Twistedsymphony's Introduction, Game Collector from New Hampshire

twistedsymphony

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Twistedsymphony's Introduction, Game Collector from New Hampshire

I grew up in the Lakes Region of NH, which means that from a young age FunSpot (for those of you familiar with the place) was what I thought of as an "arcade". I've always been an avid video game player and for as long as I can remember I've loved arcades. The Mortal Kombat series was the first that really grabbed me and pretty much all of the other fighting and simulation games from that era.

As someone who loved to understand how things worked I went to RPI to get a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Having learned some basic circuit diagram and soldering skills from a friend in Electrical Engineering I decided that I would try to get a summer job repairing arcade machines. My plan was to make the case that I was a smart engineering student who wanted to learn how to repair machines and that I would work for minimum wage until I learned the ropes. I went to FunSpot to see if they'd be willing to hear me out. I was basically stonewalled from talking to anyone and told to just fill out an application, which I did along with attaching my resume and a cover letter explaining what I wanted to do... every few days for about 2 weeks I would call or visit and try to at very least talk to someone to make my case in person. Eventually one of the floor managers told me in no uncertain terms that I should stop wasting my time because they were never going to hire someone with my lack of experience :(

So later that day I decided to go down to the Weirs Beach boardwalk and make my case to one of the smaller arcades there. I went into the Penny Arcade, asked to speak with a manager, and was taken right to him. I told him what I wanted to do and he asked me if I could start right then and there...

I worked for the Penny/Half-moon arcades for the next three summers. I started small just replacing bulbs, controls and fixing coin and ticket jams along with general maintenance and by the end of the first summer I was doing everything from machine conversions to complete pinball tear-downs and rebuilds. I loved the job and I loved that I was always learning new things. I also learned to love Pinball even more than the old fighting and racing games that I grew up on. There were two other techs that worked there and they would only come up on weekends, one was a Professor of Electrical Engineering from CT and the other was one of his former students, they both taught me a lot about machine repair, though I didn't get as much time with them as I would have liked, since they were mostly tackling the harder jobs on the weekends and I was taking care of the easier stuff during the week.

At one point in my second summer I was instructed to haul a bunch of machines in storage to the dump to make room. I asked if I could, instead, keep some of those doomed machines for myself and my boss said he didn't care as long as they were gone. I kept myself an original Contra, an original Double Dragon and an original Ring King along with a spare monitor and some other boxes of parts... I ended up dumping about a dozen other machines, including a full arcade's worth of classic skeeball machines, it broke my heart but I didn't have room for more than what I kept. I even had to give the Contra machine to a friend of mine since I didn't have room for it.

I was mostly interested in converting one or more of the machines to some of my favorite mid-90s fighters. I wanted to build a Killer Instinct machine but the cost of the PCB (and finding one without a busted hard drive) was more than I could afford. Instead I went with one of my other favorite fighters Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. I built a whole new control panel from scratch along with a whole new harness to convert the Double Dragon machine. I was pretty proud of the conversion. I later discovered that the monitor on that machine had a problem where it would simply go blank after an hour or so (probably why it was destined for the dump). I never fixed it since I would only ever turn the machine on when I wanted to play and it was pretty rare if I played for more than an hour.

HTR03.jpg

UMK3_2.jpg



Ring King was fully working but I had the machine open and I was trying to estimate the difficulty of converting the machine, while I was in the machine a hornet flew by and startled me. my elbow hit the neck board on the back of the monitor and after that the monitor never worked (just blank) the machine wasn't easily convert-able and the spare monitor I had wasn't right for it, so it's just sat in my basement ever since.

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I graduated college back in 2004 and never did much with arcades since. I thought about building a MAME cab on occasion and I pined to own one of the solid-state Midway Pinballs that I loved playing during my days in the arcade. I also Wished I had a dedicated full-sized UMK3 instead of my conversion machine, or better yet, my all-time favorite arcade game Killer Instinct 2.

I work as a software developer here in central NH, and I've done my fair share of electronics projects and most of my gaming was related to home consoles. Recently I was poking around eBay and came across an auction for an original Killer Instinct 2 cabinet. The machine had bee painted over and converted to "Turkey Hunter USA" and since been decommissioned with the PCB and gun controller pulled. It was a very reasonable price though and I figured it was worth buying and restoring.

machine_01.jpg


That brings me here. I've been familiar with the old KLOV.com for ages but I didn't realize there was a forum for collectors until recently. I figured it would be a good resource for helping me source parts and gain knowledge that will help me with my restoration.

So far I'm off to a good start, the only piece I still need is the PCB. (I'm also looking for a new control panel overlay since the once I've got is full of holes due to the conversion.)

So that's a brief history of me and Arcade Machines... if you made it this far... I'm impressed ;D
 
Welcome.. Thats a nice looking double dragon......

Thanks! Once I've got my KI2 machine up and running I plan to put the original control panel and PCB back in it so it'll be all original Double Dragon again. I'm honestly pretty bored with MK3 at this point, and now that the novelty of just having an arcade machine at home has worn off I think I appreciate keeping things all original.
 
Thanks! Once I've got my KI2 machine up and running I plan to put the original control panel and PCB back in it so it'll be all original Double Dragon again. I'm honestly pretty bored with MK3 at this point, and now that the novelty of just having an arcade machine at home has worn off I think I appreciate keeping things all original.


I had a KI2 a few years ago, great game.. Only fighting game I have now is Virtua Fighter 2
 
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