almost three months ago i picked up an
ultrarare german mad planets. just a few weeks later, the same seller offered another game on a german arcade forum and once again i was the first to reply. although amidar was NOT at the top of my list, i still like the gameplay (a mix between pac-man and qix) and because we managed to get a nice trade deal going (i had some spare system 1 parts i threw into the mix), i got the game for cheap.
amidar is originally a konami game, but in the usa it was licensed to stern. i totally L-O-V-E the colors and the looks of the american version, but it is extremely difficult to catch in europe
in france, amidar was licensed to karateco and funnily enough, at the same time when the german seller offered his amidar on the forum, that french version was for sale on ebay.fr from where i took the following pictures
however, there is also an official german version of the game licensed to the same company which did the white german donkey kongs as well: env. this is the version i was going to pick up
let's get this roadtrip going with some pics for the statistic lovers (note that my navsat is one hour behind)
as you can see, a pretty short roadtrip - wouldn't have been a lot of fun at all driving in that kind of weather all day
the seller of the cab lives "on the other side of germany", in the far north, but i was lucky enough that he bought a game on ebay himself and decided to pick it up in person. this was a perfect opportunity to bring the amidar along, which shortened my roadtrip from about 700 kilometers one way to 150 (but to be honest, i wouldn't have taken the cab if i had had to travel that distance).
we decided to meet at a motorway service area
"you have reached your destination!"
and here it is - well, at least the bottom of the cab
the proud new owner of the german amidar cabinet! i didn't like the design when i saw the game first, but i somehow fell in love with it the more i looked at the pics. although i would have preferred to own the us version, i'm totally happy with the german one.
however, i didn't just come here for the cab, i was on another mission as well - i needed to check out a location not far from where i was: just a mere 19 kilometers away!
"what the heck is he doing there?", you might be thinking. "his car is already loaded with a game, he can't get a second one in there!". well, let me step back a little bit: when i picked up the mad planets in may, i parked my car near a building construction sight right in front of an abandoned shop which had this wonderful neon sign still attached. in case you forgot or haven't read my thread, here's the picture with my car and the sign again
when i posted that picture on the forum, andré told me that he's interested in that sign, but since i'm no expert in high voltage, that sign doesn't belong to me and it is located in a highly populated area, i couldn't simply go there and remove it. so i did the very best i COULD do, i tried to find out who's
the owner of that sign. as i've said before, the shop was abandoned and the firm that was in there doesn't exist anymore. so i called around 20 - 30 people either living in that building or nearby to find out
who's the owner of that house to make a deal with him. i was unsuccessful, so i called some people in the townhall to get the desired information, but they weren't allowed to pass that information on to me
. during all that time i've reported back to andré and asked him if he had any other suggestions on what to do - but he didn't! so i promised him the next time i would be in that area i would ring some doorbells and try to find the owner by talking to people in person, not on the phone!
enough said, here's what i saw when i returned to the location almost three months later
F***as you can see, the sign has been removed, there's a security gate installed and the shop has been renovated. however, in the backyard of the building there was still some house construction going on and i didn't want to give up without a fight. so i talked to some of the people working there trying to find out what had happened to the neonlight. they remembered the sign well and told me it was taken down and trashed a long time ago, must have been at least two or 2 1/2 months
.
@André: i'm extremely sorry, i feel like i've let you down, although i did my very best and gave it all. my guess is that it must have been trashed not more than 1 - 3 weeks after my mad planets visit, so unless we had gone there immidiately, we would have been too late anyway. nevertheless, this is a huuuge loss and it would have been a great addition to your gameroom. once again, i'm sorry!
with a new amidar cabinet in my car and the neonlight disappointment in my head, i travelled home where i unloaded the game and took some more pictures of the cab.
so here comes the new leader of the pack!
this design SCREAMS 70s
it looks as if it came right out of that fabulous
TIME OUT family amusement center
and in fact here it is, back in the time tunnel for a round on the game of the week
everything about that cab is GERMAN, which makes it another ultrarare cabinet
on the back of the cab, the "german proof"
no roadtrip is complete without these
one country, two counties, 333 kilometers, 4 hours 32 minutes on the road - this roadtrip is OFFICIALLY OVER!
