So....we flew friday late afternoon from Eindhoven airport. The first (IMHO AMAZING) arcade surprise was in the departure area (behind the customs regretfully, so you can't just walk up there and play):
A nice Shrek, it was in excellent working condition, only the sound was turned down VERY low....
Also: 2 euro's gave 3 games of 3 balls, quite a fair deal IMHO. Of course we played some games, gotta support those whenever possible !!!
Also there was the "obvious" race sit-down cab:
Not too happy with this one, it took my euro but no credit....operators should be really much more careful about that, this gives arcade machines a bad name !
Of course no-one was around who was responsible for the machines....
BUT a bit to the left of this machine was.......the biggest surprise IMHO:
The machine was in excellent condition, not a scratch on the sides. The CPO did have some obvious wear though. Here I got 4 credits for 1 Euro !!!
I did pretty well on Ms.Pac (of course !!!) and had a great "arcade moment" as some younger guys who were in the cue at the gate started watching me play and said "wow he's really good"....I couldn't resist mentioning that I could practice all day
Once in cambridge we did a lot of shopping and found a nice "gadget" store. They had this in the window:
http://www.firebox.com/product/2758/Pac-Man-Alarm-Clock, video here:
http://www.firebox.com/product/2758/Pac-Man-Alarm-Clock#videos_hI was tempted (it was 15 with 25% off) but I didn't really like the build quality and the simple LCD display was a bit of a let-down. All in all I decided not to get it.
But, they also had 2 nice Atari mugs. Regretfully not the green arcade version but they did have the red one (with the huge Fuji logo) and the black one with the 6-switch 2600. Decided to buy 2. One for me, one for my friend who was with us because it had a bit of a symbolic value: Atari was what brought us together:
In the early days of owning my Atari 600XL there weren't that many people that I knew who also had one, but there was the SAG (The Dutch Atari club). They sent around a list of all members so you could find people in you neighborhood. He lived very close to me and I simply gave him a ring, and we've been friends ever since
(And "shared" a lot of Atari stuff
Then we also find a great shirt for my son at Marks & Spencer:
We stayed at the Travelodge near Cambridge Leisure center, and my son had long spotted that they had an "arcade" there....
So, of course we had to go up there for a short while and play some games. An all-time favorite is still air-hockey, although in this case it was supposed to be air-football....
(My son is forcing me to write that the kids beat us
)
I'll upload a video of the arcade section of the leisure center a bit later, it wasn't half-bad for today's standards or what we are used to in The Netherlands.
Never saw a Guitar Hero arcade before (notice the word Arcade is in Defender style on the marquee), a Pirate rail-shooter that is VERY similar to Let's Go Jungle (which I really like). The Pirate game has a really nice cabinet, a very elaborate decor on the backside. Wanted to play it but it refused my pound coins (although it did return it this time). There was also a Rambo and Terminator (new) videogame which I hadn't seen before.
For the rest, see the video.
So....arcades are not dead.......not yet.
