As I said near the end of the last Arcade post, there is more to a home arcade than just cramming some arcades in a room. I think that's why some people miss the mark. People putting them in a home for someone else just go down a list and tick off things. There's no "feeling", there's no "experiences" they are trying to replicate. So I wanted to talk about a few of my experiences I want to replicate.
Parlor Trick
When I think back to many of the arcades of my youth, the arcade itself was only the byproduct of attending... at least if you weren't me. Pizza Hut was some of my first memories of an arcade, and the only place I ever saw one of those sit down table Pacman machines. Later, in my teens, it was Cici's pizza that had all the latest Mortal Kombat games as they came out. While I went a grand total of maybe 3 times, I understand people have fond memories of Chuck E. Cheese also. Well, I do not want to put a pizza oven into my Arcade room, that's like a $30,000 purchase. What I can do, though, is put in a booth and a table so that I can take food from the kitchen and have it in the arcade. Booth seats are pretty affordable if you look for the guys selling to restaurants.
Sticky Situation
So I stole the bubble gum machine idea from the Millionaire. I found people that will sell the 1 inch gumball ones AND the 2 inch toy egg ones together. Eating random candy from public machines is cool and all, but I liked collecting things. Oddly enough... football helmets were a thing. Anyway, I thought it would be cool to find little collections of things and see what people do with them when they get them as a prize. Another thing I always liked was the stickers that were shiny and metallic. That's another Pizza Hut contribution. My nephew always liked temporary tattoos also. Sticker machines are double the price(triple in most places) than the gumballs, but I've decided I want to have them. I don't know where I'll get the stickers from, or what I'd have, but I know they'll be expensive... so no "free spin" construction on those. Its a dollar so you don't break the bank getting 50 tattoos.
Popcorn.
I'm not a huge fan of popcorn, anyone that worked in a theater will tell you that you get sick of it pretty fast. Thing is, I played a lot of classic arcade games to the smell of popcorn at the local cheap movie theater. Punchout, Pole Position, the original Street Fighter. Popcorn machines with mechanisms like the ones at the movie theater are not super expensive(for the type of thing they are), and so I plan on getting one of the 4 oz poppers, that's enough to fill like 3 big tubs, or lots of smaller boxes to pass around.July 14, 2014
Zozo... The city of insanity. I'll never forget Zozo, its one of the most memorable cities in all Final Fantasy games. The music is one of my absolute favorites and I get it stuck in my head sometimes still. I always forget that it is as small as it is, but the smallness is made up for by its INSANE encounter rate. Seriously, every 3 steps another enemy shows up. The first time I went through FF6 I had no strategy guide(I never use them the first time through anyway), but I was determined to figure out the clock puzzle. I had no idea what was there because I avoided talking to my cousins about it. The solution is apparently ingrained in my head because I remember it even now because it took me so much effort before. Basically everyone, except one person, in town lies. So you have to write down all their lies, then figure out what time the clock is meant to be set. The reward is uber powerful at the point in the game I am at, I did not get it till near the end back in the day, and even then it was uber powerful. One of my favorite things about Zozo is that the song(Slam Shuffle) features a very prominent clock. Its rare that a song has its own call backs to gameplay elements.
So EVO 2014 has come and gone. EVO is a video game tournament that focuses on fighting games, which seems like it would be something I would watch. Unfortunately, watching fighting games has a few disadvantages. If you are not well versed in the game, you do not really know what is going on, and for most fighting games; high level play is about exploits and imbalance, so... boring to watch. I tend to watch the highlight matches from Street Fighter 4, and a few fights from King of Fighters, those can be fun to watch. Super Smash Brothers is a casual fighting game, which means they had to focus on letting people live as long as possible so they can have fun. You get into "high level" play, and you end up with matches that last forever because its over compensation. So many people complained, EVO refused to have it back... till Nintendo agreed to sponsor the entire tournament.
A lot of Geekdom knows Kate Mulgrew because of her turn at being a Captain in Star Trek Voyager. Except for a few episodes in the last couple of seasons, she's my 2nd favorite Captain. So much so, that when they interviewed her in "The Captain" documentary, I felt a sadness. It looked to me like she had given up on things. I know I'm just reading in to what I saw in the interview, and editing can mess with things, but I did feel sorry for her. She seemed like an actress that lost passion and resigned herself to "whatever". So I am overjoyed at her success in Orange is the New Black, especially this season she seems to want to put everything into her character, and she's looking like she cares again. I'm not the only one to notice this because she has gotten an Emmy nomination for her role this year.
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