>>> EUROCADE 2011 <<< 3 september 2011 - Europe's own CAX :)

[ckong]

... Hey is it possible for someone to make a short list here of all (or at least most of) the ppl who were there, their nicknames, their names, their country or region, and their cabs at the event? Like for example as far as i could figure out, Muerto / Michael / Denmark/UK / (Gravitar?)?

That should be an easy job to do for André.

yeah, André told me that you actually had to do some math at the end of your game to get the nice endscore of 555.550 shown on the screen. Amazing. 

[kroustibat]

I really enjoyed this amazing w-e, meeting old and new friends, enjoying great classics games (damn chris , now i need an asteroids ^^). Hope there'll be more :p

anyway, i just want to thanks all the crew members and their familly for making this possible.

[level42]

My good friends.......


What can I say ? FInally found some time to write something here...

So much has already been covered. The feeling of the whole event was simply brilliant !

It was a lot of hard work, not just for the crew, but also for the people bringing their cabs. Some had to do a lot "Tetrissing" to get their machines out (Bruno !) and and f.i. bringing a Full Size SW trilogy arcade is not a "light" task !

There were no big problems (I think).  
I was VERY VERY happy that we decided to use the clubhouse, it turned out to be the perfect location, it would have been impossible or very unpleasant to have done this in my gameroom/backyard. The only thing missing at the clubhouse was an air-conditioning, because the weather gods thought it was funny to give as the hottest day of this summer (up to 28 degr. Celsius) after MONTHS of terrible weather. Any way, this DID give it all a sunny (sea-side arcade) feeling, it was nice to sit outside and allowed us to bring all the cabs in without need for covers...

To my surprise I actually managed to play a good couple of games, although I also missed some (Outrun !!) and played too some too little (Q*bert !!!)

I was VERY VERY happy that my Star Wars cockpit performed perfectly for the entire day. It was up for 16 hours in one go (with one break of 45 minutes for dinner) without a single issue.....YES !!!!

As always it's the games you DON'T expect to fail that failed !


Full Eurocade damage report:

MC was the first heat-victim (I think most problems were heat related, maybe we should have taken off the backs....) but Michael had a spare board luckely and it worked fine ever since...
The Space Pirate (my god, what a beautiful machine it is, in such great condition still) had a few typical Cinematronics issues, but I managed to play it a couple of times.
The Centi showed some errors during play, thought I'd fixed it because the 5V was only 4.8 V on the board, so I upped it a bit, but I think the potmeter is a bit dodgy...
The Galaxian multi board froze at one point....I hope it's nothing serious....
The Ms.Pac started to produce weird graphics (sometimes) alhtough the game still ran. I guess overheated RAMs...(I forgot that some had a missing heat-sink).

Further damage:
1 hurt toe
2 cuts in hands
1 laptop full of coca cola (thanks to me   (But it actually survived it and kept running the entire day and night)
1 broken ego ( )
1 missing key (green label, Erik ?)
1 broken off wing of my Judge Dredd eagle....that's a bit sad (and stupid of me). The wing was already broken when I bought the JD, but I re-glued it and was good enough for me. It survived the trip to Eurocade, but on the backtrip it broke off at one point. We only discovered that when we arrived.
While driving back we found it on the road, but there were too many parts chipped of to rescue it.....

O well...I'll just take it off all toghether....

Anyway, much more to write but this is already WAY too long.

All in all, I loved organizing this and thank EVERYBODY for their part, without you it would have been impossible !!!!!!!!

[Luigi]

André, I hope your toe will be ok soon!

There are always cabs dying during such an event. That's bad with the eagle....nothing you can fix or replace in an easy way  

The Carnival also died during the evening but I hope it was only because of the heat inside. The metal plate of the power supply was so hot you could have baken an egg on it. Silly me has not paid attention to the bottom of the cab where the fan gets the cool air from. I assume it will run again when I power it up this evening  



I uploaded some pics to my gallery: http://www.thludwig.de/arcade/galerie/index.php?gallery=Parties/Eurocade%202011

Nothing that has not been showed yet but maybe someone can find himself on one of it.


IMPORTANT:

If somebody doesn't want to be shown in the public internet, please let me know and I'll remove the picture!!

[Count Galious]

Hello everyone,

I realy enjoyed Eurocade. Met great people, gained a lot of useful information and bought myself a nice scanline generator.
As i promised some of you I immediately came on board of the Dragon's Lair forum. Thanks to Andre for the great event.

(For those who wonder, I named myself after one of my all time favorite games called Maze of Galious)

[Etienne MacGyver]

(For those who wonder, I named myself after one of my all time favorite games called Maze of Galious)

That was not too hard to guess, but your real name is ?  i like to see if i can recall the face of Count Galious 

[Count Galious]

(For those who wonder, I named myself after one of my all time favorite games called Maze of Galious)

That was not too hard to guess, but your real name is ?  i like to see if i can recall the face of Count Galious 

Martijn. A friend of Donald (aka Arcadegek) 
I met some other guys I know. I didn't know they would be there also. Was great fun.

[Etienne MacGyver]

... Hey is it possible for someone to make a short list here of all (or at least most of) the ppl who were there, their nicknames, their names, their country or region, and their cabs at the event? Like for example as far as i could figure out, Muerto / Michael / Denmark/UK / (Gravitar?)?

That should be an easy job to do for André.

yeah, André told me that you actually had to do some math at the end of your game to get the nice endscore of 555.550 shown on the screen. Amazing. 

I actually wanted to make "mugshots" of the people when they entered, but i simply was too busy doing other stuff,

Anyway, maybe we can still create that list.

If there are people that dont want theyre picture on the internet, let us know , so we can remove / blur that.
All you guys where just too nice to meet, and a misunderstanding is not worth that new friendship if you ask me.

Anyway, back to the "Count", i believe this is you behind the Q-bert IIRC:



Correct me if i am wrong please 

[ckong]

Full Eurocade damage report:

.... 1 missing key (green label, Erik ?)

Yep, I found it in my pocket, will send it back to you today.

[Count Galious]

Anyway, back to the "Count", i believe this is you behind the Q-bert IIRC:

Correct me if i am wrong please 

Yep, that's me

[level42]

Full Eurocade damage report:

.... 1 missing key (green label, Erik ?)

Yep, I found it in my pocket, will send it back to you today.

Thanks !....the "VUT ploeg" (you met one of the members on friday) already were moaning about the missing key. Luckily there are still spare one's so the "problem" was solved right away.

[level42]

OK....some more thoughts.....(we just said goodbye and see you soon again to Andreas, Elke, Verena and Anna after a great day at Kinderdijk & Rotterdam).

The crew: Pieter, Erik, Robin, Etienne => Without you it would have been impossible to do !!!! I am SO happy that you guys agreed in helping me out to make Eurocade the success that it has become !! I'm proud !! And you guys rock ! 
I know you also will agree with me that Etienne deserves an extra special THANK YOU because he did so many things...it's simply incredible !

The "girls behind the bar", Yolanda and Ria (and her man helped out too !) and of course my wife Wilma who shopped for all the food & drinks, cooked the chicken and meatballs and "served" everything, THANK YOU   

Ruud, my "partner in crime" when it comes to doing the "BIG HAULES".....amazing...he arranged an even BIGGER trailer then the one we used to the Belgian warehouse. This one fitted a staggering 8 uprights PLUS the SW cockpit !! He also has a lot of muscle and speed to get all the things over quickly.  (Elke made some nice picks of the transport back)...

And last, but definitely not least, all you CRAZY people who are INSANE enough to travel for hours and hours, take planes, trains and automobiles, load up the heaviest cabs you can find in your collection () and drag them all the way to Ridderkerk....without you, Eurocade would have been nothing  TO YOU ALL !!!

Financial note: It looks like we're going to be about break-even with the costs and "income". I'll publish a full report later....thank you all for donating so generously !!!

Final Eurocade thought: the atmosphere was simply brilliant. As far as I have experienced it everyone had a great time (and all the responses here seem to confirm this). Everyone was cool, relaxed, build up went smooth, lot's of people meeting again and lot's of people meeting for the first time, I think this is what makes this little community so great. So a big no HUGE thank you to Bruno, because without the DLF/ALS forum Eurocade would never have existed ! 


Then....there was this ULTIMATE gift I had the honor to receive from Dirk & Thorsten (Capt.Kirk & Luigi): A Q*bert cabinet !!!!

There's a pretty long story to that, but I'll put that in a separate thread but I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to both of these brilliant people 

My grail has arrived !!!!
Yes it is an empty shell. But the shell is in GREAT condition for a Q*bert. Of course I already "found" the CP (thanks to Bruno !!!), I already have a fresh new "swearing" marquee, the original knocker and of course I reserved one of the NOS Wells Gardner monitors for it. The rest will follow soon enough.

In fact, it's good that it's an empty shell, because now I can do the outside work first for a change

Oh, one more thing it was great fun to see some of the music club members (who had a rehearsal in the "gym" across the road, they moved because of Eurocade !) had such great fun with the games....some they played for the first time ever. This is an indication that there could be a wider interest for these games still with the general public.

ANyway, too long post alarm is ringing....

[level42]

Owww...something I forgot: Thanks to ALL for totally respecting esp. the "no drinking" rule in the gameroom....I think the separate bar helped a lot in this, but still I know this is a bit of a hard rule to follow (even I had to think about it one time....). How important that one is was proven by my accident pooring coke into Etienne's laptop....you never know how it can happen.

Also, the NO FARTING rule seemed to be totally respected....at least, I thought the room smelled pretty fresh, although some of the music club members mentioned it smelled because of the old machines running (we arcade-idiots either don't notice that anymore, or simply love it ).

Of course, this rule, and the NO CAB MOLESTING were a bit of a joke. We wanted to put up the famous "houserules" sign, but the NO LOITERING rules seemed pretty dumb, because the whole point about Eurocade is LOITERING with friends
Also the NO GAMBLING rule seemed pretty silly. So Etienne and I exchanged a couple of ideas and this is what Etienne came up with in the end. I though they were pretty funny (but nobody commented on them )

Of course I have to give credit to the arcade club in Frankfurt for the "emergency escape to cab" sign. The idea was "borrowed" because we liked it so much. I really hope they are not cross with us for this


Also, something a lot of you guys might have missed, but the piggybank Zacc (once emptied of course) was generously donated to Béla by Etienne. The reasons, well of course he is the "master Zacc collector" in Europe and he came from SUCH a great distance, plus providing all those drinks and parts for a lot of people and being such a great guy

However Béla, what we forgot to mention is that like the girl who catches the flowers thrown backwards by a bride after the wedding party, the one who "catches" the piggy-bank is the next Eurocade organizer !

 

Of course that's just a BIG joke Béla 

[Etienne MacGyver]

Yes, i mentioned in the scratch build threat.. 

[PacWhiz]

Hi Art, welcome here 

Thx!

What was the name of that game with all the red flags, I had never seen that one before 

It's called Bubble Bobble hehehe

It was incredible to watch play (while talking) while you were blasting those aliens with seemingly no effort at all.
It's like there was a bee magnet on your rockets and they were all drawn to it screaming "please, Art, kill me please".
(exactely the opposite as when I play actually).

Okay i confess, i was using the secret heat-seeking missile mode.

I liked the fact that there was crowd gathering behind you to watch you play... I had'nt seen that in years, nice old school luna park feeling.

There was a crowd?!    I saw 2 or 3 ppl i thought that was all.  I didn't really see, i was trying to shoot all the aliens before they probed me.

I myself had the time to watch your game for a moment then try every single cab around twice, check in at the hotel, have a relaxingtime in the sauna, read the whole millenium trilogy and come back to watch a little bit more of your game and count the extra lives 
Thanks for being there and congrats again!

Haha! You sure know how to make very efficient use of 1½ hours!    Was nice to meet you, thankyou Chris(Chris)!

... Hey is it possible for someone to make a short list here of all (or at least most of) the ppl who were there, their nicknames, their names, their country or region, and their cabs at the event? Like for example as far as i could figure out, Muerto / Michael / Denmark/UK / (Gravitar?)?

That should be an easy job to do for André.

yeah, André told me that you actually had to do some math at the end of your game to get the nice endscore of 555.550 shown on the screen. Amazing. 

"Moest nog even rekenen" ja... Well it wasn't calculus, but when you get to within for example 150 points you have to be careful not to shoot a purple and green in-flight, because that's 80+60 and you can't get 10 points.  And a red 100 + green 30 is no good either, coz you can't score 20!     Math is actually a fun "exercise" to try to do while playing, because apparently (at least for me!) when you are playing a shooter or maze game and using your brain to avoid enemies, the part of your brain used for mathematical calculations is (partially) "occupied", which can make even simple math hard to do during a game!

I miss playing the cabs already lol

André congrats on your (holy) grail cab!!

~Aart