Thursday Arcade Series 01
To be perfectly honest, I have very few arcade memories. I never frequented arcades when I was younger, they were just too far away. I have a few very cherished memories of my first time at a "real" mall, where I saw Mortal Kombat 3 and Killer Instinct for the first time. I have my memories of going to Six Flags for the first time, and seeing Marvel Super Heroes and Mad Dog McGee. I have my memories of the skating rink, when I was too young to be able to remember what games were there because I was barely able to walk, let alone read. I do not feel like I want a home arcade to re-create my old memories, I think I may want one so that I can "escape" to this place where I have no memory its existence, but somehow I always knew was there.
This project has kind of a mean spirited start, but I'm past that now. I know it was probably some jealousy that played the part, and I'm not too young to admit it. Anyways, the start of why I want to price out a game room was with this millionaire guy in New York that decided to turn a room in his million dollar apartment in Manhattan into an arcade. This guy spent $30,000+ and lost some relationships over his arcade room. As I read, I got these visions in my head of the a $30,000 arcade room looks like, and it was NOT what his looks like. In fact, I was all "I can do that way better for less, wtf?". His arcade was a couple of super rare machines crammed into a space barely large enough to walk in. Sure, he had one of 10 Wreck-it-Ralph arcades made by Disney, and he had the actual King of Kong arcade used in that documentary... but... bleh. I need none of that.
He did have one really cool thing to say in interviews. He said that his favorite addition was the gumball vending machines in the corner there. He said that no matter if it was a crusty 60 year old journalist or a bushy tailed 20'something blogger, before they talked about games they would see those machines and give him a story, without him asking. These stories made his day. When I read this, I realized that, at least in some part, he "got" what having a home arcade is about. Its not about playing the games, for almost nothing I could play every arcade game I had ever seen in my early life to my teens. Its about creating that "feel", re-creating or establishing memories. THIS is what I imagined when I heard about a $30,000 home arcade
That guy gets it. That's like walking into an arcade. You are going to feel that arcade, you are going to smell that arcade. This is what I would want, on a much smaller scale. I realized that I would not be pricing machines, I would be pricing carpet, I would be pricing lights and decor. I came up with some clever ideas that I thought would save money and still give that feeling of having the "right" stuff and yet not be beholden to one arcade forever. I'll share those ideas as time goes by, but for now, think about your quarter vending machine stories and be 10 again.
July 9th, 2014
I focused this day on the "split" near the beginning of Final Fantasy 6. The split is a sort of "choose your path" section of Final Fantasy 6 where the story line branches in different directions. This part was where I fell in love with the game. In this one segment we get introduced to the concept of "no main character" as the story follows several characters, and ALSO we expand the cast considerably. We switch the viewpoints between 3 events that we can play in any order. The genre mix ups continue as we get old style Metal Gear stealth gameplay. My favorite character is introduced(hint: its Cyan), my favorite sub-plot gets teased(Locke's past), and a lot of groundwork is set up for the epic story. Also, I do not want to spoil anything important, but I ALWAYS forget what the hell Gau's ending means, as its a picture of his "treasure" from this part of the game.
My vending machine story. There used to be a really cheap super market where there is a school now. They used to rent that parking lot out for fairs every now and again, and I still have dreams of those fairs. Anyway, fairs aside, they had vending machines in the front like everyone else, but they had one that no one ever had. It was a vending machine full of oily, greasy, salty Brazil nuts. Growing up the only way to get a Brazil nut was to wait to get some at Christmas, and you had to break the shells yourself, you know how hard that is as a kid to break those? You use a hammer, and you end up getting a handful of crumbs. Anyways, for a quarter you got a handful of perfect Brazil nuts, so in a way it was like getting a little Christmas every time I went to the store with my aunt.
I watched Ninja Scroll with my girlfriend, it has probably been a decade since I bought the DVD and watched it. I had to explain to her that when I first saw this movie, it was the cream of the crop. The 80's and early 90's was full of ultra violent anime that is heralded as masterpieces, and how I consider almost all of it garbage. I never cared for Akira, I never made it through Fist of the North Star, and the Miyazaki family style movies just did not get brought to America back then. I liked Ninja Scroll because it was rather tame compared to things like M. D. Geist. It also reminded me a hell of a lot like Samurai Shodown. If you've seen the movie, you know that when I say "tame" its misleading, because Ninja Scroll is probably the most violent and offensive thing I've watched in recent memory lol, yes, even more so than Attack on Titan. I also had to explain to her that there was no "scroll" in Ninja Scroll, and that we're lucky it wasn't 3 different movies spliced together to form one and given a new name(like Robotech). Early anime... you young'uns don't know how good you have it now to get the actual shows and movies. I even got suckered into buying a VHS of a series called Ninja Scroll put out by someone else that used the character's name and the movie's name specifically to screw people out of money...
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