My Conversion Education - Kyle Snyder of Gameroom Mag

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My Conversion Education - Kyle Snyder of Gameroom Mag

As many of you know, Kyle Snyder used to write the Lost Arcade Classics column for GR Mag.

Kyle just finished up a new piece entitled 'My Conversion Education' that chronicles Kyle's amazing knowledge and passion for interesting converted arcade games. Pop by to Rotheblog, check out the column, and leave a comment.

Arcade Game Conversions - An Education
 
Nice article -- well worth the time to read. Given the amount of space they take up, we really shouldn't be surprised there aren't more of them that ended up in a landfill.

Most operators viewed these through a single lens: a way of making money. If the original wasn't working, you might as well try another game. Expecting an operator in the 80s to look at arcade games from the perspective of preservation is like expecting a taxi driver to be a car collector at the same time. Cars, like games, were just the means to an end.
 
True opinion? Simply put, I love conversions. I enjoy trying to figure out what a game had been in a past life, as some of the obscure cabinets out there are quite challenging to identify. I view it like a puzzle, and a window into that machine's history.

I find it interesting that if somebody says "I saw an upright Defender machine", we all instantly know what that machine looks like, but if someone says they saw a Street Fighter II, we don't have that moment of instant recognition. That kit could have been installed in anything... a Centipede, Pac-Man, Zaxxon, MACH 3, or Robotron, or any other cabinet for that matter.

In most cases, if a game was released as a dedicated and a kit, I'll prefer the look of the dedicated to even the best conversion. However, I've seen many professionally done conversions that look just as attractive as a dedicated, just as I've seen many that were laughably bad. (The Double Dragon in a Space Invaders upright I used to own comes to mind...)

I'm considering writing a follow up to this conversion article - a sequel, if you will - to delve deeper into my conversion fascination and spotlight some of the more unique conversions I've seen over the years.

Kyle :cool:
 
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