whisker away from landing one but I might have been the lucky party there. :)
 
Wow - that looks like fun.

I live in Buckeye, but this might be worth a trip with my 2 boys to just hang out.

Do you have a website with hours on it? I would hate to drive all the way out there and find it closed...

Thanks for your post!
 
I lived in Chandler for 12 years and loved it. Still own some rental property there. I hope to make it back next summer and plan to drop in and play.

Best of luck to you!
 
My wife's sister lives out your way...we visit at least twice a year...I will stop by as I'm just a few minutes away...hopefully your collection will have grown by the time we come back to visit...Its funny I always see game related sales and such after we get back..I need to start writing these locations down to visit...normally my trips out there are actually pretty boring...its too hot to do anything in summer..and with the Mormon influence not a lot going on ...:D
 
Awesome to see a start-up arcade here in town! I will definitely try to make it out there soon :)

Other than arcade games, what else do you all sell/offer? It looks like you have a set up for card/tabletop miniature games. My best friend is an author who writes Warhammer novels, but he's also heavy into the gaming aspect of it as well.

Keep us posted on any new acquisitions!
 
Contact the guys at Cade Gallery:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/CADE-Gallery-Old-School-Video-Arcade/151084718282246

They used to have an arcade in downtown Phoenix, but closed it up a few years ago. They may still have some machines in storage that they'd like to get out on location again.

Best of luck!

Sweet! Page LIKEd and I will definitely be in touch with them!

Wow - that looks like fun.

I live in Buckeye, but this might be worth a trip with my 2 boys to just hang out.

Do you have a website with hours on it? I would hate to drive all the way out there and find it closed...

Thanks for your post!

Sure! It's desertskygames.com but I'll just tell you the hours right here: Mon-Thu 10am-10pm; Fri-Sat 10am-Midnight; closed Sundays. Making the trip out from Buckeye is no joke though -- that's quite a drive. I hope you guys have a great time when you stop by!

Awesome to see a start-up arcade here in town! I will definitely try to make it out there soon :)

Other than arcade games, what else do you all sell/offer? It looks like you have a set up for card/tabletop miniature games. My best friend is an author who writes Warhammer novels, but he's also heavy into the gaming aspect of it as well.

Keep us posted on any new acquisitions!

We're huge into the TCGs (Magic, WoW, Star Wars/Trek, LOTR, and the various youth games like Pokemon and Vanguard) and huge on the board games (Catan, Dominion, Munchkin, Penny Arcade, etc). We're acquiring console games as we go, so if you're looking to sell out of any of that, we'll make an offer. Right now we haven't started on miniatures because it seems like you have to commit to it very thoroughly, and we'd rather hold off a bit until we can do a good job of it rather than making a poor offering and disappointing devoted players of WH & 40k. But down the line, yes, definitely we want to do that too. And of course there is the arcade, which is DSG's unique differentiator. We don't THINK any other hobby gaming stores are doing a vintage arcade at this point. For sure I don't think any are doing restoration and resale.

Thank you, everyone, for the encouragement! I certainly don't plan on being a stranger here, not the least of which is because I'm still learning as I go. Hopefully I'll start getting enough knowledge under my belt to pay it forward and help future newcomers to the arcade hobby. Feedback and commentary always welcomed!
 
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