Hello guys,
I'm relatively new there and forgot to introduce myself. My name is Jan Orna, born in 1979, and I'm quite sure that I have bought some games and cabinets from many of you on ebays around Europe
In the past I was also active on european demoscene (Marshals).
In the Czech Republic the arcade market was very different. We have been under the Russian influence and it was very hard to play any videogames here. I have seen first cabinets (czechoslovakian made) on fairs, there were russian televisions, and mostly bootleg boards with awfull home-made joysticks and so on. But the games (Frogger, Galaga, PacMan, Moon Patrol, Phoenix etc.) were just amazing and I got hooked on it. When the Soviet union crashed itself, borders were open and I have seen some gamehalls in the Western Europe: Spain (Canarian Islands, Mallorca), also in Italy and Germany. I was a teenage computer gamer in these years and I promised myself to let my dream come true: To have a fullsize arcade cabinet at home.
Many time have passed away and from a huge nostalgy I have started to collect cartridge games, consoles and accessories. When I do anything, I'm doing this with passion and at a full throtle:
http://bomberoza.net/collections.php?p=consoles_and_gamesIn year 2004 I have bought a first cabinet and the dream came true. It was dedicated upright Klax from Atari, in nice condition. This was the top of my collection, a real fullsize cabinet in my home - whow! And when I woke up a day after it's arrival, I was pretty sure this is not a last one
The madness started: I have buying nice cabinets in auctions in Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Austria, later from Italy and United Kingdom. Sometimes we have picked up some of our cabinets to the parties of various companies, it was nice bonus in my growing collection. For me are interesting cabinets from 2D graphics generation. And when my garage and all storages in houses of my friends were full, there was a basic question to be answered: "It's time to sell this all and live a normal life again or realizing a museum open for public?" So in time when we have been waiting our first baby with my wife, I have chosen the more challenging way - and the ArcadeHry museum project was born. ArcadeHry means ArcadeGames, it's my variation on the word VideoGames.
year 0 : 2010
My family had an empty barn originaly made for medieval festivals nearby the Castle of Cerveny Ujezd, what's 10 kms from Prague in the Czech Republic. In autumn we did the reconstruction, mainly the electricity and isolations of walls. Before the winter we have moved all my stored cabinets there. The most of games were not working, had so much technical issues and problems, but my little team have joined an experienced "bastler" Vesly and with him in -10 degrees of Celsius we have been repairing the cabinets whole winter - yes, there was no heating this time. During this period I have completely ruined up my finances, health of myself and my two coworkers, but finally we managed that.
year 1 "Verification": 2011
The first opening day of Arena ArcadeHry.cz was 16. April 2011. We had 55 running videogames there and more than 20 not working. On the first day we had only 14 visitors after huge promo in newspapers and various magazines and webzines. I was I thinking about suicide these days
But I never gave up the fight, contacted more people and friends and two weeks after the opening we have been in the News on First channel of Czech national televison. After this report we have been contacted by every major media companies on the Czech market. But numbers of visitors were growing very slowly. This was "the test year" - we have been testing the visitors if they like to come and play arcades, and visitors were testing us if we keep the arcade miracle alive. After paying all the monthly expenses (electricity, insurance etc.) we have used all the profit for repairs and acquiring new cabinets.
year 2 "Confirmation": 2012
We have opened after the winter with more games (90 cabs) and new system of a tour. From the beginning numbers of visitors have been rising also more mentions in the media helped us a lot to stabilize our budget. From August 2012 our museum is fully financing itself: monthly fees for electricity, repairs and also acquiring the new games from the money we take from visitors. We absolutely didn't expect this so soon, but from the first day, we have been working very hard to reach that goal. During the year we have also presented our cabinets on rock festivals around republic what earned us more money to buy new cabs and make some more investments into the Arena.
year 3 "Strengthening": 2013
This season we have entered with about 110 cabs, of course counting fully working ones only. After visit of Spilmuseet, RetroGames and Amusement Only, we discovered that we are really the largest retro-videogames arcade museum in Europe, we were very proud
Numbers of visitors were still growing this season. We have been saving money for worser times and also used some for buying more expensive cabinets into our collection. We had a lots of business trips with the cabs.
year 4 "Boom": 2014
Long time medial impact of our promo brought to us still more and more visitors. Arena was nearly full of games (around 140) so we have started to think about branches or barcades. We saved some money and finally decided to invest into the isolations of the roof and the heating system (heat pump air-air). This huge and very expensive rconstruction we did in the half of November when we are normally closing because of winter. One month ago we have opened again and for the first time we were able to offer people to play our games in the Winter. Arena ArcadeHry.cz prolonged it's season to the all year service.
year 5 "Uptake": 2015
We are open for about two and half months now. Actually we got 150+ working arcade cabinets. Visitors are returning and still newbies are comming with them. This year we have decided to finally improve all our cabinets. We have started from the oldest games from 70s, we make complete cleaning, wiring imroving, repairing the wood and metal parts, finishing service we had no time before when many of games were problematic and it was crazy to keep them alive. Marquees are shining, long time lost graphics on cabs are comming back, so the games are looking better every day.
Actual gallery:
Full gallery:
http://arcadehry.cz/index.php?str=30Full list of our games:
http://arcadehry.cz/index.php?str=51We have saved so many dead games, boards and equipment here at ArcadeHry. With our visitors we are keeping the arcade spirit alive here. If you are interested in visiting us, feel free to check the transport info on the website:
http://arcadehry.cz/index.php?str=39 We are allways happy to welcome our colleagues and arcade enthusiasts here. If you like to offer us some cabinets, feel free to do it aswel.
Thank you for patience and I hope we will encourage you to start your own arcade business!
Jan Orna
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