Why do you collect? What got you started?

[30FathomDave]

I played a ton of Berzerk as a kid, and I told myself I'd own one some day. Shortly after graduating from high school, I habitually checked ebay for a Berzerk machine; but every time one came up, it would be really far away. Eventually, one popped up right down the street from me. I won the auction, and it's still in my collection to this day.

Then I went to Castles N Coasters (an awesome local arcade that's still in operation) one day with my buddy, KingOfTron, and played a bunch of pinball. I had to have one. I wound up finding a really good deal on a Creature From The Black Lagoon (which is now Krajkerjak's CFTBL). Shortly after that, I got a smoking deal on an Addams Family machine (the guy spelled it "Adams Family" on ebay and it got very few views). Still have that one.

That was my collection for a couple years- just those three games with really no desire to expand.

Then I got divorced and got a bigger house with a dedicated room for my games. I picked up a Star Wars Trilogy from a Namco that was closing, and around that time, stumbled onto this forum. That really sparked the sickness. I've been a lunatic ever since.

 

[jar155]

Awesome stories, everybody. I'll be starting that article today and it should be up before the weekend. Keep 'em coming, because the quotes will be peppered throughout and you've all given me great stuff to work with so far.

 

[YellowDog]

I have a slightly different (warped?) perspective than the other posters having worked as a video games programmer for Williams in the '80s. My first arcade game was purchased in 1983, it was a Battlezone that I finally sold last year. In 2007, I saw an article on games that mentioned William's Mystic Marathon, which was a game I had worked on. I had toyed with MAME and decided that I would never find all the parts after all this time to put a MM together, so I'd build a MAME version. Long story short, I found eBay and the USENET forums. Bought a Bubbles boardset off eBay "untested" (and we all know what that means) brought it back to life and I was off to the races. I mostly collect Williams games with a few others just to keep things interesting. And yes, I have two working Mystic Marathons now.

ken

 

[groffdaddy]

I have a slightly different (warped?) perspective than the other posters having worked as a video games programmer for Williams in the '80s. My first arcade game was purchased in 1983, it was a Battlezone that I finally sold last year. In 2007, I saw an article on games that mentioned William's Mystic Marathon, which was a game I had worked on. I had toyed with MAME and decided that I would never find all the parts after all this time to put a MM together, so I'd build a MAME version. Long story short, I found eBay and the USENET forums. Bought a Bubbles boardset off eBay "untested" (and we all know what that means) brought it back to life and I was off to the races. I mostly collect Williams games with a few others just to keep things interesting. And yes, I have two working Mystic Marathons now.

ken

Now I know why you have a Codemonkeys avatar.

 

[More Cowbell]

I remember it like it was yesterday... <dream sequence>
I was on the train coming home from work in 2005 and saw a guy in front of me with his laptop open. He was playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and my interest was immediately piqued since I loved arcade and classic console games while growing up. I did some googling and found out about emulators and eventually made my way to the MAME and BYOAC forums. I was hooked and built my own arcade cab from scratch. My wife was great with it because I told her I would never need another arcade cabinet because this one would play almost all of them. Once completed, I simply wasn't ready to be done with the hobby so I bought a dedicated Xevious. That led to another and another until my basement was full of dedicated games, pins, classic consoles, and memorabilia. Best hobby ever for someone who grew up in the 80's arcades. I can't imagine getting into any other hobby as much as I have loved being an arcade collector.

 

[YellowDog]

Now I know why you have a Codemonkeys avatar.

Ssshhhhhhh! It's a secret!

That show was obviously written by someone who actually worked in the games industry back then.

ken

 

[gwarble]

great stories everyone...
one of my first jobs was at a "Max Sportsters" which took over when the local chuck e cheese closed down... sports-bar theme family place (pizza, beer, flat screens with sports and arcade games to keep the kids away)... had already loved video and arcade games so i was stoked to have the keys to them (lots of late night freeplay)

i never thought i'd own any at that point...

after i graduated high school and started at the local jc, i was getting the bug from playing with MAME to build a cabinet... before i made any progress i bought a ghosts n goblins (venture cab) from the local arcade while looking for an empty cab, and quickly realized how much better a dedicated machine was... this was the end of '99, and at the beginning of 2000 i bought a pallet of like 5 piece of shit games, empty or broken, probably paid more to have then shipped then the actual ebay auction) but i was having so much fun with them...

as i moved out of my parents house and added more games, i refined my tastes quickly... years later i finally did a mame cab of sorts... at least a multijamma'ed SmashTV with Total Carnage PCB and a mame setup with j-pac) but prefer the real machines any day... its great for guests or for me to get psyched about a game that i want for real.

now that i have room and some moolah i'm trying to add more to the collection, but the market seems very dry compared to those days... on the flip side the repro market and customization/hacks seem to be booming (i took a few year hiatus from the hobby not being involved at all, and having been back since the beginning of this year i'm impressed by whats changed... an arcade party, KLOV, and lately CAX have all sucked me back into this hobby quickly...

- gwarble

 

[yellowstitch]

for me I loved arcades, the smell, the lights the sounds, I couldnt wait to get to the mall on sats (when the p's would take us shopping) to play and I told myself when I made it big I would own an arcade of my own. Well I never made it big but I did end up winning my first game when I was 20 on ebay. It was a converted pac-smb. man I loved that thing and played the hell outa it. but as time passed it sat, then when I got married it went into the garage and it sat for 4 years collecting dust . Then we got a house with a basement and all of a sudden my pac-smb was lonely. Tons of ebay/live auctions and a wife wondering what she has gotten herself into and I ended up with around 30 machines in the basement and a hobby I honestly never thought I would be this into...It consumes you...

 

[Tycoonbrad]

It started with riding my bike for to get to the laundry mat in 1978 to see the new...Space Invaders. Like any kid, I waited weeks to actually play it. I watch older kids play it because I was too afraid to look stupid. The thrill was amazing. Later on in 1980, Berzerk and Wizard of Wor came along and was freaking amazing. They talked! I loved hanging out with other kids and playing the next game to come out. Seeing your initals every day was such a great feeling.

Fast forward to 2007 at the Computer Recycle Center in Topeka. My IT coworkers took a load of monitors that needed recycling. At the Recycle Center, inside the office there was an arcade game with a sign that said "Free" and "Dead". I got a call from them that an arcade game was free and asked if I wanted it. They dropped it off at my place. It turned out to be a trivia game. I wasn't too excited until I looked inside and saw a Wizard of Wor Instruction Card. I'm still working on it.

As a side note, I still need a Wire Harness and an Audio Card for it.

 

[gwarble]

i found this old ascii picture of when i was collecting while living at my parents house, haha

        gwarble's gameroom/bedroom  2/12/01
 ______________________________________________
| file |         |       |        |            |
|cabint|         |  dig  |        |    hook    |
|______|         |   -   |        |            |
|---------       |  dug  |        |____________|
|        | ____  |_______|          __________|||
|  d     ||ch-|| |----------|      |          |||
|  e     ||air|| |          |      |    b     |w|
|  s     ||___|| | scramble |      |    e     |i|
|  k     |       |__________|      |    d     |n|
|________|                         |          |d|
|                                  |          |o|
d-._                               |          |w|
o   '.                             |          |||
o     \      ______   ______       |__________|||
r______|    |      | |      |          |-------|
|  ________ | robo | | champ||-.    .-||ghostsn|
| |bookcase|| tron | |sprint||  \  /  ||goblins|
|_|________||______|_|______||___||___||_______|
                       | dr-|  closet      cl- |
                       | es-|  ________    ot- |
                       | ser| /  parts \   hes |
                       |____| |________|       |
                        -----------------------

sure is nice to have more room!
- gwarble

 

[jehuie]

i found this old ascii picture of when i was collecting while living at my parents house, haha

        gwarble's gameroom/bedroom  2/12/01
 ______________________________________________
| file |         |       |        |            |
|cabint|         |  dig  |        |    hook    |
|______|         |   -   |        |            |
|---------       |  dug  |        |____________|
|        | ____  |_______|          __________|||
|  d     ||ch-|| |----------|      |          |||
|  e     ||air|| |          |      |    b     |w|
|  s     ||___|| | scramble |      |    e     |i|
|  k     |       |__________|      |    d     |n|
|________|                         |          |d|
|                                  |          |o|
d-._                               |          |w|
o   '.                             |          |||
o     \      ______   ______       |__________|||
r______|    |      | |      |          |-------|
|  ________ | robo | | champ||-.    .-||ghostsn|
| |bookcase|| tron | |sprint||  \  /  ||goblins|
|_|________||______|_|______||___||___||_______|
                       | dr-|  closet      cl- |
                       | es-|  ________    ot- |
                       | ser| /  parts \   hes |
                       |____| |________|       |
                        -----------------------

sure is nice to have more room!
- gwarble

That right there is classic.

 

[jltlarry]

Friend of Sister In Law had a Pole Position. Went to pick it up and What do you Know, it stopped working. He sold me a Galaga Cocktail and that is how I got started.

 

[gwarble]

That right there is classic.

times have changed (the collection and how its digitized)

this was about 45 minutes playing around with Gozer's tips last night... a couple wrong games that didn't exist, and a little imagination in the layout (and the "inside games" are just floating outside the garage depicted) but its a start (and way easier than moving these around!)

- gwarble

 

[GoldenAge]

I had gone to arcades in high school in the late '70s and played black / white video games and really enjoyed them so I had a memory of late 70's and early 80's arcades.

I was living in So. Cal around 1985. I had a video room above my garage with my wide screen TV (50" at the time!), stereo, Atari 2600 and Colecovision. I wanted an arcade game to add to the atmosphere - I called it Electronic Art. I found some games for sale in a paper called The Nickle. Went and check it out - he had a whole garage full. I picked up an Exidy Venture and a Atari Warlords cocktail for about 400.00 for both. They were of course like new since they were only a few years old.

Fast forward to 1996 (I still had the above two games) - living in No. Cal now - in looking through an old 'Video Games' magazine I had, I came across a History of Atari and a time line of games. In that was a picture and description of Lunar Lander. I remember playing that as a kid and loved it. The search was on. A short time later I discovered the Usenet newsgroup RGVAC and posted on there I was looking for one. Had several replies and a couple weeks later I was on my way to San Jose and "Yogi's" place - anyone else remember him? I picked up my Lunar Lander from him and I still have it. After that, my obsession with collecting these things went crazy and I've been involved since then. Finding KLOV early last year re-ignited my interest again and I've been pretty active since then with about 40 games in the game room.

Tom

Wow, Yogi, what a flashback! I used to hang out at a convenience store in '88 or so with like 7 vids and a pinball (can't remember which, Jokerz or Whirlwind) and the attract mode on the Pin would flash "We are not men, we are Yogi", I remember I could never understand WTF that meant... I remember the attract sounds from the TMNT they had drove me insane, it was like every 30 seconds with that lame song. Wow, I'd completely forgotten that place, I usually default to my earlier memories from '80-'84 when, in my mind anyway, there were no bad games... Yeah, that era was awesome. For me, the fighters killed it. I'm a fighter hater, no doubt about it. Where's the spaceships and stuff? Why are there so many buttons?

 

[Compute]

It's all Bill Kurtz's fault! Like any dork kid, I was into video games. When I was 10 I found a copy of Slot Machines and Coin-Op Games. From that point on, I wanted my own games. A few years later the local distributor was clearing out games for <$200. A friend picked up a Centipede. Mom said I could get a Playstation or an arcade machine. Of course I went with the Playstation, which in retrospect was the right decision.

Fast forward a few years and with my own money I began looking. Snagged a WMS Aztec pin, and recently acquired a JAMMA cab with P-47 Phantom Fighter. I'm pretty sure the person from whom I bought this game picked it up in the same warehouse-clearance sale in 1997, so in a way I feel like things came full-circle.

 

[jar155]

Just so you guys know, that article went live a while back. Please keep your stories coming though, I love reading them.

Here's the article: The Arcades Aren't Dead, They're Just Not Where You Left Them

 

[kspiff]

I think I just wanted to own a MAME, ended up buying a RoadBlasters, thought it would then be cool to have a Star Wars, Assault, and/or APB machine, and it just went downhill from there.

 

[jawhn]

MAME was my gateway drug as well... But after buying my Joust, the "original, oldschool" mentality kicked in hardcore.



Especially since I have picked up several fully working games for $70 or less... Now is the time to buy, all the people that want / wanted these now have them. The demographic for arcade video game buyers has capped out pretty much completely. (IMHO)

 

[kspiff]

Funny thing is I never did end up with a MAME cab of any kind, and now wouldn't want one.

Yeah, it's a dry market these days. Getting hard to find good projects these days. At least around here sellers tend to ignore the economy and lack of demand tho which makes it worse.

I guess a small consolation is that there are probably less people making crappy MAME conversions since there isn't much money in doing so anymore.

 

[incrediblegamez]

I collect a lot of console stuff, mainly NES though.

In 2007 I was searching craigslist for NES and Nintendo in general when I came across a Punch-Out and a Red Tent. I somehow convinced my wife these would be sweet to own along with the rest of the Nintendo stuff we had. I actually only owned these 2 plus 2 others until 2009. 2 years later we have over 35 games and there is no sign of it slowing any time soon.

and your red tent is still within arms length. Quite impressive. I have no clue where my first 3 games are, NBA Jam, KI2 (still have the cab, a mario bros. widebody, but dont know who i sold the board to.) and Smash TV.

Back on topic, i got started because i wanted to make a MAME cabinet to hopefully relive my childhood but then stumbled upon KLOV from BYOAC and said F it, i want the original games!