Well, there’s not a lot taking place on the arcade restorations.  I’ve come to the conclusion that spring and summer are too busy for me to dedicate time to my projects.  Between kid’s baseball games, swimming, soccer, business trips and vacation there just isn’t enough time (not to mention work itself).  I guess that is one benefit to living in Illinois.  It’s so damn cold in the winter you’re forced to stay inside.  That seems to be the time when most of my work gets done.

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).

High Score

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…..