Retrogaming love is a many legged creature

After searching local ads for NES games and arcade cabinets I happened upon a guy selling a Centipede cabinet as follows:   Arcade Cabinet and Header for Centipede game.
Original arcade cabinet and header for Centipede.  The cabinet does not have a monitor or the
centipede game board. -  $150

So on Monday, June 23rd I met the seller at the storage center where he had this "not so little" gem holed up.

The cab looks very much intact and with the exception of the control panel overlay all the artwork is there.  The side art has a few scratches, carvings, burn marks, etc but definitely workable.  The T-molding is peeling in places and there are dings and chunks of wood missing.  I suppose, though, if the machine was immaculate then doing a resto on it would seem a moot point.  After a little bit of negotiation I managed to talk the seller down from his asking price a bit and got the cabinet for a fair shake.

A quick search on wikipedia reveals that centipedes are Cavernicolous (cave-dwelling).  This little factoid helps to diminish the guilt I have about locking my new machine away in my cold, dark shop.  When my mancave is completed this species will be in its natural habitat.

I am so excited to be embarking on another arcade cabinet project.  This will be my first crack at a partial restoration. I say partial because I plan to keep the artwork more or less intact and preserve the vibe of the original machine, but as it has no arcade monitor, board or guts anymore I plan to convert the interior into a mame machine capable of playing as many of the classic hits from that same golden age of arcade games as possible.  One of the first steps is to try and design a control panel that will obviously play Centipede as it was intended but (without getting too over-the-top) also be capable of games such as:  Donkey Kong, Pacman, Asteroids, and the like.  It should have a clean interface with the original style 1 and 2 player buttons, a trackball, 1x 8way joystick and maybe 2 or 3 buttons.  I realize that some of the games from that era had 4 or 5 buttons (Defender and Asteroids I think are examples), but at least with the case of Asteroids I have managed to play it on my other machine using only a few buttons and it still allows for fun game play.  I think want to go with a Zippy joystick with a white or green colored ball to bring out the colors of the sideart and/or marquee on the machine and led-lit colored buttons to tie the control panel together with the awesome original artwork.

I won't say that Centipede is my favorite game from this era, but certainly the artwork that came on this cabinet is some of the best I have ever seen.

I hope that others out there with similar interests will get something out of this series and, if nothing else, I want to document the choices I make for this project (good and bad) and see how it turns out.

NES happenings June 4th - 18th, 2014

Good thing I had my twitter feed to fall back on or I would have forgotten 3 of the games I had recently acquired.  On June 4th I made my way around to a few pawn shops in town and picked up 3 games at one location:   Blue Marlin, Image Fight, and Golf Power (as if I needed another golf game).  Then just tonight I made a return visit to my new found contact (a fellow NES collector) and traded him some NES and SNES accessories for 9 games.   Most I already had, but I managed to replace some of my damaged label carts with better copies and added 2 new games:  Spy vs. Spy and Golgo 13.

The stand out for me from this lot is Spy vs. Spy.  I have many fond memories of camp-outs as a kid (tenting in the back yard, etc.) and reading Cracked and Mad magazines with friends from the neighborhood.  The Spy vs. Spy comics always cracked us up (no put intended).   Like all good things the written works tend to spawn movies or games and Spy vs. Spy was no exception.  My first introduction to the game was on a friend's commodore 64.  I think what I loved most was the split screen shenanigans and hilarity that came from trying to outwit your opponent with bombs and booby traps.  I have yet to play through the NES version, but I hope it lives up to my memories of it from way back when.

These additions bring my collection perilously close to 50% overall... which is a bittersweet realization.  To have come so far and to, at the same time, realize I have so far to go.  Games are going to become harder to come by and more costly from here on out and as a by product I imagine my entries may become fewer and farther between.

For this reason I am trying to pick up some doubles along the way in the hopes that I might be able to sell, trade or barter my way to some missing titles in the weeks, months and years to come.

NES cartridge total:   411

Nes pickups - June 1st!

In the words of Chris Farley (as Todd O'Conner from Bob Swerski's superfans): "That's a baker's dozen for me".  Never been big on superstitions myself but I'm willing to consider thirteen lucky.  My previous entries have touched on how I've been searching for games a little off the paths less traveled. On two recent trips stateside I came up empty handed and only found a handful of items on my last few car trips.  Never would I have thought that just around the corner from my house (literally four houses around the block) I would find a stockpile of games for sale by a neighbor. 

I wasn't sure what to expect when I arrived at the seller's front door because the listing was a guessing game with a lot of the titles difficult to make out in the pictures provided.  The night before (with only the light of my laptop to guide me) I felt like a forensic tech trying to clean up closed circuit images and make viewable the grainy outlines of letters in the ad.  I sharpened the images, resized them checked them against google images as to the guess of the colors vs letter placements and tried not to make too many assumptions as to what the games might be.   I was so anxious to finally see the titles in the cardboard boxes when his garage doors went up that it was difficult to hide my excitement.  I'm not sure if most people can relate to this feeling, but game collectors (or I suppose collectors of anything) know this feeling all to well;  that pure rush of adrenaline that comes from seeing that thing you are looking for right before your eyes.  The titles I got from his lot were as follows:  Dragon's Lair, A Boy and his Blob, Wrecking Crew, Ikari Warriors 2, The Simpsons: Bart vs the World, Disney's Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, Bomberman, Castlequest, Rad Racer 2, Flying Warriors, Pinball Quest, Clu Clu Land, and Solomon's Key.

Today holds a few milestones for my collection.  Firstly, these 13 games are (I believe) the largest pickup in one day that I have had since this collection started and secondly this push puts my collection over the 400 mark of total carts!!!  The obvious standouts for me would be the two black box games I added to the collection (Wrecking Crew and Clu Clu Land), Dragon's Lair, Bomberman and A Boy and his Blob.   

This brings the game count to:  406

Next-town Crusader

Having traveled not once, but twice out of country this month: first to Pasadena, then a week later to Anaheim, one might think that the opportunity to find games would readily present itself.  Not so much... on my first trip I searched up used game stores in close proximity to my hotel only to find that Google had not updated in awhile and the store I was looking for had closed down.  I managed to find the Goodwill store nearby, but it was a bust as well.  There was actually more selection in my local thrift shops.

The second trip to the state of California was more structured and time didn't really permit the opportunity to poke around their local second hand stores. I was able, of course, to get my 'game on' though with a stop off at the Starcade in Disneyland.  There I got up close and personal with the Fix-it Felix Jr. game which looks very much like it hitched a ride in the Delorean and came here from 1985.  The paint job looked aged and it screamed retro arcade.

It was actually quite dark in there and my biggest regret was not getting a better picture of the machine before we ran off to the Star Tours fast-pass lineup.  Seems really silly to speak of a whirlwind trip to Disneyland and Universal Studios as in any way lacking, but what it lacked in NES game pickups it more than made up for in feeding my 40 yr. old kid brain.  This gaming opportunity at Starcade was awesome and my kids went around pressing buttons on every cabinet until they came across one that actually played without any tokens being put in.  In here I also got a Wreck-it Ralph souvenir coin and kept a few left over Starcade tokens.   Throughout the 4 days we spent on this trip to Cali I encountered many game-related photo ops so it was a wonderful experience all around!

  I actually thought my 2 weeks vacation was not going to yield any additions to my collection when my friend contacted me saying he'd found 2 games for me down in Vancouver:   Bart Simpson vs. the Space Mutants and Spiderman! If that wasn't enough, today my wife and I took a trip (while the kids were in school) to the next town over and hit every pawn shop, thrift and specialty store we could find.  At the specialty store I found a fairly uncommon game called:  Galactic Crusader and at one of the Pawn shops here they had a very good boxed RBI baseball 3.  This purchase replaced my old cart that had a damaged label.  Despite paying a little more for the Galactic Crusader cart than I wanted to, I was happy to have acquired a game that is less common than most, unlicensed, and a groovy looking aqua blue-green color.  The game itself is a loosely based Galaga clone, but unlike most unlicensed games is somewhat playable. Even though it isn't one of the most popular NES titles I have an affinity for the oddly colored or shaped carts.  I especially like the gold camerica carts, Black Tengen carts and blueish tinged  Color Dreams and Bunch carts.

This brings the collection total to:  393 with the addition of 3 new games, 2 new manuals, and a new game box!  Didn't want to crosspost this with Twitter, but also aquired Dick Tracy a few weeks back... that's why the jump from 389-393 from last post.  

https://twitter.com/8bitbobby/status/460464585326092289

NES pickups April 7th - 17th

This has been a week with more ups and down than the "dash 3" worlds on SMB... visited my local thrift store which shall remain nameless and went from ecstatic that they had some games that I needed, to flabbergasted that they had raised the prices on their games 600%.   I honestly can't remember the last time I paid more than 3.99 for a game at this 'establishment' so imagine my surprise when I visit them and all of a sudden their games are priced at $24.99 each (even the Super Mario Bros / Duck Hunt cart that came bundled with EVERY freaking Action Set sold).  Either the person in charge of the sticker gun is entirely out to lunch or just plain greedy.  When I questioned the clerk about the recent price hike they tried to play the "they have always been that price" to which I promptly showed them a picture of my purchase there last week for $2.99.   At this point I tried to remind them that most of the items they sell were donated and that charging higher than Pawn Shop prices is ludicrous.  I was disappointed that I couldn't add to my collection at that stop and realized, at that moment, that I would likely have to boycott the store altogether.

Last Sunday I tried to make myself feel better about things by visiting the flea market and found a new seller!!!  Mostly RPG games and some boxed, but a bit more pricey than my cheapass blood could afford.  However, in light of the aforementioned events, I figured I HAD to spend some money here just to show those 'other guys' that it's about principle.  I bought 2 games from the new vendor:  The Last Starfighter (with the Box) and Shenigan the Ruler.

Today capped off the last week and a half on a high note.  A few days back I was scrolling through the local classifieds and then Kijiji ads when I came across a seller in my city that advertised: NES games for sale TOO MANY TO  LIST.   If that didn't sound promising I don't know what did.   I corresponded with the girl who placed the ad a few times and finally setup a time to go and check out the games.  She was a collector herself, but decided to give up on the NES collection to focus on her Gamecube and PS1 collections.  She had a crapload of games and SOOO many titles I didn't have that I was salivating like a Sheepdog on the beach in August.  Yah I know... my poker face sucks!   Anyway she had the games in separate boxes with prices on the flap of each box.   Many of the best games she obviously new the value of from her own collecting days and so quite a few I had to pass up, but she did have a box in the $5-8 range that had several titles that I thumbed through.  Without wanting to waste alot of her time I gathered up 8 titles and asked if she would give me a deal.  In the end she game me 3 games for free.  I told her that I hoped this would be the first of many transactions down the road as there were alot of games she was selling off that have yet to reach my hands.  Just out of curiousity I checked my trusty NES collection APP and was happy to discover that one of the games I picked out was worth the same price as I paid for the whole lot.   This made the 10 day rollercoaster so worth the ride!!!

The standouts from this lot for me are:  Jimmy Conners Tennis (a little less common than most), Tennis because I have a soft spot for the Black Box games and 720 because I used to love that game in the arcade -- "Skate or Die!"  This update brings the collection total to:   389

Until next level...........

NES pickups - April 6th

It was quite fortuitous that I made it to the flea market this morning.  My daughter has been sick with a cold for the last few nights and since she doesn't like to sleep in her own room at the best of times she was bunking with my wife and I last night.  I woke up about 7am to her poor gravelly breathing instead of the usual dissonance of my alarm clock.  Knowing that I couldn't hit the snooze button on her congestion I wiped her nose, tucked her in all warm and cozy and got up.

Arriving early and beating the rush to the flea market this morning I caught my seller before anyone else had picked over his table and came back with 5 new additions to the collection:   Loopz, Dragon Spirit, Hollywood Squares, Magic Johnson's Fast Break, and Stealth.  Not really any standouts to this lot, and some of the carts have certainly seen better days, but I feel sometimes like these games have become orphaned and it's my responsibility as a lover of that time to welcome them back to an appreciative home.  These new titles bring the total count to 379.   

Today was also made remarkable by the fact that my son (who is on the Autism Spectrum)  is not unlike Liam Neeson in the Taken movies... in that both have a very specific set of skills (I'm paraphrasing of course).  No my son isn't going to break the family away from their captors by snapping people's limbs or pinpointing our location with the use of a pencil and shoelace, but he does possess the ability to take a mental picture of how things are supposed to be and can tell you when one thing is out of place.  For example, the other day my wife knocked a few of her pez dispensers off of the wall where they are displayed and, in a hurry, just put them back without realizing they were no longer in character sections (Gargamel had left the "smurf's village and was now flanked by Bert & Ernie).  Well my son took one look at the wall and stopped dead in his tracks... he proceeded to interrogate Melissa as to why they were not in their correct spots.  Much laughter ensued.   This same gift has rendered my NES collection app useless.   He can take one look at my collection and can tell you which games I have and which I do not.  He even went so far today as to correct a blog post I had made more than a year and a half ago.  I had incorrectly listed a pickup as Megaman 3 when it should have been Megaman 6 and when I questioned the validity of it and he insisted, I cross referenced it with a post I'd made on twitter at about the same time and, sure enough, the boy was right.  Well that was a tangent.  I almost missed my stop.  Bye for now!

Nes pickups 2014 (January-March)

When we last left our intrepid collector Bobby, he was closing in on 400 games... though still not at that mark he has taken a few small steps of late......................

   The temperatures are getting warmer and the itch to get back to the flea-market (did I just use itch and fleas in the same sentence?) is upon me.  This past Sunday I went (for the first time since last year) and was NOT disappointed.  There was a vendor outside that had a few games that I did not have:   Predator, The Punisher, Wayne Gretzky Hockey, King of Kings, and Bump n Jump.   After that I ventured inside and my regular dealer had some new titles but the only one I could really swing for was Star Soldier.  In addition to the games I also picked up a few new manuals.  The week before I went to Value Village and under their display case they had several games (all priced between 20-25 dollars.. for what reason I'll never know)... but one lonely game was priced $1.99 and as luck would have it it was one I did not yet have!   Pretty good week all around!   According to my collection APP, my new game total is:   374

I think of this batch the standouts for me were Punisher and King of Kings.  However, that being said, it was exciting to pick up Little League Champs for 2 bucks only to find out that my app lists the game at 4x that price.  The other 6 games were bought for $25 investment and according to the app are worth approximately $50.  Doubled my money on those as well.  I guess it's a little misleading to say that when 1 or both of 2 circumstances would have to occur for that statement to be true. A) I would have to be willing to sell my collection and B) There would have to be someone willing to pay for the games what the value is listed at.  At any rate it's just fun to see what kinds of deals I can find out there... I try to never pay more than what the listing says (even it's a game I really, really want)   Well... that's it until next adventure!!! Keep collecting!