Happy Holidays!

Though I do have a brand new chassis for the Atomiswave SD, I won't be installing it just yet. I've figured it out and it's really a straightforward process, but I'm just not up to discharging the monitor yet. This cab has a really awkward and potentially dangerous design for discharging, removing, and replacing the anode cap. Just my luck.

Movie Theatre Games

While going to the movie theatre I was happy to find a game corner with some arcade cabinets, even if the games weren’t the greatest and I didn't bother playing them. Actually, the best of the bunch, Time Crisis 3, appeared to be out of order.

They also had a working Ghost Squad and another Sega game I’d never even heard of before, Motor Raid, along with a few other machines not worth mentioning. It seems that movie theaters and establishments like House of Targ  (see my previous post), are the last bastions of hope for old arcade lovers in this part of the world.

House of Targ

Ottawa's House of Targ is a cross between a concert hall, restaurant/bar (specializing in perogies), and video arcade. They are well stocked with various classic pinball machines and retro arcade cabinets. Most notably, they had a dedicated Mortal Kombat cab!

The crappy video below from my iphone shows the complete line-up of games, save for a few cocktail cabs I missed. I think that a Neo Geo 4 slot and Konami 4-player cab would really put this place over the top.

                            

Atomiswave SD

There are two things I heard upon first entering this hobby. Firstly, one cab is never enough. True enough, when I miraculously found an Atomiswave SD locally I just had to have it. Secondly, this is the hobby where everything breaks. The seller of  the cab warned me that there was a monitor issue with some red color bleeding, but it was at a fair price, I had the cash to spare, and I wasn't sure when I'd ever get the chance to buy another candy cab again, so I couldn't resist. 

The Atomiswave SD is essentially a re-branded Taito Egret 3. Mine even came with an Egret 3 control panel, which is great as I hate the stock Atomiswave SD control panel due to it's ugly card reader. I got a new ball top and buttons (Taito Hey colors!) and, as it was missing a 100 yen sticker, I bought a NOS Egret 3 sticker to match (not to mention a step down converter too. Stupid, finicky PSU). 

These cabs have a bad rep due to the flat tri-rez CRT monitor, which is made of cheap wei-ya parts and is better suited to high rez 31khz games than the low rez 15khz games I enjoy. This is further compounded on my cab due to the red color issues. It's perfectly playable but the red color sometimes bleeds and/or makes the screen appear darker than it should be. I do find it annoying, but can live with it for now. A cap kit or chassis replacement may be in order someday, but my skill/comfort level with monitors isn't even close to attempting that right now.

Anyway, while you can never truly replicate the arcade experience at home, with two cabs blaring I'm that much closer to doing so. I think I've maxed out on cabs for now, unless I can somehow get my hands on a Taito Egret 2 or a Capcom Mini Cute.

Spring Purge

I'm getting the hang of this hobby with regards to buying and selling things on forums. It's fun receiving packages in the mail, and I even get some enjoyment selling off, packing up, and shipping out games at the post office.

Recently,  I sold much of my console stuff. I'm going 100% arcade! I also sold off some of my arcade games.

Sadly, the Atomiswave and Dolphin Blue had to go. I love the game, but it didn't get much use, and I wasn't interested in any other Atomiswave games, which is quite ironic...

Next update coming soon.

Super Street Fighter 4 Vewlix Model

I'll never own a real Vewlix cab so this is the next best thing. I'd never built a model before, fortunately this one involved no painting or glue. All of the pieces snap together, making for a relatively painless assembly.

I did manage to break a few pieces, but it was nothing a little crazy glue couldn't fix and you certainly wouldn't even know it looking at this picture.

Metal Slug X

I traded the control panel my cabinet originally came with (seen at the top of my blog) for a copy of Metal Slug X. I'd been looking to upgrade my copy of Metal Slug 2 for a while with this much improved, slowdown free version. The cart is in really good condition too. 

Joystick Gamers! Ver. 2.0

I got another little care package from Japan which included this fun little independently produced photo magazine. It features artistic photographs of some of Japan's more grimy independently run game centers.

Game centers like the one's featured in this magazine were always my favorite. Unlike Taito Station or Club Sega,these smoke filled establishments cater to the older gamer looking to fill their evenings after work. No puricura or UFO catchers, just great games from the past.

So filthy and grimy, I love it! Game centers like the ones in this magazine are slowly becoming a dying breed in Japan. I actually used to live literally 5 mins from a great game center in Shin-Koshigaya, Saitama, Play Spot Big One. Maybe I'll blog about that in the future. 

Random Game Center Photos

I found a few pics from my time living in Japan on my hard drive that I thought I'd dump here. I took this picture of Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition the first day it hit the arcades. The Viewlix cabinet is really a sleek looking machine.

This snap from Warzard was taken strictly for the password. Though I don't think I ever ended up using it, what a cool feature to have in an arcade game.

 I found this sad Neo Geo cab all by itself in the corner of a game center I used to frequent
close to a school I taught at. The manager of this place gave me my arcade stools for free!

Even more shocking than the Double Dragon intro, the Japanese version of Final Fight is pretty crazy. Only in Japan could they get away with stuff like this.

Double Dragon

As arcade game collecting can be a rather expensive hobby, I try my best to hunt for deals and usually only get games when they are fairly cheap. This may be my cheapest pick up yet, an original Double Dragon PCB for $60 Canadian shipped!

 This PCB was a birthday present to myself that arrived a day early today. My brother and I played Double Dragon for the first time when I was 6-7 at a hotel arcade in Toronto. In fact, I think it was the first time either of us had played a video game before and it left a big impression. Now, about 25 years later, I own the damn game.

I still think this is the best intro/story to any video game ever. Straightforward and to the point, setting up the action perfectly. It's still kind of shocking today actually. 

Funny, I never really noticed the slowdown in this games 2 player mode until it was pointed out to me in recent times (I also never knew about the "elbow trick" until recently either, lol). Still a classic.

Aliens PCB

I remember seeing this game in arcades as a child, but have no recollection of actually playing it. I mainly picked this board up because it was relatively cheap (for an arcade PCB) and hassle free (no suicide batteries etc.). 

While it hasn't aged as well as other games of it's time, this gives Aliens a distinct "retro" feeling. The game is also well known for straying away from the source material to provide all sorts of interesting creatures. Also, it has never been ported to any console whatsoever.

By no means a great game, Aliens has several unique features that make it stand out. Firstly, the controls are quite unique with only two buttons, one allowing you to do a standing shot and the other to shoot while crouching. It's more fun than it sounds (or looks).

The game play is rather varied and includes tunnel sections with a radar indicating incoming aliens, a brief but tense elevator segment, and occasional driving/shooting stages and bosses from a third person perspective .

Atomiswave Dolphin Blue

I received my Atomiswave motherboard and Dolphin Blue cart today. Though I don't have a high res monitor, the Atomiswave still supports good old 15khz. The games don't look quite as they should on my low res New Asto City monitor, but it's good enough for me. Besides, the Atomiswave looks so cool! I just had to have it.

Arcade hardware doesn't get much easier than this, just pop in a cart in the middle, plug in the JAMMA harness, and it's ready to go. Perfect for someone like me who is just starting out with this arcade stuff.

The Atomiswave only has about 25 games, many of which are fighting games. However, Dolphin Blue is basically a Metal Slug Clone with an aquatic theme. It may not be terribly original, but it sure is fun.