A lot of them are donations because the museum is a non-profit organization, people do donate them because they want a tax write-off or whatever. Also, there are a lot of people out there who really enjoy what we're doing and they want to be a part of it. So, they'll take a game that's in their collection that they really don't want to play anymore and they don't want to sell and give it to us. That way they know where it is and if they ever want to come play it they can just come down here and play it.
Do you give those people some kind of 'skeleton coin' or universal token to play? Or do they need to buy tokens like everyone else.
(laughs) They have to pay too.
So, the best way to describe the American Classic Arcade Museum is, as a preservation center?
"I didn't think it was a direction we should be going in, and we caught some flak for it." |
That game, wow. We have so much money tied up into that game but it isn't a matter of "How quick will we make our money back on these games?" We will never make our money back on that Death Race game, but that's not the point. The point is, that was a rare game and I thought we should get it because we had the ability and resources to restore it. We had to rebuild the cabinet... and we did.
And this is a the beauty of the internet: When we were done building the cabinet we had a Death Race game that had no side art. No one at the time was selling Death Race side art but someone said they thought it was silk screened. A guy in Florida, who owned a graphics business said "If I had a side of a cabinet, I could scan it and if someone could make screens for it we'd be able to silkscreen it."
It just so happened that I saved one of the original sides of the cabinet -- it was broken in half but it still had the original artwork. So, I packed it all up and sent it to him in Florida so we could at least save the artwork digitally for future reference.
You shipped the entire side of an arcade cabinet to someone who replied to a post on a message board?
Yeah. I cut it to a smaller size and wrapped it in bubble wrap and cardboard and shipped it UPS to him. When he got it he confirmed it was silk screened. So he scanned it, cleaned it up and we had a perfect image. Then someone in Oregon, Rich from This Old Game, saw the post and said "Well, send me the images because I do silk screening." So, Rich got the images and then contacted me and said, "I think I'm coming to your tournament this year. If you want I'll make screens and I'll put the artwork back on your cabinet as a donation to the museum."
I makes us feel good that there's other people like us that want to save this part of American history for future generations. So, we'll be debuting that Death Race machine this year at the tournament.
What do you think of the video game industry now? I mean, classic games were always focused on gameplay. It was about entertainment for the masses, for example, you walk into FunSpot and one of the first signs you see is "No Horseplay. No Swearing." It's a family friendly environment here. Do you think the video game industry has abandoned that idea?
I guess it all depends what you're looking for. There has been a trend as anyone knows, who follows games, that is more toward more violent games. But here -- back in the days of Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and we have a few of those games -- the clientele changed and all of a sudden we were hearing language here that we hadn't heard a lot of before. It just doesn't work well with parents and kids. We're a family based business.
I told the owners that I didn't think it was a direction we should be going in, and we caught some flak for it. People would ask, "Why don't you have Killer Instinct or Street Fighter II... whatever umpteenth version they had for that game" but, we pretty much stuck to the philosophy of "Don't forget what made you successful in the first place." For us, that's catering to a family based business. Mortal Kombat III was the last, you know, "fighting game" that we ever bought. That was just our stand on it. Other people, what works for them, works for them. But our thought was that this wasn't the direction we wanted to go in.
"If we had to create an Arcade Museum, pre-internet, I don't know how we'd do it." |
Oh, gosh. I don't think I could pick one. I'll give you a few. One is that Death Race I mentioned because it sat in our shop for over a year and I didn't think we'd ever be able to save it. It was that bad. It was busted up and originally it smelt so bad. The overpowering smell of mold -- we couldn't bring it into the main building.
The other one, is our Nutting Computer Space machine. It's the world's first coin-operated video game. I mean, how could you have an arcade museum and not have the world's first coin-op? Of course now the old television set in there died. So, what we're going to do with that is save the set that's in it for historical purposes and replace it with one of those old black-and-white security monitors.
And probably, one of the others is Atari TX-1. It's a three-screen driving game, which sat out of order here for probably 15 years because I couldn't find a working set of boards, nor find anyone to repair the board sets we had. Now a days you know people or meet people who can fix these things but with TX-1... every time I call someone about that game they decline because they hate that board set. Something about that board. No body wants to fix it. Eventually we had it working but just this morning (April 25) I looked and it was Out of Order and I thought "Oh, no! No please!" So, as soon as I have some time I'll have to tear into it and see what happened.
How has the advent of the internet changed the landscape of the Arcade Museum?
It pretty much is the saving grace of the Museum. I can remember in the mid-80s when something would break down here and the only place you could call was your distributor -- the place you bought it from -- and if they didn't have the parts it would be junk. Save the monitor but scrap the rest. The distributors were the only source. Now, with the internet, you can find people to fix things or reproduce things. The internet is just wonderful.
Definitely. If we had to create an Arcade Museum, pre-internet, I don't know how we'd do it.
It's funny how the classic arcade scene is being saved by technology.
Yeah. Modern technology.
And technology is largely the reason the scene died to begin with.
(laughs) Yeah.
You've probably heard that Steve Wiebe is attempting to break Billy Mitchell's Donkey Kong high-score again, this time at E3 -- the industry's major press event.
Yeah, I don't follow it religiously or anything but I had heard Steve just broke the Donkey Kong Jr. record. So, congratulations to him for that.
Thank you Gary for everything that you and your organization does. It's an amazing place, filled with special memories.
[Image Credit: Ryan H.]
