The price of admission was included with our vacation package so the kids and I decided to head there on our last evening while the rest of our group shopped.    I can honestly say, there was no way we would have gone had the price not been included already.  The price of admission for guests 10 and over was $42.50 per person.  For children aged 3-9 the price was $36.  For myself and the four kids to even get in the door it would have cost almost $200.  The price of admission can be less if you purchase your tickets in advance but it’s still pretty pricey.

Regardless, the place was absolutely packed.  The facility is 5 floors, with each floor consisting of a different “zone”.  Upon entering, we were directed to an elevator which took us to the third floor of the facility.  Coincidentally, that is the floor that houses the classic arcade games.  I didn’t make a note of the games they had but it was a fairly large selection.  They had the typical Ms. Pacman/Galaga combos, the Donkey Kong/DK Jr/Mario Brothers combo, a 25th anniversary Space Invaders but also a large selection of dedicated classic arcade games.  Dedicated games that I recall seeing: Lunar Lander, Mr. Do, Tron, Galaga, Galaxian, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Asteroids, Super Pacman, Ms. Pacman, Pacman (w/ speed chip), Pengo, Qbert, Gorf, plus many more that I can’t recall right now.  There was also some type of Buzz Lightyear bumper car ride on this floor.  I tried to snap some pictures but all I had was my cell phone and the pictures didn’t turn out at all.  All games are set on free play except for crane games and the like that dispense prizes.

I was immediately drawn to the Tron machine, a game I hadn’t played in over 20 years.  I fired up a game and immediately noticed that the monitor was crap.  It needed a cap kit.  As a matter of fact, as I walked around the room 90% of the monitors needed cap kits and major adjustments.  My son attempted to play a game of Frogger, which was located next to the Tron machine.  The game would credit up but neither the 1 player or 2 player start buttons worked so it was impossible to start a game.  After being pummeled by Tron, which had a less than responsive joystick, I stepped to a dedicated Galaga machine.  While the monitor was again less than perfect, I did manage to beat the high score of 180,520 with a respectable 195,600.

I tried to play a game on the dedicated Donkey Kong cabinet but didn’t have much luck.  I couldn’t figure out why the high score was only 16,200.  I soon found out.  The game had a replacement micro-switch joystick in it.  The joystick stuck in the up position.  While that didn’t matter too much on the barrel level, it made the rivet level almost impossible.  Any attempt to climb down a ladder would immediately send Jumpman back to the top when you reached the bottom.  I found if I jumped at exactly the right time I could get him to stay at the bottom of the ladder.  Needless to say, my score of 40,800 was nothing to brag about but given the joystick problem I seriously doubt that anyone was going to top it.

We then went up to the fourth floor where we found a selection of more “modern” games.  The kids all played a few games of Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution.  These all worked fairly well as expected.  We then attempted to play a few games of air hockey.  The games were supposed to last 5 minutes but each time we attempted to play a game, the puck got stuck when someone scored.  They only way to get the puck back was to credit the table and start a new game.  The table next to us also had the same problem.  There is also a snack area here that serves beer and wine.   Most of the parents were getting liquored up while their kids ran through the facility, cutting in line for games we had been waiting on.

We attempted to go to the first floor to ride some of the virtual reality attractions but the lines were all too long.  The second floor had some interactive games that the kids played for a bit but quickly tired of.  We really wanted to do the roller coaster designer with the option to ride it in a simulator, but again, the line was too long.   After about 2 hours, we headed out the door.  The kids had no interest in half working classic games and it was too crowded to try anything else.  For the cost of admission, I would expect the games, particulary the classics to be in better shape.  I did notice a sign that was placed sometime after we entered offering 1/2 price admission after 8:00 (might have said 7 or 9, I don’t recall).  Even at that, I’d pass unless you take a tool kit.

The basement is progressing nicely.  I finished framing the exterior walls and am now framing the lone interior wall that runs along a portion of the beam.  I’ve decided that the bar is not going to fit well in the area I had planned, so I’ll post the updated plan when I get a chance.  If things go well and I get some free time this weekend, it should be on to wiring and insulation.  Pictures of the progress will be coming in the next few days.

The staircase, at the upper left, essentially splits the unfinished portion, which will be used for storage and mechanicals, from the portion that will become finished.  The wall with the door, at the upper right, already exists but the drywall will be removed and some minor modifications made.  The dotted rectangle running vertically down the middle is a steel beam that exists in the room.  The gray portion of that same beam is where a 2×6 wall will be constructed.

I initially wanted to place the bar in the lower right hand corner.  The plan is to have a sink in the bar which meant I needed to run a drain line to the unfinished portion of the basement.  With the bar placement as shown, I can run the plumbing through the 2×6 wall, which I will construct to span about 1/2 the length of the steel beam, underneath the stairwell and to the existing stubbed in plumbing fairly easily.  There is also a bathroom directly above this location so all I need to do is drop the water lines down the 2×6 wall.  Finally, there will be a nook here, so I can build the full size refrigerator into the bar and it will sit even with the bar back instead of sticking out three feet.

The lower left hand corner will be the television / seating area.  With the bar in its present location, it will also be possible to sit at the bar and watch the television.  The remainder of the room, to the right of the steel beam will all be for the games.  While my collection isn’t big enough to fill it, there’s plenty of room to add the foosball table and plenty more games in the future.  Phase 2 will include a bathroom off the door by the MAME cabinet.

With the initial plan drawn out and the “boss” giving her approval, it was time to get to work!  With my $10 coupon in hand, I headed to Lowe’s and loaded up on lumber.  As of right now, I’ve completed the framing on two of the three exterior walls.  In the plan above, the bottom wall and right hand wall are finished.  Hopefully by this weekend all of the framing will be complete and it will be on to wiring and insulation.

As you’ll notice in the fourth picture, all of the games are covered in plastic to keep the dust off of them. I need to move them all as they are standing in front of the next wall to frame. The cheesy ceiling fans are going and the freezer will be relocated to the storage side of the basement. The foosball table, which is a dust magnet right now and needs to be covered with plastic, will be going on the game side of the finished basement.  I have no idea where the basketball game is going…hopefully not in the finished basement!

To help invision the space a bit better, from picture 1 to 6, you are starting in the upper right corner of the plan and panning 360 degrees to your right.  That’s all for now.  I’ll keep updating as progress is made.  As you can see, for the next few months there won’t be any game related work happening.

The previous owners had painted the foundation walls white and put down some berber carpet but not much else had been done. I wasn’t fond of the carpet so before any construction could begin, I decided to remove it. Unfortunately, the carpet was glued to the concrete floor. I initially thought it might just be edge glued, but no such luck. Every square inch of the carpet is glued to the floor.

The quest to remove the carpet adhesive began.  My attempts to scrape it up dry did not go over well.  I then decided to mop water on sections and allow it to sit for about 20 minutes.  The adhesive came up much easier and with two or three passes it was removed.  Below are some before and after shots for comparision:

Whoever put the carpet down also put some floor leveler down, although I’m not sure why as it didn’t level the floor. You can see the leveler in the first picture towards the top. It’s the area where the adhesive appears to be thicker. They didn’t allow the leveler to completely cure before putting down the carpet adhesive so the two are now permanently bonded. To remove the adhesive in these areas, I have to chip all of the floor leveler off of the floor as well (water doesn’t help soften it).

Three weekends of work and I have about half the floor done. I’m working on a plan in Visio but haven’t finalized anything yet. I’ll continue to post project updates and the finalized plan here and hopefully will be able to fit in a little work on games as well. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

This isn’t my first experience with errors on the 360. Not too long after I purchased it, I received a E 86 error. This was fixed by removing the hard drive and cleaning the contacts. In early June of this year, just 3 months after the warranty had expired, every disc that I put in indicated it could not be read. I disassembled the 360, cleaned it out thoroughly, and reseated the magnetics on the optical drive. Problem solved and a working 360 for another month.

After researching the E 74 error code it appears to be either a problem with the video cable, scaler chip or GPU. A co-worker had a spare video cable so I swapped it out with no success. The problem is definitely hardware related and probably needs to be sent in for repairs. I don’t feel like doing a hack repair job only for it to work a limited amount of time.

So why the frustration? I can honestly say that the XBox 360 is most unreliable piece of electronics equipment I have ever owned. I have an original NES, a Playstation, Playstation 2, Sega Genesis, GameCube, and Nintendo Wii all older than the 360 that are still fully functional to this date. The 360 has quit working 3 times in one year! Hell, my father in law still has a working Atari 2600.

Taking a cue from my good friend Patrick, who likes to write letters to Senators, Presidential Candidates, newpaper editors, etc. I fired off an e-mail to Steve Ballmer, expressing my frustration. Surprisingly (tongue in cheek), I haven’t heard anything back. The decision now..to repair or opt for a $400 paper weight.

I’m also working on acquiring another non-working game. I haven’t committed yet, but the price is right and it’s not too far away. The only problem is working out the details of a pickup as my calendar is pretty full for the next few weeks and I’m not sure how long the current owner would be willing to hold onto it for me.

For those that are interested, there haven’t been too many updates to the site as I recently attending a week long conference in Florida and just returned Sunday from a week long vacation in South Carolina. In Tampa, I briefly visited the local GameWorks. I was pretty disappointed in the game selection. They had a couple of Madden showcase cabinets, a ton of sit down racers, a few redemption games and 3 pinball machines. They were all Stern machines including a Nascar machine which was out of order, a Family Guy machine and one other which I can’t recall the name of. Not one classic game in the joint.

In South Carolina, I took my kids to a mini-golf/go karting place one evening after dinner. They had a decent arcade with about 5 pinball machines (the only one I can remember is a Williams Funhouse), some sit down racers including Need For Speed, Fast and The Furious, Mario Kart Arcade GP (which my kids think we need to own), some skeeball machines, a few redemption games, Tekken 3 and 5 if memory serves correctly and even a Ms. Pacman/Galaga 25th anniversary game.

That’s all for now….I’ll save my brush with death with a shark for another day. I might have to stretch the facts just a bit to make it sound more impressive than it actually was.

Anyway, last week, my long time friend and good buddy Patrick was in town.  Patrick is a frequent commenter on this site and lives in Hawaii, so we don’t see each other too often.  About a week ago, we developed a great plan…Saturday would be “game night”.  Patrick would show up around 5:00, we’d cook some burgers on the grill, have a few beers and then head to the basement for some serious old style arcade gaming.

I knew the game of the night was going to be Track & FIeld and that’s the way it turned out.  We started playing the game the correct way, by pounding on the buttons with our hands.  Patrick was no match for me and quickly decided that he needed to cheat, like we did in the old days.  I showed him the wooden dowel that I used as a cheat mechanism and he quickly began searching the basement for his own cheating device.  For those unfamiliar, back in the day, we used to use pencils, combs, etc. to quicken our running speed.  The device was placed over the middle finger with your index finger and ring finger on top.  With just the right amount of pressure, you’d create a fulcrum and tapping on one end of the device would yield great speeds.

After a few minutes of searching (with my help) we found a small 6″ plastic ruler for Patrick to use.  It took a few tries for him to get the hang of it, but once he did, it was game on.  Patrick consistently kicked my behind in the 100M dash.  The long jump, javelin and hammer throw were toss ups as either of us could top one another given a perfect run and jump/throw.  Patrick was no match for me in the hurdles as he tried to perfect his use of the ruler while trying to press jump at the same time.   Each game boiled down to the high jump and as luck would have it, Patrick sucked.  He failed to beat me once at the high jump and the margin was so great that I always regained the points lead.

Frustrated by Track & Field, we eventually hit every game in the collection.  Patrick whooped on me in Missile Command and All American Football.  He was no match for me in Donkey Kong, Dig Dug and Omega Race.  The real battles of the evening took place in Track & Field.

I promised Patrick that if he broke any record, I would reset the top scores the following day after he left.  Sure enough, during the course of the evening, Patrick topped my records on Track & Field in the long jump and placed second in the javelin.  I still can’t beat the default high score in the javelin and neither could Patrick, but he ranked higher than me.  This left me with a dilema….reset the scores or try to beat the record.  I decided for the later, chucked my wooden dowel to the side and decided to try the ruler.  On about my third game, I regained the record on the long jump (sorry Patrick).

Patrick has promised that he’ll be back in August.  Here’s to another great night of gaming…perhaps there will be a new game in the collection by then…..