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Video Tour of the 'Luna City Arcade'
A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned the pretty awesome personal arcade of Peter Hirschberg, located in Linden, VA. Ryan R sent us the heads up that someone put together a video tour. It's an even better look at what a lot of us agree is an amazing collection of vintage arcade games.
arcade
Pretty Amazing Personal Arcade Collection
The Washington Post has a neat little article on Peter Hirschberg, a Linden, VA guy who has made a hobby out of restoring old arcade games. Hirschberg recently completed building his own personal arcade, dubbed "Luna City Arcade," filled with 65 restored arcade classics. It's a private collection, but Hirschberg seems happy to show it off within reason:
For Hirschberg, the arcade is a labor of love, not a business. There are change machines on either end of the arcade that freely spit out quarters at the touch of a button — Hirschberg doesn't ask his guests to spend their own money to play. The arcade is illuminated with blacklights, all the better to light up the space-themed carpet. To complete the scene, his personal soundtrack of 1980-era rock tunes by Foreigner and Journey play on the stereo.
A complete list of his arcade games and other stuff can be found at his website.
Heaven in His '80s Arcade [Washington Post, photo credit David Beltran-del-rio]
auction
Sealed Chrono Trigger Fetching a High Price on eBay
How much is a really good old game worth to you? What if it was still in it's original shrink wrap? According to eBay, the right game can be worth quite a bit to the right people. A seller is currently hosting an auction for a sealed copy of Chrono Trigger for the Super Nintendo that has shot up to an amazing $420.55. With thirty bidders and a day and a half still left to place bids, something tells me it will go even higher. My question is, what will the winner do with their expensive prize? Will they open it and play with it or will it become a pricey knick-knack that will take up shelf space and no doubt garner the envy of hardcore Chrono Trigger fans.
[via GoNintendo]
nerd in paradise
Flynn's Akihabara Adventure: Part One
Today marked the day I had been looking forward to since I found out I was going to Tokyo, a trip to the nerd mecca, Akihabara. Accompanied by some friends and the ever stalwart friend of Kotaku, Witzbold, we navigated the massive Tokyo subway system and arrived safely in Akihabara after long journey that seemed to never end.
First stop: Super Potato. You've heard about it, you've read about it, you may have even seen pictures of it, but nothing can prepare you for actually seeing it in person. The outside is fairly unassuming and seems nearly invisible compared to the surrounding shops with their large neon signs. A dingy hallway with a few handmade signs mark the way to a tiny elevator that barely contained our four person party. When the doors opened again onto the third floor, we all gasped in amazement. Here we stood, on the border of vintage game paradise. Famicoms and other ancient systems lined the walls with shelves upon shelves of games of every size and shape imaginable dotted here and there with toys and other gaming memorabilia.
The next floor was just as crowded with every available space taken up by a immense collection of more toys, game soundtracks and various knick knacks. One last trip up the stairs brought us to a dimly lit and smoky arcade filled with various otaku and their girlfriends (yeah, they had them!) who lined the back wall texting on their phones, waiting for their geeky knights to finish conquering the video game world.
Obviously, hearing me describe it is nothing compared to seeing what it was like in photos. I took a ton of pictures despite the various signs indicating that photos weren't allowed that I pretended to ignore, all for you, our precious readers. So, click below and enjoy the thirty six photo gallery of the possibly greatest vintage game store in the world.
good things come in mobile packages
Atari Flashback Portable
The only way to play Atari in this day and age is to go mobile. New details on the Atari Flashback Portable which willl run on three AAA batteries and come equipped with a USB port that can load games onto the handheld. The cutie-patootie will also come with two controller ports so you can plug in two joysticks and get some regular-sized Atari action going on. How that would work on the tiniest of screens is anyone's guess but if you don't mind being super close to your opponent, it could turn out to be more fun than fatal. More »
coming soon
Sonic 2, F-Zero X On Deck For Wii VC
In addition to spilling the beans on Tomb Raider: Anniversary for the Xbox 360, the ESRB also gives us a look at what's next for the Wii Virtual Console. More »
gone but not forgotten
The Used Video Game Industry
According to an article in The Ledger, the "mom and pop shops" that sell video games have to rely heavily on second-hand sales in order to keep up with their chain-store competitors. By focusing on the used games side of the business, retailers can control the pricing of their inventory, whereas with new games, the price is fixed and a retailer may only make $10 or less for one title. With the used games, buying low and selling high has allowed a lot of these stores to stay open. More »
like fine wines
ESRB Rates Actraiser For VC, Streets of Rage 2 For Xbox 360
North American Wii owners lamenting the fact that they're the last to get the Enix SNES classic ActRaiser for the Virtual Console will be happy to read that the ESRB has rated the game, indicating a release is imminent. Well, more than likely. More »
dead horse dept.
More Sega Vintage Games For XBLA
Those Sega Vintage Collection images? They were real. Last week, we took the Sega PR doublespeak at face value, thinking that someone had faked images of Sonic the Hedgehog for Xbox Live Arcade. We've learned our lesson and know not to those marketing types ever again. More »
snes
The Epic Tale of SNES Discoloration
Vintage Computing's Benj Edwards is a man possessed. Possessed with understanding (and solving) the problem of Super Nintendo plastic discoloration, his investigation of the burning question "Was my Super Nintendo always this yellow-ish?" has yielded interesting results. More »
ebay
The Uber Console Collection Auction
Forget the instant console collection. If you've always wanted to get into collecting vintage game consoles but weren't sure where to start, we've found the definitive starting point. It's an auction up on eBay UK right now entitled ber 90 Telespielkonsolen (Over 90 Television Consoles), and it is uber indeed. With game systems ranging from old classics like the Atari 2600 (4 versions!) to obscure items like the Game Axe NES clone, the auction covers over 2 and a half decades of gaming history. There are consoles here I've never even heard of.The auction starts at 3,000 Euros, which is close to $4000, but with 80% of the systems confirmed to be in working order it is totally worth it. The poster recommends you come to Germany to pick up the systems due to high shipping costs, but if you end up winning this horde I very much doubt price is going to be an object. More »
steampunk
Steampunk Laptop
I type this from my bathtub, where I am currently transmitting raw text directly from my sinuses into a copper receptor dish situated atop my viewing screen in the other room. The water is tepid and I am clammy with soap scum and the patina from my plate-and-rivets bath ducky. More »
nes
NES DVD Player Hits eBay
Hey, NES lovers, if you remember that ultra sweet NES DVD player hack we wrote about a few months ago, well, nice noodle. The creator, one Mr. Redwolf, the man responsible for VintageComputing.com and a stint at GameSetWatch and the hack, is putting up his fully functional project on eBay. Lazy bums with electronics ignorance like me can now snap this bad boy up courtesy of eBay. More »
retro
Interview with Greatest Video Game Collector Ever
Remember this? The lucky child and pretty much every video game ever printed. RedWolf over at VintageComputing was able to track down the owner and conducted a short email Q&A. "He's a bit reclusive (answering only 10 of 17 questions asked)," writes Red "and not exactly a master at typing the English language (I've had to clean up his answers quite a bit)." Huh, the greatest video game collector evar is not the greatest grammaritarian evar. Imagine that. (Is grammaritarian even a word?) More »
gba
Buy Extremely Rare GBA Game Cheap!
It's the game that slipped through the cracks. The 2002 Tiny Toon Adventures: Scary Dreams for the GBA was believed by many gamers and by the game's Japanese producer to have only gotten a Europe release. The game, however, also got a U.S. release. Well, sort of. It actually got an extremely limited, stopped mid-production release with even review copies being recalled. The Treasure-produced software was barely brought to the States by a company called Conspiracy. More »
vintage
