Hi,
I'm Erik, from the Netherlands and 44 years of age (

) In my childhood, the late seventies, early eighties, I used to play the common video games in pubs. I liked them a lot, especially DK, Galaga, Pacman, Gyruss, Phoenix, MoonCresta, etc. You could say that I'm a SHMUP fan.
From around 1984 until 1997 I wasn't involved in gaming (school, work), but in 1997 I read an article about Mame, which ignited the love for arcade gaming all over again. I built my first mame cab back in 2003 from a junk cab and since then I bought another two generic woody cabs (very ugly, but very useful) and a few Japanese Candy cabs, like New astro City, Egret 2 and Egret 3. I have most classic game boards which I used to play as a kid, but my PCB collection also contanins some nice other classic and modern SHMUP's from Konami, Psykio, Toaplan, Cave. Although I love my candy cabs and my PCB collection, I never lost my dream of owning some original classic cabs like DK, Ms. Pacman, Phoenix, Galaga, and if they were not so expensive (importing etc. costs a lot of money), I would have pursued this already some time ago.
But now this dream could still become true becaue I have a possibility to buy a nice DK cab (see my post in the technical section), with only a little restoration work.
I'm sure that I will have a nice time on this forum.
Here is a picture of my Mame cab (you love it, or you hate it):