A Fun Spot? Part 4 – ACAM

As far as amusement arcades go, Funspot, in Laconia, NH, is big.

According to their website, they are ‘the largest arcade in the world‘. But how does that claim measure up against reality? And what, in any case, is the quality of the experience on offer?

Definitions are important here. For collectors and connoisseurs of classic video arcade games, the term ‘arcade’ has become synonymous with the larger of the rooms or buildings in which those kinds of machines were once housed – the smoky palaces of bleepy, bloopy thrills and escapism that dominated the seaside towns, and occasionally city-centres of yesteryear.

But this is where we need to stop for a minute and think. With the arcades of the Golden Age surviving only in our heads, we tend to fixate on the part of the arcade experience that appealed to us the most – the video games. Fuelled by YouTube tours of private collections, and photo galleries of arcade ‘holy grails’ on forums and blogs, there’s a tendency to dwell on the alternative reality of what Jonathan Meades calls the ‘Mythical Arcade’. I’ve been guilty of that myself. And why not? It’s a wonderful mind-spot to visit! Wouldn’t it be great if there had been dedicated, barn-like venues with an exclusive focus on the appreciation, and competitive enjoyment of video games ? It’s little wonder that our collective memory has coalesced around the false recall of that idea.

For those of us who spent out formative years in UK arcades, however, the truth is that these places never really existed, certainly not on a large scale. I’m not talking here about the high-street backrooms, or computer shops, or chippies that might have housed a few ‘spacies’. If you relax and let your genuine gaming-memories bubble up to the surface, you’ll remember that what we actually had in the bigger arcades was a mixed economy of penny-pushers, one-armed bandits, horse racing, bingo and other low-stakes gambling opportunities as well as video arcade games – but with the later only usually in the minority. Formally, the largest arcades were recognised as ‘family entertainment centres’, designed to attract the broadest possible demographic, and part them from the biggest possible chunk of disposable cash.

In that sense, Funspot isn’t really an ‘arcade’ at all. But neither can it be described as a mere family entertainment centre. No, it’s a venue which prides itself on the elevated status of ‘Family Entertainment Super Center’ – with quite some justification. You see, Funspot isn’t just a room, or a building. It’s not even a building with several floors. It is what can only be described as a compound – a sprawling complex of multi-storey-buildings strewn over a site covering several acres.

Perhaps I should qualify that observation. The word ‘compound’ has acquired some unfortunate connotations over the years. And for the casual reader, this image of the LED billboard on Endicott St. won’t help to allay those fears. Don’t worry, though – this particular compound is not home to a disturbing survivalist cult. Or at any rate, not a violent one! What you can read on the billboard is actually the state motto of New Hampshire, which harkens back to Revolutionary times, in which context it makes a lot more sense!

Most of the buildings at Funspot are inter-connected, with a few others set apart. All are enveloped within an enormous parking lot with space for several hundred cars and – potentially – thousands of visitors.

In the summer months, the activities spill out beyond the parking areas onto a crazy golf course, ice-cream pavilion, picnic area and more. This place is huge!

Inside, there’s plenty to keep the whole family busy. There are 20 bowling lanes – half 10-pin, and half candlepin. There’s a crazy golf course, there’s a cafe – the Braggin Dragon, and a bar – the D.A. Long Tavern. There are dodgems for the kids, and several floors of redemption machines, spewing out tickets that can be swapped for sweeties, toys and keepsakes.

There’s even a separate bingo hall. And that’s all well and good. I enjoy the odd punt on the redemption machines myself. Once you’ve figured out the most ‘rewarding’, and more importantly, how to maximise you chances of winning – you have the challenge of trying to get yourself a commemorative mug or t-shirt for less than it would cost to buy one outright in the shop!

But none of that is what we’re interested in! Coming back to our implicit understanding of the term ‘arcade’, the thing we really care about is its collection of ancient and historic video games! And this is where we have to make another distinction. If Funspot is the Family Entertainment Super Center, only a small part of it it would be considered an ‘arcade’ – and that is the American Classic Arcade Museum – or ACAM for short.

ACAM occupies only one part of one floor in one of the buildings at Funspot. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t large, or worthy of a visit…

Nosir, ACAM is not just #ossum, its #OssumSosBoss!

It is precisely how we would imagine a Meade-ian mythical arcade. The electronic glow from its rows and rows of carefully-curated video-games, draws you in to its half-lit sanctuary of retro-gaming history. Soft-rock classics from the 70s and 80s waft from the PA system to help ease you into your journey. I suspect that if you stood still for just a bit too long, you’d end up stuck there, not just mesmerised by the fosfor-induced nostalgia, but frozen solid for all time in pixelated carbonite!

While ACAM is packed full of video arcade machines, it doesn’t feel crowded. The aisles are wide enough to allow players on both sides to adopt even the most preposterous of arcade ‘stances’, and still allow free passage in between. More importantly, things have been arranged so that side art is always at least partially on display when warranted.

To get the full effect, I recommend making your first entrance through the bannered entry on the top-floor, opposite the indoor golfing centre. But once you’ve done that, and had an explore of the main buildings, you should try again using the steps that come up from the floor below. Perhaps on the way back from a sneaky refreshment in the D.A. Long Tavern, or from having a go on the touching, and not-at-all-gimmicky homage to Irish cultural heritage, Leprechaun.

It’s worth pointing out that while base-line snackage, such as ‘soda’ and ‘candy bars’, is available from vending machines, your options for more substantial vittles will be limited to the pizzas and other items on sale in the Tavern through the week, outside of peak season. At the weekend, however, you can also avail yourself of the culinary delights of the Braggin’ Dragon, whether that be Chilli-Cheese Dogs, Onion Rings, Fries, or all three!

NB: while the hotdog in the picture looks small, that’s an optical illusion caused by the relative size of the ketchup pots. These aren’t the inch-wide thimbles we get at McDonalds in the UK, what you’ve got there is a pair of two-and-a-half-inchers!

While there are some games from most years between Atari’s 1972 Pong and the late 1980s, there is a noticeable, and pressumably intentional emphasis on older models, many of which are not just unusual but downright rare. I saw plenty of games, which I only vaguely remembered from back in the day. Some of these, like Midway’s 1976 submarine classic, Sea Wolf, brought back particularly fond memories (read the first blog in this thread!). Shame it was out of action. Luckily, from what I remember, it was vaguely similar to Destroyer and Depth Charge, which they did have – in full working order – so I had a few goes on those instead.

I was also pleased to see a pristine example of the notorious Death Race, a two-player, top-down ‘racer’, with a single screen, where you compete to see who can run over the most ‘zombies’ in their sports car! It’s not a high-scoring game – if you can break into two figures, you’re doing well. Not something to emulate out on the roads either!

If you’ve enjoyed the arcade doc- (or should that be mock-)umentary, King of Kong, you can take your chances on the same Donkey Kong machine that’s inspired champions for decades. In fact, it sits in the middle of an impressive row of Nintendo cabinets, with all the Kongs, Popeye, R-Type, and more besides (NB: The R-Type pcb is by IREM, but was served up for the US audience in a Nintendo cabinet).

Other highlights included cockpit versions of Sega’s marvellous racers, Turbo and Monaco GP. Both use the same basic game mechanics, which – despite entering its fifth decade – remains surprisingly good fun. It’s smooth, responsive, fast – and, bascially, easy to pick up, but difficult to master.

Something else you’ll find out on the floor, which I’d heard about but never seen before was the vector-based space simulator, Star Tek. There is no doubting that the cabinet itself is a retro-futuristic work of art. And it certainly had the potential to offer an immersive experience in Captain Kirk’s chair. Sadly, IMHO, this is an opportunity missed. The game itself is shallow and repetitive, but not – it has to be stressed – in an entertaining way. I imagine that explains why I never saw one b.i.t.d.

I also found myself drawn to Exerion, a midly nauseating, but strangely compelling inertia-based shooter, that I don’t think I’ve seen in the wild since the summer of 1983. It was one of two cabinets in the takeaway on a campsite I was visiting with my parents in France! I also dallied on the crisp Krull cabinet with its twin-sticked trickery; marvelled at the photo-realistic topper (kindof) on the Alien Syndrome machine, and spent a pleasant half-hour re-acquainting myself with the spinner-induced joys of Arkanoid. And how could I not sink some serious time into the original Williams Sinistar cab, with its still-responsive 49-way joystick. The difference this makes to playing in MAME on an 8-way stick is really quite something.

While there was a general lack of shoot-em-ups, and other games from the mid-to-late 80s, the range of other genres on offer more than made up for it. Amongst them was a bewildering array of strange old distractions, which could only reasonably be described as ‘janky’. Regular listeners to the Ten Pence Arcade Podcast would have recognised a fair few of these, such as Satan’s Hollow, Circus Charlie, Kamikaze, and Radical Radial. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that they steer clear of RR‘s evil cabinet-twin, Frisky Tom. It clearly crosses the line between janky and junk. Why they have it in ACAM, and not smouldering in ashes at the bottom of a bonfire, I do not know.

New discoveries for me included Timber – a really engaging twin-sticked-lumberjack game, starring the main character from the perenially-popular Tapper; and the janky shooter, Space Dungeon, which I reckon could be a grower. I also enjoyed reconnecting with Warlords – a fantastic multi-player game which holds up well for the single gamer; and Canyon Bomber, with its cross-over bomb/coin-drop vibe.

Beyond this, there was a representative selection of heavy hitters, including Robotron, Track’n’Field, Rastan, Pac Man, Missile Command, 720 Degrees, Rolling Thunder, Gauntlet, and Black Tiger to name but a few. Sadly, there was no Time Pilot ’84 out on the floor, which was a bit of a blow, as I was hoping to get some practice in it at the time for Arcade Archive’s February high-score challenge.

If that wasn’t enough, the electronic bleeps and bloops of the arcade games was complimented by the mechanical thwacks and thumps of a row of classic pinball tables. Stand-outs for me included Xenon, Gorgar and Black Knight 2000, but there was also a selection of older machines. Downstairs, en route to the D.A. Long Tavern, was a secondary collection of DMD-based pins.

If there was one disappointment, it would have to be that there was no Rygar – unarguably (DON’T DARE!), one of the all-time masterworks of the video-arcade-game form, and I game where I am relentless pushing my personal best twoards the 5 Million point mark (yeah, #fr #srsly!)

With all of this sounding like a cut-and-paste description of a pretty exciting fantasy arcade, you might be wondering where the ‘Museum’ aspect of the title comes into play. Well, impressively, this descriptor is no mere confection or contrivance to lend the arcade a degree of gravitas. It is no symbolic blunt object, with which to bat away the painfully ignorant meddling of the Mary Whitehouses of this world. For reasons related to it’s funding model, ACAM is in fact configured as a bona fide museum, and is registered as such with the authorities. While you might feel that its collection of classic games would be enough in its own right to justify that status, ACAM goes above and beyond the call of duty in this respect.

At regular intervals throughout the arcade, you will find displays, installations, signage and interpretation boards that showcase pivotal moments, movers and material examples from the world of classic arcades. There are displays cases filled with early games consoles and cartridges, banners highlighting the impact of arcade culture on other aspects of popular entertainment, and boards telling the story of the machines that have been donated or lent by enthusiasts to be enjoyed by the wider public through ACAM. For those who’ve spent any time delving into the arcade scene on the internet over the past decade, there will be some familiar names here. There is also series of banners outlining the history of industry giants Bally-Sente, and their ‘multi-system’ cabinets, which form the backdrop to a row of the same cabinets, showcasing a selection of the weird and wonderful games that were sold for them. The example par excellence here is the bizarre ‘eat-em-up’ Snacks’n’Jackson – a game that needs to be seen rather than described!

Upping the ante in terms of scale are the apparently growing number of pivotal cabs encased in Perspex sarcophagi. But the largest artefact on display, by quite some way, is the Hercules pinball table. That thing is so big, players steer what looks like a baseball across its playfield.

An unexpected, but welcome addition to the museum displays was what can only be described as a shrine to Keith Apicary – YouTube phenomenon and comedy creation of Nathan Barnatt. Not only do we get to see Keith’s certified score of -400 on Donkey Kong, as witnessed at ACAM, but also the actual Neo-Geo multi-slot machine featuring in the video for his (in)famous, Neo-Geo Song. If you’re having a look at that, do check out Nathan’s ‘Skittels’ (Skittles) Song while you’re at it. Top notch nerdery!

Now onto the more sombre stuff.

ACAM was great, as was Funspot. Full-stop.

Something that worried me a bit about both, however, was the way you pay for the experience. The machines throughout are operated by tokens, you see, which you can buy with cash or card from dispensers in the main entrance. On one level, this is quite nice. I like dropping coins (or tokens) in the slots. It really twangs my nostalgia strings. I even have my JAMMA cabs at home set up to run on old 10 pence pieces.

The more you buy, the cheaper they get. So if you’re going to be there for a stretch, it makes sense to buy the maximum 120 tokens for $20. That works out at not much more than 10p a token. While some of the big-ticket redemption games cost 3 or 4 tokens a play, the more familiar pinballs cost 2, and most of the arcade games 1. If you’re an even half-decent player, that makes for a fairly cheap evening’s entertainment. But that’s also a problem. Businesses like Funspot were hit pretty hard by the pandemic, the lockdowns, and the slow rebound in custom afterwards. I get that they don’t want to put their regular customers off by hiking their prices, but doing so might help them to give the place a bit of refurbishment. I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest that fixtures and fittings, and especially the carpets are starting to look a bit ‘tired’. Maybe fershening things up would also encourage even more people in?

When I first went, on a cold and dark Thursday evening in February, the whole place was deserted. And things weren’t that different on the Friday. Come Saturday during the day, however, the carparks were full, and the redemption-machine areas were rammed with families, with loads of small kids tearing about enjoying themselves. And I have to say, that made for a really nice atmosphere. While ACAM was moderately lively during the day, come 6 o’clock, it emptied out almost as if someone had flicked a switch! Having passed the time on my flight out to Boston with a private screening (!) of The King of Kong, I’d been expecting a throng of middle aged nerds to descend as the families left, and for there to be some serious jostling for position on the classic cabs, and pestering of the ‘part-timers’ with announcements of ‘Kill screens’. But that was not to be. Maybe it was just the time of year, but I suppose the rag-tag collection of 30 and 40-something gamers holding the fort in the movie, would be in their 50s by now or perhaps even older. Maybe they had other things to do? Or perhaps they’ve just drifted away from the arcade scene?

From a purely personal, and selfish point of view, however, that actually worked out rather well for me as a man on a time-limited mission. It meant I had the pick of the machines, and plenty of opportunities to take (bad) photos of them to boot.* But it did make me wonder about the viability of the place going forward. Given what Funspot/ACAM has come to symbolise in the arcade community, it would be a real shame if more of you didn’t get to see it.

On the whole, the bulk of the machines were very well looked-after, and there was clearly maintenance underway on others, even while I was there. Nevertheless, I don’t know if it was reflective of the winter doldrums, or a general trend, but far from all of the games were in good working order. A few were completely out of action, but that’s something you’d expect in any busy arcade. All the same, beyond that, I’d say that perhaps a quarter of the total had issues ranging from screen problems, to broken controls or non-functioning coin-slots, which meant you either couldn’t play them at all, or couldn’t play them in a way that was enjoyable. It would have been good to have a go on Forgotten Worlds, or Buck Rogers, or Pin Bot, or Super Bug, or Bandido for example, not to mention Sea Wolf. But they were all broke in one way or another.

This, to me, points to problems. I’d suggest the easiest way to resolve them would be to replace the tokens with the kind of single entry fee used so successfully in the UK by Arcade Club, and others. Perhaps that would give ACAM the headroom it needs to help keep everything ship-shape, in Bristol fashion, and floating comfortably above the waterline? It would certainly save on the time and resources needed to fix dodgy coin mechanisms.

To conclude, you couldn’t argue that ACAM is the world’s biggest arcade. Depending on the specifics of the arcade experience you were after, it may not even have the ‘best’ collection of games in absolute terms. Based on what I’ve seen to date, that honour would have to go to the monumental, multi-level Arcade Club, Bury in England.

What ACAM does have to offer, however, is unique. It works well as a museum, but I think it’s real value is as a physical reinforcement of the idealised arcade of the early to mid-1980s. Although a mythical arcade in terms of its contents, ACAM has also achieved mythical status in its own right. But this is no fantasy arcade that you can only explore in your mind. You can actually go there, see it, and buy yourself a baseball cap to prove you’ve been!

What are you waiting for?!

* A note on the photos: I’m obviously no photographer. And I didn’t take a dedicated camera. Like most folks, I was stuck with the built-in camera on my less-than-flagship Android phone. While it seems to give reliably good results in daylight, the pre-sets struggle with multiple sources of bright light in an otherwise dark setting, eg. in a dimly lit video arcade! What this meant in practice was that I could only easily get a decent shot of the marquee, or the screen, or the cabinet, but never all three at the same time. The alternative, was to dial in the settings manually. While this worked for isolated locations, the non-uniform lighting in the arcade meant that settings that were perfect for one side of the room would have to be recalibrated for the other. This made it pretty difficult to capture consistently watchable video-footage. I realise the two obvious solutions are to invest in a better camera, and spend some time learning how to use it properly! But if anyone has any tips for apps or techniques to squeeze the most out of an Android camera in these kinds of condition, please leave them in the comments below.

Next up: Other things to do on the ACAM trail…

A Fun Spot? Part 3 – The Trip Begins!

With all my ‘pre-flight checks’ taken care of, there were only really two things left to do. The first was to pack my tiny suitcase. As I was limited to 12 kg of cabin baggage, there’d be no dinner jacket or cummerbund on this trip. But fear not, I still had space for not one but two pairs of long johns, with room to spare. Not as some kind of hidden fashion statement, but for reasons related to the second item on my list – my worries about the weather!

Now, hear me out. Obviously, I was excited about the trip. But at the same time, I was keenly aware of the very large bag of spanners the New Hampshire climate had the potential to throw in the works. You see, as Mark Twain (never) mused, it can get very cold there in the winter. So cold and icy, in fact, that Funspot occasionally closes its doors to avoid staff and customers skidding into oblivion on the road home. There can also be heavy snowfall, with proper blizzards and drifts that block the routes from Boston to the lakes. I’d clearly taken a risk, here. The price of getting to Funspot at bargain basement rates in February could easily have been delayed flights, an inability to get from Boston to Weirs Beach, or worse still, getting there despite the odds, only to find ACAM’s gates barred for health and safety reasons. As far as returns on investment go, and I’m talking both financial and emotional, that would have been tragic.

While I tried not to, I couldn’t help but keep an eye on the weather forecast. Two weeks before I was due to leave, the mercury began to drop. On the 4th of February, with windchill figured in, the temperature in the Weirs Beach area had dropped to -20°F. That’s -29°C, folks! Eeek! 50 miles up the road, however, at the summit of Mount Washington, the windchill temperature plummeted to -108°F (-77.8°C), the lowest ever recorded in the USA! That was just a wee bit disconcerting… Fast forward to the week after I came home, and the region was hit by three winter storms in a row, with many inches of snow causing mayhem on the roads, and some Funspot closures. Thankfully, as the day of my departure approached, the weather flipped, with the prospect of 16°C in Boston towards the end of my visit. Phew! I was able to sleep easy that night, but not – as it happens – for very long.

Thursday the 16th of Feb: 3 am

Yes, you read that right, folks, three o’clock in the morning – GMT. That wasn’t even when we got up, but when we had to leave to get to the airport in time! The drive to the airport was a dream, thanks to my wife, who very kindly drove me in. We neither passed nor were passed by a single car until we turned onto the A8 in front of the terminal. Despite the eerie silence, the familiar buzz of the airport dropoff zone confirmed there had been no zombie apocalypse. 20 minutes later, the gate was anounced. 10 minutes after that, I was sat there sipping a cup of overpriced coffee.

I still had a 4,000 mile journey in front of me, but the next leg was a short one – from Edinburgh to Amsterdam. I’d been lucky enough to bag a window seat, but better than that, the flight turned out to be half empty – so I had room to stretch out and sleep pretty much the entire 90-minute flight to Schiphol. For those of you who haven’t been there, Schiphol’s a big old airport, with quite a schlepp between the gates – up to 30 minutes if it’s busy. Fortunately, it was still surprisingly quiet, which is just as well. As I stumbled towards Gate 53, still half-asleep, it seemed like I was already in some kind of amusement centre. Shame those dodgems weren’t switched on. It would have livened up the two-hour wait for the next plane.

The next leg was the long one – 3,400 miles and seven hours across the Atlantic to Boston Logan. I’m sure we’ve all heard horror stories about transatlantic flights, but it seemed that luck would be staying with me on ths one. Once again, I had a window seat, and once again, the flight was far from full. Stretched out across two chairs, I enjoyed a very pleasant journey.

I used the time to get in the mood. In between snacks and snoozes, I watched a couple of movies on the in-flight entertainment system. Having seen the most recent offerings, I went for Trading Places and Beverley Hills Cop – mainly to remind myself how to talk to folks in America (not!). Staying with my chosen theme of retro gaming, I washed them down with the latest edition of Retro Gamer magazine. Then, as the frozen wilds of Canada hoved into view, I dialled things up to eleven with a private screening of The King of Kong. My destination was getting close now. What would it be like? Would I too have to negotiate a succession of well-meaning ‘enthusiasts’, press-ganging witnesses for a ‘Kill Screen’, while I was busy trying to beat my top-score on Canyon Bomber? I pondered the most appropriate swerving techniques, and had another snooze.

Before I knew it, and well ahead of time, we’d touched down in Boston. It was only 12.30 pm (EST), and with the weather being dry and mild, the likelihood of me getting to Funspot later that evening was as close to 100% as it was going to get. Yee-to-the-ha!

Having no hold-luggage to collect, I was down at customs in no time – only to experience an unexpected… ‘inconvenience’, albeit the only one of the trip. While I was fully prepared to swear that I had never been a member of the Communist Party, and to not make any stupid jokes about other kinds of party, or the contents of my bags, none of those situations came to pass. Instead, I had all of my fingerprints scanned into a US government database, like I was some kind of common crim – as opposed to an excited nerd coming to pump tonnes of money into their ailing economy. Nice welcome, guys.

After that minor annoyance, I made it down to the car-hire centre and was sitting in my Nissan Efficient by 1.45 pm. A couple of minutes of fiddling around with Android Auto later, and I was hooked up, directions enabled and heading out onto the highway.

While I’d driven on the right-hand side of the road plenty of times in the past (in countries where it was required by law!), I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous when the city underpass threw me out onto a five-lane freeway. Given the very finite nature of my journey, and the need to not get stopped by the cops or done for speeding, I was keen to keep within the limits. I was a bit surprised that nobody else was. More worryingly, however, there were no obvious safe lanes for ‘sensible’ drivers. Cars were zooming past on both sides, bobbing and weaving from left to right – and back again – pressumably to steal an extra second on their journey rather than simply for the sheer thrill of it. OK, so there may have been times when I fell into ‘the flow of the traffic’ myself. Thank goodness that Android Auto has warnings for mobile speed cameras!

As I sped away from the city, the traffic began to thin out. While it was still busy, I felt relaxed enough to turn on the radio. Having spent the afternoon in 80s nostalgia mode, I was hoping to tune into some WKWotnot rock station. But that bubble was soon burst. I couldn’t find anything less bad than the UK’s dreadful Radio 1. So I turned it off. Passing into New Hampshire, the speed limit had ramped up to 70 mph, and I began to see the remnants of the previous weeks’ snow drifts at the side of the roads. Best I concentrate in case it was icy.

Just over two hours later, I finally rolled into the hotel carpark in Laconia. While it was still light, the sky had started to cloud over. Ominous, perhaps, but at least I’d made it that far intact, and only down the couple of dollars I’d had to spend on tolls. By the time I’d checked in, and dumped my bags, it was 4.36 pm EST – or 8.36 pm GMT – almost 18 hours after my day had begun. But it wasn’t finished yet. After reporting back to the mother ship, it was time for a power snooze. At 5.45 pm, I’d spring into action, get myself coffeed up, then head out into America!

When I woke up, it was starting to get dark. And like a panther, I pounced into action. OK, so I was still a bit tired from the long journey – not sleepy-tired, you understand, but a touch weary, and possibly not in the optimum condition for a primo gaming sesh at Funspot. Nevertheless, I felt I should get in there, stake out my claim – so to speak – and figure out how I was going to spend Friday and Saturday. Besides, I needed something to eat, and I’d heard that Funspot had good pizzas.

15 minutes later, I was back in the car, and navigating the unfamiliar US infrastructure. They don’t seem to be quite so big on signposts, or roundabouts, as we are over here. What they have instead is a system of filter lanes, which can break off from the main road without warning if you’re not exactly sure where you’re going – forcing the inexperienced driver into wrong turns. But not I, being ably assisted – as I was – by Anroid Auto. By this point, I was starting to feel rather fond of it.

As keen as I was to get to the Amercian Classic Arcade Museum, there was something I had to do first. Something important, but paradoxically, not something that deserved any quality time during the day. I had to visit me a Walmart – and not just out of curiosity (we read about them a lot over here, in various contexts); I had to stock up on supplies.

In my mind’s eye, Walmart would be like a supersized ASDA, filled with customers manouevering heavy trollies laden with oversized packages. But it wasn’t like that at all. Perhaps it was just the branch I visited in Gilford? The store had a massive footprint, but only a small part of it was given over to food and drink. There wasn’t a massive range to choose from, and what was there was tended to be not just expensive, but excessively so, IMHO. There were no bargains as far as I could see, with prices substantially higher than you would pay in Lidl, for example. Apart from the sack of cheetos, and tray of diet coke, I needed some deoderant – as a precautionary measure, of course! Of the 5 or 6 familiar brands, none cost less than $5.95 for a standard-size tin! That’s the same stuff you’d never see for more than £3 over here, and usually discounted closer to £2. There was one exception. At $1.29, I had no choice but to become a mad axeman!

2 kg of ‘Murican chee? $18. I didn’t buy this!

400 g Extra-large Cheetos? Yes please!

The rest of Walmart was like a giant crossover between Primark and Home Bragains, with next to none of the latter. You could buy clothes, tech, kitchenware, gardening equipment, and sports gear. There was a whole aisle devoted to fishing rods, for example. And a special counter stacked with… GUNS! Time to go!

One, or maybe two sneaky cheese puffs later, and I was on my way. Not long after that I was passing the the famous 50s-style sign for Weirs Beach. Although it was only a smidge after 7 pm, the sign and its surroundings were shrouded in darkness. What a relief to conitnue two minutes up the road and see this…

I’d arrived. But to what? The enormous carpark was all but deserted. I had kindof anticipated that a dark Thursday evening, nestled between winter storms, might not see the venue at it’s liveliest. But was it shut? Had they checked the forecast and closed down for the day? Had I missed the memo?

No! It was open! I headed in.

Rather than zoom straight up to the holiest of holies – ACAM – I followed my stomach to the DA Long Tavern, where I ordered myself a pizza and a couple of drinks – one soft, one not so much. By that stage in the evening, however, ‘ma een’ had apparently grown too big for ‘ma belly’. While the pizza was very nice, it was a lot heftier than it looked, and in the end, I couldn’t finish it. #Pizzafail. A ‘Regular’ serving would have sufficed. But I should have known that. For when you’ve come 4,000 miles to experience the spiritual home of the video arcade scene, you need to stay limber and light on your feet!

Next up: ACAM!

A Fun Spot? Part 2 – Coming to America

With my visit to the States dialled in for the 16th to the 20th of February, I started finalising my plans.

Finding accommodation near Weirs Beach turned out to be surprisingly difficult, with far fewer bargains to be had than you might expect from travelling around the UK or Europe. The best deals by a long way seemed to be for rooms for four sharing, which worked out quite reasonable per head if they were going to be full, but with limited concessions for less than maximum occupancy. Whether this was because of the season, I don’t know. With umpteen ski resorts within an hour’s drive, it could well be that I’d been gazumped by the winter sports crew. Although, having said that, I never saw anyone driving about with skis on the roof of their car. What I did learn was that the region is quite the tourist Mecca in the summer, with prices ramped up to match. The moral of the story seems to be book as far in advance as you can.

In the end, I settled for the Best Western Hotel in Laconia. It was only 20 minutes drive from where I wanted to be, had free parking – which isn’t always the case – and would make it a bit more straightforward to check out the surrounding area while I was there. It also meant I could explore ‘downtown’ Laconia by foot if need be.

I reckoned it would take a few days to drill down the Funspot experience. If things went according to plan, I’d be there on the Thursday evening, most of the Friday, and a chunk of the Saturday. And that, in my experience, would probably be enough. I’d leave Laconia first thing on Sunday morning and head up to the Maine coast for a look-see and some ‘lobsta’. Then, in the evening, I’d drive back down to Boston in time to drop off the car at the airport, head over to the Hampton hotel in Chelsea, and get ready for an early start exploring the city on the Monday.

With flights, accommodation, and itinerary booked, I was hoping I could kick back, relax, and get ready for departure. But coming to America, it seems, isn’t quite that simple. There are a couple of things that aren’t just convenient to get sorted out in advance, but essential if you want to get into the country at all.

The first is the ESTA Visa-Waiver Certificate. This is available to UK-based (and some others) travellers who haven’t been to Cuba or North Korea recently (seriously). Unless you’re also a US citizen, or have a full Visa for US entry, you won’t be allowed into the country without one. To get it, you need to go to the Department of Homeland Security website, upload you passport details, and provide them with various pieces of information – including the addresses and telephone numbers of named contacts in the places you’ll be staying! You also have to pay a fee – a theme which recurs with no little frequency in any kind of ‘Murican Adventure.

Something else you have to do at the moment (which could change in the near future), is provide official proof of your Covid vaccination, and also make a declaration confirming that you’re not currently ill with the disease. While I’m a veteran of multiple vaccinations, my login to the records site had become corrupt, and it took an hour or two on the phone to sort it out. So don’t leave it to the last minute!

Something else you’re going to want is a US SIMCARD for calls and data. I hadn’t been aware, but few (or perhaps even no) UK mobile contracts offer a roaming service in the States at anything like sensible rates. And if you’re going to be driving, you are going to need the internet for your navigation programme. I used Android Auto, which linked my phone with the screen in the hire care. Looking back, I am seriously glad that I had it. Getting about without it would have been impossible. Fortunately, you can pick these SIMs up relatively cheaply on the internet, and get them fitted and activated before you go.

They used to say that ‘cash is king’ in the USA. But the reality, these days, is that plastic passes in most places Stateside. They even have contactless – just like everywhere else. Imagine that! Fortunately, my credit card lets me pay for services in foreign currency without charging a fee. Even if yours does too, it’s worth phoning the provider before you go, and letting them know your travel plans – just in case they shut it down for payments in unexpected locations.

All the same, you’re also going to want a wad of small-denomination banknotes. Not just so you can shuffle them out à la Danny Devito shouting, ‘Dolla, dolla bill, y’all’. Almost everywhere you go in the States, and for lots of the things you’ll have to do, you’ll need to leave a tip. Typically, this will be:

• In restaurants and diners,
• For every individual (boozaholic) beve-radge (yeah, I know – deal with it) you buy in a bar,
• Every morning for the housekeeper who tidies you hotel room,
• For tolls on roads and bridges ($1 – $2 fairly frequently on the bigger roads),
• But there’s prolly other stuff too…

You’ll need to be careful with the cash, though. All American banknotes are the same size, and more or less the same colour. Under dim light, it wouldn’t be too difficult to confuse a one for a twenty, or a twenty for a one…

A final top tip for thrifty travellers: don’t pay the extortionate fees for choosing your seats on the plane, but do check in as soon as you get the chance. If you leave things to the last minute, odds are you’ll be relegated to the middle or back of the plane.

Next up: The Trip Begins!

A Fun Spot? Part 1 – A New Year’s Resolution

January 2023.

Christmas and New Year had come and gone. The holidays were drawing to a close, but hadn’t quite finished yet. With the wife and kids out shopping, I was home alone. As the day was dark and dreich (yes, there does seem to be a lot of those on this journey), there was no incentive to do anything outside. So, I took the opportunity to relax. What a weird experience. It was calm, quiet, and sitting there, freed from my Hogmanay hangover, but not yet gripped by the demands of work, I slipped into a moment of eternity. Which was nice…

Sitting on the sofa, and sipping my cappucino, I browsed through an old tablet, recently revived from the dead. The screen connector had come loose inside the case, sending the poor thing into a coma – an easy fix when you know how, but a mystery otherwise. I came across a PDF I must have downloaded to ‘read later’, Peter Hirschberg’s story of his home arcade, Luna City: The moment that couldn’t last. If you haven’t seen it yourself, it’s well-worth checking out. Peter’s story is both inspiring and sad, and tinged with quite a deep sense of loss that goes beyond the triviality of video arcade machines. But at the high point of Peter’s breakneck journey, the home arcade he built and stocked in his own front yard was truly amazing. It was the epitomy of what Alan Meades describes as the ‘Mythical Arcade’ in his recent academic-crossover survey Arcade Britannia: A Social History of the British Amusement Arcade.

This got me thinking. The only way to visit Hirschberg’s arcade was in cyberspace. But there must surely be opportunities to seek out and enjoy a similar experience #IRL? Of course, I am well-aware of the towering Leviathon of arcade gaming that is ‘Arcade Club – Bury’. I’ve been lucky enough to visit half-a-dozen times over the past seven or eight years. And I should add, that it has kept getting better, beyond expectation, every time I’ve been! But that’s a story I’ll return to in another post.

Back in January this year, I had a hankering for something new, something different. If you’ve read my previous blogpost on this topic, you’ll know that I’ve developed a newfound enthusiasm for expanding my horizons. Having spent a fair bit of time on arcade Twitter and YouTube during the holidays, exploring the options, there were a couple of venues in particular that had caught my eye. ‘RMC Retro’s: The Cave‘, and its conjoined twin ‘Arcade Archive‘, in Chalford, near Stroud, looked like they might well tick the right boxes.

With a few days of holiday coming up in February, I got busy plotting a visit.

The simplest solution would have been to drive. However, this would be no Saturday-afternoon spin. The return journey covers around 1250 km (or 775 miles in old money). Having spent many petrified hours driving up and down the M6 in the winters of the mid-2000s, blinded by the spray from thundering freight lorries and buffeted by the icy winds, I decided that would have to be the summer option. The alternative would be to use public transport.

Climate change is real, folks, and we all need to do what we can to minimise our carbon footprint when we have a reasonable opportunity to do so.

For me, long-distance busses are not the answer. I am, you see, not just getting on, but rather tall. My days of spending twelve hours locked into various yoga positions just to save a couple of quid on a journey are, thankfully, behind me

In any case, if the journey is long, I much prefer trains. Apart from anything else, a train journey offers a protective capsule, in which you can sit undisturbed by the temptation to go anywhere or do anything other than enjoy the moment – whether that’s reading a book, listening to a podcast, or just looking out the window.

Now, I’ve used trains a lot over the years. As a commuter, I’ve made thousands of shorter journeys. But I’ve also also embarked on a fair few longer ones, for business and for pleasure. I’ve enjoyed the railway networks of numerous countries, in Europe and Africa. While aspects of the experience have been universal, there is one key area where our own domestic situation differs radically from that of pretty much everywhere else in the rest of the world. For those of you who are unaware, railway-pricing in the UK is not only excessive, but seemingly exempt from all logic and reason: Many routes don’t offer return tickets unless you return on the same day. For longer routes, the price from A to D can be substantially higher than the total price of a series of tickets from A to B to C to D, using the same line, sitting in the same seat on the same train. If you haven’t heard of ‘split-ticketting’, look it up.

I knew before searching that I wasn’t going to like the results. To be fair, I’m also aware that with terms, conditions and offers wobbling up and down all over the place, you don’t always get the best deals without a significant investment of time and energy in researching the options. Nevertheless, the first results that came back – for return tickets from my town to Stroud in Gloucestershire – weighed in at a whopping £220. No, that’s not a typo. The price was two hundred and twenty pounds sterling. Add in the taxi rides you would reasonably want to get from Stroud to Chalford in the winter months, and the total would have been nearer £250.

Sigh.

You do what you can to save the planet, but if a train journey costs twice the price of the fuel needed to carry one passenger the same distance in his own car (at a time and following a route that’s more convenient) where’s the incentive?

Once I calmed down, it struck me that this price was so ridiculous, I could probably fly there for less. But if I was in a position to fly to Gloucestershire, why not fly somewhere a wee bit more exotic? Why not fly to the U, S and A, and make a pilgrimmage to the spiritual home of the video arcade scene at ACAM – the American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot in Laconia, New Hampshire?!!!!!

Out of curiosity more than anything else, I started looking for flights from Scotland to Boston, MA – the closest international airport to Funspot. While I hadn’t fully appreciated it until that point, it seems that the pricing for these kinds of international flights is even more arcane than it is for our domestic trains. As expected, the best prices were not direct from Edinburgh – my closest airport. So, I broadened the search to Ireland and England. The first time I checked, the fares from Dublin to Boston in mid-February clocked in at just over £220! Whoddathunkit?! However, they soon shot upwards. And when you added in the cost of the transfers and the obligatory night in a hotel in Dublin on the way out, the total cost would have been north of £300.

The best deal in terms of cost alone stayed relatively stable throughout my many searches. But it was hardly the most sensible. I could have flown from Edinburgh to Warsaw, to Copenhagen, spending a night in a hotel near the airport, before flying on to Reykjavik and then transferring to Boston. While that worked out less, I didn’t really fancy spending two days on a plane – or arriving in Boston after dark.

Unpeturbed by the pricing shenanigans, I pressed ahead with planning. What next? If I got to Boston, how would I then get to Funspot? While it is theoretically possible to get most of the way there using public transport, the timings weren’t great, and the last leg of the journey would have to be done by taxi. As there was no available accommodation within walking distance of Funspot, anyway, getting about would also then have to involve numerous taxi rides. Besides, I mean come on, as much as I love arcade games, I couldn’t go all the way to the States and only visit an amusement arcade. There were plenty of other things I would want to see and do. Given the surprisingly low price of petrol in the US, hiring a car was a no-brainer.

With that in mind, I refined my planning. Ideally, I’d want to arrive stateside by lunchtime. Partly so I could pick up the car and escape the city before rush hour. It would be scary enough driving on five-lane urban freeways, without also having to ease into driving on the righthand (wronghand?!) side of the road. I’d also want to get to my destination in New Hampshire before it got dark. I’d heard a lot from friends and colleagues about how cold it could get up there in the winter, and didn’t want to risk careering off the road on the ice before I’d set foot in ACAM.

It was a couple weeks before I finally took the plunge. During that time the price rose on most routes. In the end, however, I found the best deal for me with KLM, flying out from Edinburgh via Amsterdam at 5:50 am on Thursday the 16th of February. It was a bit more expensive than the others, but not much. Crucially, it invovled the least time travelling and the best possible timings. Even with a short stopover at Schiphol on the way, we’d be touching down in Boston at 1 pm, EST, time aplenty (barring delays) to pick up the hire car, and negotiate the two hours’ drive from Boston Logan to Laconia, New Hampshire, where I’d be staying.

In theory, the flight back seemed optimum too. With a 6.50 pm departure from Logan on Monday the 20th, it would leave me a whole day to explore Boston, and let me sleep through the journey back. The brief stop-over at New York JFK, didn’t seem like it would be a problem. For reasons which seem obvious with hindsight, however, that probably wasn’t the best choice. More on that later.

Next up: Coming to America

The Journey

‘He pondered in his mind upon the journey’

Homer (The Odyssey, Book 1)

Time…

What it is?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘time’ can be defined as ‘the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future’. Now, that’s all well and good as far as definitions go. It gives us a useful starting point for further discussion. But in practice, we all view time differently. Our experience of time is subjective.

At this stage in my life, I never seem to have enough time. I’m either racing against the clock to fit everything in, or watching as tasks grow to fill the time at hand. When I stop to think about it, however, it was not ever thus.

Those of a certain age (ie. old) might like to cast their mind back to the late 70s and early 80s. Perhaps like me, you spent your formative years, the days of the old school yard, in a crumbling Victorian primary school? If so, I imagine the part of that experience you’ll find easiest to conjour up, is the last 10 minutes before lunch. Reading, (w)riting or (a)rithmetic tasks complete, you’d be sat quietly at your desk, trying not to attract the teacher’s attention – lest extra sums be doled out as a reward. But at the same time, you’d be staring, forlorn, at the large analogue clock, which glowered down from the wall above the blackboard at the front of every class. Perhaps you too strained in anguish as you tried to push the second-hand of those clocks faster on their journey – with the power of your mind?

Of course, it never worked.

And sadly, the harder you tried, the bigger the chance the teacher might ‘clock’ what you were up to – and find something else to fill those last tedious minutes. But the point is, that back in those days, every second could feel like an eternity. Nowadays, unfortunately, the opposite seems to be true. Not just the seconds, but the days, the months, and even the years seem to spin round like you’re on the Waltzers at ‘The Shows’.

But why is that?

‘For a time they flew swift as the blasts of the wind’

Homer (The Odyssey, Book 2)

My own favourite theory is that time passes at a speed relative to your age. For a 50-year old (!), a year represents a mere 2% of the time you’ve already spent on the planet. As a ten-year old, however, it’s a hefty 10% of your banked life-experience. The same would obviously also apply to seconds. So, it’s no surprise, really, that for my 10-year old self, each individual second seemed to drag on for ten!

That would go at least part of the way to explaining the pain of classroom clock-watching. It might also help us rationalise the ocassional bouts of ‘boredom’ that were commonplace in the world of childhood before kids were totally captured by so-called ‘smart’ phones and social media. But I digress.

For me, 2022 brought the reality of our accelerating journey into stark relief. In the spring, my Dad got unexpectedly seriously ill, and within a few short weeks, he had passed away. He wasn’t particularly old. I miss him, but I did get to say goodbye, which is not a gift that is given to everyone.

How much time do we get? How long or short is the thread cut for us by the Moirai? In the animal kingdom, there seems to be a clear guide. A mouse might live for six months. An elephant might survive for 60 years or more. But the allotted span of both is fixed by the number of times their hearts beat. For most animals, barring accidents and predation, this seems to be about a billion times. That’s a one, followed by nine zeros!

People are different. Our little pumps get to flex two billion times or more before they finally give out. But precisely how many more or less is not revealed until the last few grains of precious sand are slipping through the waist of our personal hour-glass. We knoweth not the hour. And for that reason, we need to use the time we have left well. We should all strive to be our better selves, but part of that surely, is being better to ourselves? For ‘arcadists’, one diem that needs be carpe:d is the last of the arcades. We need to find them, visit them and report back to spread the joy.

Next up: A Fun Spot?

A Voyage of Deskovery – Part 2

Back in 2011, I commandeered a chunk of the utility room to use as a home office. The main part of the job was puting in a new stud-partition wall, and the all-important door. Beyond that, there wasn’t too much to do. I moved some kitchen units, ripped up the floor-tiles, took out the built-in cupboard, and replaced it with a bit more insulation. Nothing too arduous or complicated was involved, but it did make quite a mess, of the floor and the walls. As we were getting another room plastered at the time, I had the guys give it a skim-coat. One cheap laminate floor later, I moved in the office furniture I’d already had in a bedroom upstairs, and it was ready to roll.

It’s not a big room, just over 2.2 by 2.6 m, but it did the job – both as a place of work, and – crucially – as a store-room for my retro distractions. Inevitably, as the years went by, I acquired more and more stuff. I tried to be sensible about what I kept in there, and avoid unnecessary ‘heaping’, but regardless of how ruthless (and ocassionally tidy) I was, there were certain things that just didn’t have a self-evident space. Important things like old games consoles! The immediate solution was to shuffle stuff about, then put up a shelf – a wee shrine to my retro-gaming habit.

Most of the time, however, most of my retro-gaming kit had to live in the loft – which is obviously the least-good solution when time only usually allows for random and fleeting gaming sessions. But even when I could get it down, having old monitors perched on the edge of a small desk, or worse still, underneath it, wasn’t exactly ideal.

While the room wasn’t big, the more I sat in it, and the more I thought about it – which was a lot – the more I came to realise just how much of the available space was wasted. Of course, cramming every square inch of any room with furniture and shelves is never really a good look – either aesthetically, or in terms of health and saftey. In the words of design guru Mies van der Rohe, less is (usually) more!

Ogam’s razor here – the simplest solution – would have been to hit up IKEA for a more tightly-configured set of furniture – maybe swapping out the BILLY bookcases for some lower, desk-height units, perhaps with a worktop/desk over the top, and some wall-units to match. But try as I might, I could never quite get things to fill the space the way I wanted them to. There was always a gap here, or a window sill or power-point in the way there. In the end, it was obvious that I was going to have to get creative, any maybe even make some cabinets myself. But then COVID happened.

Compared to many people, our lockdown experience was mild. None of us got ill, and as we live very close to the sea and a couple of quiet beaches, we didn’t have to stay couped up in the house if we didn’t want too. It was tough not being able to see family and friends in person, of course. But I was kept busy with work. Now, don’t get me wrong, being able to work from home was a godsend, but the flimsy fixtures in my home office weren’t really up to extended hours of abuse that followed.

First thing to go was my office chair, then the ceiling light, then my PC, then the flooring started to split. With the ceiling already stained from an earlier plumbing issue, things were starting to look more than a touch shabby. The room was also filling up with work junk. I bought another small bookcase and fitted with casters, so I could move it to access the shelves behind. But it wasn’t big enough to keep everything tidy. Basically, it was no longer a pleasant space to be stuck in. So, when things started to go back to normal, I knew I had to do something about it.

Now, I’d seen a lot of YouTube videos and blogposts where folks had used scaffolding planks to fit out their games rooms – to impressive effect. But as good as these looked as shelving, I was still going to need closed cupboard space, and I wasn’t quite sure how best to combine the two. Besides, at the time I was looking, scaffolding boards seemed to be selling at quite a premium. I also looked into laminated kitchen worktops, thinking I could get some cabinets to match, and cut them down to size if necessary. The problem there would have been cutting and joining the worktops without making a mess of it. So, I decided to go back to solid wood, which I felt I had a better chance of working well, and making it look at least half-decent.

While trawling through eBay, I’d seen some really nice-looking oak worktops. The smaller ones weren’t really cost-effective for this kind of project. But it turned out that if you bought several 4 m lengths, the discounts on offer made for a much more reasonable price-per-metre.

So, I went back through my design ideas and decided on 28 mm board for the selving, and 40 mm board, 64 cm deep, for a workbench wrapping round two walls. With careful measuring, there would also be enough offcuts to make an under-desk PC-storage system, and line the exposed sides of the shelves, and lower cabinets with wood.

For the cabinets themselves, I decided to go with IKEA METOD kitchen units. While there were none that would fit neatly under a desk-height worktop, the plan was to cut them down to size, and fit them with custom doors sourced from elsewhere on the web.

The work begin in November 2021. Clearing out the room was perhaps the worst part of the job. It took three or four evenings to get everything off the shelves, out the cupboards, securely packed into boxes, and moved elsewhere in the house. The worktops arrived soon afterwards, unsealed but wrapped in plastic. Miraculously, they were delivered on a day when I was actually at home, and it wasn’t raining!

As it was wintertime, the boards would have to live in the house for a few weeks until I was ready to process them – flat on the floor, of course, so they could acclimatise without warping. However, lifting and manouevering 4 m slabs of 40 mm oak worktops without smashing a door, denting furniture, or putting your back out is, let’s just say, ‘challenging’. Luckily, I’d already borrowed a circular saw, and with the help of some clamps and a straight edge, was able to cut them down to a more managable size.

Before I could get any of the fun stuff done, I had to prepare the room. Most of the furniture went to friends, neighbours or Gumtree, but the messy flooring was ripped up and thrown with glee into the tip. With the floor clear, I decided to chase a channel across the room for some trunking to carry a new ethernet cable to the PC. I knew this would be dusty, and took precuations – like taping shut the door, opening the window, dampening down the floor with water, and wearing a mask. With hindsight, though, I’d probably have chosen a different solution for that particular problem!

With pipes and wires in place, I used some self-levelling compound to even out the worst of the dips, and minimise the scope for wear-and-tear on the new flooring. As the cabinets were going to be built-in on top of the flooring, and it would have to stay in place for a long time, I decided to push the boat out a bit here and go for something a bit more durable. Not wanting too many different kinds of wood on display, I went for an engineered oak finished, broadly similar to what I intended for the worktops. I also put some more effective insulation underneath. I’m really happy with the end result, and think it looks great, but it seems to be magnetic to hard objects and sharp edges, which have already left plenty of dings. In retrospect, I would have gone for thicker and more expensive stuff, with more oomf to withstand the day-to-day blows.

With the floor done, I moved on to the wood. While I’ve done a fair amount of bodging with CLS timber, and larch in the past, I’d never really worked with hardwood. Basically, the main thing you need to appreciate is that it’s very hard, and very difficult to cut!

Even if you have tough tools with properly sharp blades, you can’t just plough through 40 mm thick boards in one go, let alone cut a straight line – even less so, one that holds to 90 degrees.

Fortunately, I had known this in advance, and had planned my cuts so that, in almost all cases, it would be the factory-cuts you saw facing out into the room. My own shabby saw-work would be disguised by having it face back onto the walls. Nevertheless, the practicalities of doing this turned out to be even more difficult and frustrating than imagined.

Where possible, I used the spare boards as straight edges. Being heavy and tough, they were never going to flex – which is something you need to avoid at all costs when making long cuts. I also took each cut in several stages – going throught about 10 mm at a time. Even so, the slight differences in the way I was holding the saw meant the cuts were never really that smooth, and a lot of planing, sanding and swearing was needed to sort it all out.

The one saving grace here was that the walls in my house, like those in any other house – in my experience – are never perfectly smooth or plumb. So, the boards would have to be planed anyway to fit neatly in place. Another small, but annoying issue, was the realisation that the circular saws would take off a fractionally smaller amount when cutting from the left compared to the right. This made precision cuts difficult, and highlighted the importance of consistency in techinque. Looking back, I think I should have invested in a track saw for this part of the job, and perhaps used even more passes to cut through the thicker wood. Oh well, you live and learn.

With the wood cut, the next step was a final fettle to match the countours of each plank to those of its intended space, and then treatment with a sealant to stop it warping or getting stained black by water spillages. Yessir, believe it or not, plain old tap-water can leave horrible black stains on your hardwood surfaces which are very difficult to get out. The same is true for iron – never leave either in contact with your lovely new hardwood worktops!

Sealing the wood wasn’t too tricky, but as the wood was new, it did take four coats over several days. I decided to use Rustin’s ‘Danish Oil’, which looks good, and lets off a lot less, and a lot less toxic fumes than many other treatments, working it in with 240 grit wet-and-dry sandpaper for all but the top coat. The results were very nice – and even better with a liberal helping of Mr Sheen on top.

Next it was time to ‘mod’ the IKEA cabinets. I’ve done this before when fitting kitchens and the like, and having to squeeze one last cabinet into an awkward space. It’s easy enough to do in theory, but there’s an important proviso. Over the past 20 years, a lot of IKEA stuff has been cost-reduced to the point of being mostly thin air! Seriously, with their chunkier stuff in particular, what you get is a cardboard honeycomb faced with melamine. They’re sturdy enough for everyday use, but can’t be cut to size without crumpling. If you’re going to do this yourself, make sure the units are solid (wood or chipboard), or at the very least, that there are no voids in the bits you plan to cut though. Having established that, my three top tips for cutting melamine-faced chipboard with a circular saw are:

• Use a fine-toothed blade, and preferrably a new one,
• Cut with the ‘fine side’ down, that’s the bit that folks will be able to see,
• Line the parts to be cut with easily-removed masking tape. In theory, that’ll hold the melamine together and stop it chipping quite so much. In practice, it’s never quite perfect, but you can buy coloured furniture waxes to cover it up.

With the sides cut to size, I carefully drilled new holes for the fixings, put the units together, and lined the exposed edges with melamine tape. Typically (!) the floor wasn’t exactly level, so it was important I fitted the cabinets with surdy, adjustable feet. I didn’t have the clearance to use IKEA’s own parts for this, but there are plenty of other options avaible on the web. The same thing went for the kick boards. Standard offerings were too high, but some lengths of melamine-coated chipboard cut down to size easily enough.

It would be less than honest if I said that fitting the cabinets was a breeze. To give myself the best possible chance of lining things up squarely, I started by attaching some battens to the wall – at the bottom, for the cabinets to rest on, and at the top, for them to be screwed into. But even then, with nothing being plum or level, it took ages – and lots of clamping and tweaking – before I could get everything into place.

With that done, it was time to fit the worktops. Given the difficulty achieving perfectly straight edges with my limited skillset and meagre collection of tools, I decided to go for ‘butt-joints’ (fnarr-fnarr), held together with worktop clamps. This was actually, surprisingly straightforward. I’d already bought a forsner bit to drill out the holes, and used a smaller circular saw and a chisel to cut out the channels – making sure they were oiled like the other surfaces. It went together like lego.

The shelving was next. Getting the parts turned out to be a pain. As the shelves would be bearing a lot of weight, eg. my full collection of Retro Gamer magazines, I wanted sturdy brackets. Finding the right size in the right colour was difficult enough, bet even when I thought I had, I went through several shipments, from several different suppliers, which turned out to be way off the advertised dimensions, or cast at angles so far off 90 degrees, it was actually quite funny.

However, we got there in the end, and I was eventually able to source and fit a combination of lipped brackets, angle brackets and jointing plates to hold everything square and secure. After fitting the shelves, I also got to try out some exciting new carpentry chops – putting in my first ever ‘dado joint’! I used it to attach an end-piece to the main run of shelves, making them look more like a cabinet than a jumble of planks. I was chuffed with the result.

By now, the stacks of boxes strewn around the house were becoming a wee bit… contentious. So I moved most of the stuff back into the study. At this stage, there weren’t many big jobs left to do. I’d painted the walls, fixed the ceiling, tarted up the window and door with some high sheen gloss, and new handles, and added a ‘few’ more points to the ring circuit. I also decided to swap out the old radiator for a slimmer model. It had pretty much the same BTU output, but its slimline profile sat a lot closer to the wall, and really opened up the back of the room.

Next on the list, was cabinet doors. Loads of time was wasted mulling over styles, colours and handles, but with this procrastination came the realisation that I wouldn’t be able to cut IKEA-type doors to size without leaving visible and ugly scars. Luckily, there are a few companies on the web that make these things to measure. Moreover, they’ll do them with built in handles, which I reckon gives them a cleaner, more modern aesthetic. If you’re prepared to do a bit of fettling, you can even fit them with IKEA’s soft-close hinges. At £2.79 a pair, that went some way to balancing out the extravagence of the doors.

Of course, with the big jobs done, the temptation was to kick back and relax, but as with all projects of this type, the list of minor snags was enormous. So, I persevered, fitting some new blinds and LED strip-lights while I was at it. While the top strip shone out distractingly at eye-level, a hasty trip to B&Q, and the purchase of some angled oak-moulding let me knock out a matching shroud.

Its been nearly a year since I finished the project now. I enjoyed doing it. Of course, there were frustrations along the way. But I feel that I learned a lot about woodwork and ‘room-installation’ in the process. If I was to do it again, I’m sure I could do it better and quicker. But hopefully that won’t be on the cards for quite a few years. Besides, I’m not sure my wife would let me, even if I wanted too! According to my son, the study is now the ‘nicest room in the house’. And he’s probably not wrong. My refurbishment skills, it seems will be tied up elsewhere in the house for the forseeable future.

Anyway, here’s what the business-end of the room looks like now. Have you done anything similar? Have you got any tips or advice to share? Feel free to chime in with a comment below.

A Voyage of Deskovery – Part 1

‘Nor are there shipwrights in their land who might build them well-benched ships, which should perform all their wants’

Homer (The Odyssey, Book 9)

I regard myself as a fixer of things. That could be in the house, in the garden, or – within strict limits (!) – in one of the family’s various vee-hickles. My craftsmanship may not win any awards, but when left alone to my own devices, it is something I have come to enjoy.

Technically speaking, I suppose I could be labelled a ‘D.I.Y. enthusiast’. That’s not a badge that I have actively set out to acquire. Like many, or even most of you, it began out of necessity – to tackle jobs around the house that needed doing but couldn’t otherwise be covered by the household budget. In the early days, this was scary stuff. There was no internet, or instructional videos to help prep you for the task at hand. If you were lucky, you might know someone who’d done it before, who could give you a quick demonstration of what to do (Plumbing with a soldering iron anyone? Remember that?). If not, you’d need to get yourself a 4 kg D.I.Y. manual from the shops – quite an investment in itself.

But as the years have gone by, I’ve evolved from being a fixer to a maker. In fact, there have been plenty of times when I’ve chosen to undertake even quite large projects on my own rather than get someone else to do it. Why? Well, there’s always the cost issue. But sometimes, there’s stuff you need made that you just can’t buy. Increasingly, it seems, that’s because there’s no one willing or available to do it. Round these parts, there just aren’t enough tradesfolk. The ones we have are naturally chasing the bigger and longer jobs, leaving a dwindling number who’re able to fit in smaller projects, unless – of course – they command a hefty premium.

There are times, however, when going bespoke just makes more sense. You can get (almost) what you want, within a time-frame you can (at least sometimes) control yourself. You can also up the ante in terms of materials and quality, while shaving a chunk off the price. And let’s be honest, there’s always the thrill of playing with sharp objects, power-tools, and other seriously cool bits of kit. Yes, it might be time-consuming. Yes it can be frustrating – you will always forget to pick up all of the drill bits you needed until you’ve driven home from Tool Station (other D.I.Y. outlets are available). And yes, it can be difficult – you will make plenty of mistakes along the way, no matter how carefully you try to, ‘measure twice, cut once’. But that’s all part of the fun. That’s how you get better at it. Provided you’re comfortable seeking – and taking – advice, and providing you stay limber enough to recast projects on the fly to draw attention away from any imperfections, anyone can achieve passable results.

This part of the blog will catalogue a selection of my CRT-aligned projects – some big, some small, but all inspired by or related to my gaming needs. We’ll start with my recent ‘Voyage of Deskovery’, in which I tamed the mighty oak, to bench my little retroship…

…to be continued.

Proper Games!

‘[And Zeus] soon gave us game[s] to satisfy our hearts’

Homer (The Odyssey, Book 12)

Proper games? What are they? What exactly are we talking about here?

In a bit, it’ll be computer and video games (obviously). But before we can start that conversation properly, we need a bit of context. Some gaming archaeology.

Back in the days of fresh air and exercise in the old school yard, there were games aplenty. Stalwarts included ‘Tig’, of various different kinds. When cries of ‘you’re “het”‘ rang out across the playground, we knew what was happening, even if we didn’t realise that was actually just the old word for ‘it’, living on in the bubble of primary school patois. Then there was ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’ – which we enjoyed long before anyone had heard of Squid Games. Hide-and-seek was perenially popular, but eclipsed, when the opportunity arose, by its edgier cousin, Two-man-hunt. We called it ‘two man’ hunt, but the actual number of hunters at the start varied depending on the size of the crowd. And who could forget the viscious but exhilarating grabby-dashes of Bulldog, or its rhyme-powered variant Red Rover. The energy invested in those last two games led to so many ripped coats and jumpers it was eventually outlawed by the school. No-one was bothered about the bruises, though!

Despite their apparant differences, all of these games had a few things in common. There was always a set of rules. More often than not, there was also the need to combine talents in several different areas – dexterity, speed, vision, hearing. Finally, as unpopular as it might be to dwell on the fact in 2023, they were competitive. There was always a winner. But the competitve element didn’t stop there. Thinking about it carefully, there was also a kind of leaderboard – albeit fleeting – with the names of the last five or ten players being called out, increasingly frantically, resonating in the air around the playground.

Yes, we all aspired to be up there – on the virtual leaderboard, ideally at the very top. But how would we do it? As cheeky London ska/pop outfit, Madness, reminisced in their 1980 single, ‘Baggy Trousers‘ – being at school was all about learning how to ‘bend, not break the rules’. This was a maxim that applied, more than anywhere else, in the world of games.

Those schoolyard games were always better with a crowd, and in bigger spaces. They didn’t work so well on home turf. Instead, we’d have to make do with more modest pursuits like kerbie, and keepie-uppie, where the emphasis was very much on the score, and the not-at-all-dangerous escalation of ramps and stunt tracks for bikes, sledges and other moving objects, where the concept of ‘risk-and-reward’, although not something we could have articulated, was slowly seared onto our brains. Of course there was always the ubiquitous football, but that got a bit boring after a while.

Imaginative games were all the rage too, with or without the ‘scaffolding’ of accessories like lego, toy soldiers, or wooden-stave ‘swords’ or longbows. They highlighted the natural tendency in kids towards creativity and escapism. Much later, they would all be completely swept away by the role-playing game phenomenon – but that’s a whole nother story

The cold and dark of the winter months didn’t really curtail these outdoor activities. In them days, parents weren’t so keen on having groups of kids hanging about their houses. A lot of homes seemed smaller then than they are now, or at least had more people crammed into them. So, space, and peace-and-quiet were prized commodities. Unless it was raining, we’d be ushered out. Who can forget the hours wiled away under the orange glow of the sodium street lights, competing to see who could execute the longest skid on the hard-packed winter ice?

For entertainment inside, there were board games. The baseline for things to play was usually some version of the aptly-named ‘Ludo’, which is Latin for ‘I play’ – but we soon graduated to the classics like Monopoly, Cluedo and eventually, Scrabble. Depending on the mood or the timing, boardgames didn’t always hold your attention. Yes, there were some slow-burners, like Colditz, but if you didn’t have enough time or enough players, they were pretty much non-starters. They became bored games.

And that is where video games came into the picture (do you see what I did there?).

To begin with, the mere fact that we could control the picture on the TV screen was enough to keep us transfixed. Given the central importance of TV in our lives, it was almost like being able to move the hand of god (check out my observations on ‘In the Beginning’). That being said, there were only so many times you could play the million different variants of Pong on your Grandstand TV Games 3600 before you realised just how shallow and boring they actually were.

So how was it that the fad took root and didn’t fizzle out?

A lot of early video games had the same ‘Pong’ (tee-hee-hee). Even the arcades, those temples to pixelated hedonism, were packed with single-screen oddities that worked well as a brief distraction, but didn’t really warrant any return play. Or at least, that’s what we would have realised if we’d been able to plough enough time into them.

In practice, most games would be over in two minutes, and our finite supply of ten pees exhausted after a few rounds. For that reason more than anything else, the gaming component of the arcade experience was spun out as long as possible around a series of other activites. Every inch of the machine would be investigated – in the (usually) vain hope of finding a way to finagle an extra credit out of it, but also to appreciate the artwork and overall aesthetic (no, I didn’t know that word in 1982 either). Attract modes would be studied time after time in the hope of isolating tips and tactics to make the games last just a tiny bit longer. The efforts of other kids, but especially older and more experienced players ,would be scrutinised and copied to the same end.

Eventually, however, and inevitably, it became apparent that some games were better than others.

Those calls were obviously subjective, but often to a much lesser degree than the disinterested observer might imagine. The boxes they ticked had already been imprinted on our subconscious by the experience gleaned in the playground, on the streets, and in the boardgame battlefields of our bedrooms. By and large, for games to appeal, they had to:

• Be colourful, with appealing (ie. smooth) animation,
• Sing sweetly, with memorable sound effects and music,
• Offer a well-balanced mixture of risk and reward, with the pats on the head coming thick and fast,
• Demand an element of twitch-reaction and skill,
• Give some scope to bend the rules to gain an advantage – even if only very slightly,
• Offer a straightforward and comparative scoring mechanism – with the facility to archive and advertise your performance via a high-score table.

Time was also a factor.

As a kid playing arcade games, whether that was at the seaside or in the high-street backrooms, we may well have been lost in the moment. Time had effectively stood still, and we wanted – or thought we wanted – the games to go on forever. Without realising it, however, the reality was that this would never have worked. Eventually, we’d have to get back to school, or with a bit more urgency, get back to the carpark before our parents drove home. No-one wanted their game to be over after two minutes. But good games had to be short enough to fit in to the time we had available.

In the years since, and the evolution of home computer games, that time parameter was temporarily bent. Exciting new opportunities to pursue real-time strategy games, marshalling armies, building cities, or colonising the new world, grew to fill the aeons of time that went along with early teenage evenings and summer holidays. And that was all well and good, then. More recently still, however, with the rise of home-console gaming, this element seems to have risen to crowd out all others.

As far as I can see, most modern games seem to go on and on and on forever. They demand a huge and extended committment from players. They may be very pretty, with UHD, HDR, ray-traced graphics, and mind-blowing special effects, yet the competitive element has been diluted away to some pointless ‘trophies’ that everyone can find given enough time. Their worlds may be complex beyond anything we could ever have dreamed of, yet they are bound by strict, and inflexible rules. Even supposedly ‘open-world’ games seem to play on rails. There are always tables you can’t climb onto, windows you can’t smash, things that your eyes tell you should be possible but console says ‘no’. That won’t do! You’re not the bos of me, PS5!

Then there’s the matter of twitch reaction and skill. For many, many modern games, the interactive element of the experience has become almost secondary to the protacted cut-scenes. These may be visually and aurally stunning, but to my mind they work as neither movies nor games. To enjoy a movie to the fullest, you need to be able to clear your mind and concentrate on what you are seeing. But if you have to press the correct sequence of buttons every now and again simply to keep the reel rolling, that’s not really possible. And with games, well, I need the challenge and reward to follow in short order, not spun out around five-minute video clips. Surely I’m not alone in that?

Ultimately, there are always gonna be different strokes for different folks. Stick to whatever floats your boat and enjoy it. But in my world, with its roots in the ebb and flow of the Before Times, I think I can afford to make some pretty bold distinctions. Here are a few examples of what I consider to be ‘Proper Games’ – games that fit the bill:

1) Fast Twitch

• Robotron 2084
• Exerion
• Track’n’Field
• Rygar
• Twin Cobra
• Raiden
• Daytona USA
• Quake

2) Slow-Burners

• The Hobbit
• The Lords of Midnight
• Sim City
• Colonisation
• Age of Empires II
• Cossacks: Back to War

Nothing too controversial there, I imagine. They tick all the boxes. But here’s the stinger…

Mostly ‘Meh’ Games

• Tomb Raider franchise
• Resident Evil franchise
• Assassins Creed franchise
• Most Japanese RPGs

Sorry folks. These days, I need games I can play (and maybe complete!) in less than an hour. I’m a busy chap. And as much as I love the animations of Studio Ghibli, I also have a relatively low threshold for full-on anime. That’s why, for me, it’s Golden Age arcade classics all the way. Do you agree? If not, let me know why. Leave a comment below and try to change my mind.

Next up: How we enjoy games…

About Me

‘Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways’

Homer (The Odyssey, Book 1)

Welcome, one and all, to the realm of Arcade Odysseus!

I may not be Greek, but I did once sport a mullet, and like Odysseus of old, I have spent many years on a quest to return to my spiritual Ithaca, the Golden Age of video arcade games.

This blog serves as a Chronicle of my adventures on that fosfor trail – the places I have been, the things I have seen, and the vessels I have crafted to carry me on my way.

Maybe you’ll find something here to inspire your own jouney?

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know.

The Last Arcades

‘[A]nd now they must roam about in search of game[s]’

Homer (The Odyssey, Book 12)

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Odysseus, and I am an arcade-o-holic.

Yes, there it is. I confess! I am hopelessly addicted to video arcade games, and have been for 45 years. Don’t worry, ‘though, I’m fine with it. In fact, it’s something I’ve come to embrace and cherish. It’s part of who I am. But when, and how did my predilection for the fizzy pixel begin?

My first encounter with an arcade cabinet was way back in the summer of 1976 on a family holiday to Great Yarmouth. There were six of us, staying in a chalet, a short walk from the sea – my younger brother, our mum and dad, our granny and grampa, and me. Our journey to get there had spanned two days and a night, with four adults, two kids and all their luggage crammed into a pretty average family car and its roofrack. At any given time, there were four peope on the back-seat in various configurations. No seatbelts, of course, or anything approaching peace and quite for the driver. But that’s another story.

The weather that summer was glorious – warm and dry with clear blue skies – and set the benchmark for years to come. The Scotland we had left behind was prone to being dreich (look it up), dull, and – let’s face it – rainy. This seemed like a different universe! We spent many sunny days on the beach, digging holes, building sandcastles and splashing about in the water. Everything was new. Everything was fun. Even the sweaty cheese sandwiches that were brought out for lunchtime picnics tasted great. Bizzarely, even as I sit here nomming my extra-mature-cheddar-on-sourdough-olive-bread, the thought of those wilting white-bread sandtraps brings back happy memories.

The holiday raced away, like holidays do. Then, one day, to give my parents a break, my grandparents took my brother and me to an arcade. There were all sorts of machines there to enjoy. At the entrance to the building were the penny pushers, and one-armed bandits. My granny showed me how to play those. Then there were machines with guns where you could shoot beams of light at circular targets, or little steel plates in the form of assorted wildlife. (Symbolic) animal-cruelty issues aside, the guns themselves were made from steel and wood, and a bit too heavy to be successfully wielded by a very small child. There were also machines with steering wheels, which let you move a rolling track round a static car, giving the illusion of driving. I now know these were electro-mechanical contraptions, some of which had been around since the 1960s. There’s no doubt that the sights and sounds of the arcade were exciting. But up to that point, they were already familiar from ‘The Shows’ – the traveling fair – that came to our town in the spring.

Lurking in the middle of the room, however, was something else, something new. Something large, looming, glowing and grumbling. Something which turned out to be a video game! The first I’d ever seen, and the experience was, well, religious. While my memories of that day are fuzzy, time spent trawling through the Romsets on MAME suggests it was the submarine ‘simulator’, Sea Wolf. My grampa asked me if I wanted a go, and the answer, ‘yes’, had left my lips, even before I’d had time to think it through. Frustratingly, for my four-year old self, I could hardly reach the periscope, let alone see through it. It seemed impossibly high – a distraction for giants and other supernatural creatures, not wee boys like me. But that only made me more determined to try it out. And with my grampa’s help, who held me up for the ninety seconds or so the game lasted, I set my first foot on the fosfor trail. When he put me down again, my eyes had been opened, like saucers!

Sea Wolf (Midway, 1976)

Funspot, NH (Feb 2023)

There wasn’t much scope to explore this new calling in the first few years that followed. I was only just starting school, with little say in where I went or what I did, beyond mucking about in friends gardens or tearing through the neighbourood on pedal bikes. With no arcade machines nearby to fan the flames, those pixels could easily have fizzled out. But I was lucky enough to enjoy regular family holiday in the 70s and 80s. Looking back, they were the highlight of my year. Growing up in central Scotland, they involved long journeys to the seaside resorts of southern England, to a series of guesthouses, chalets and latterly with our caravan in tow.

Of course, the coastal towns of Cornwall, Devon and Dorset were packed full of attractions. The mainstay was the beach, with its infinite scope for civil-engineering projects. But there was also swimming, exploring rock-pools, playing tennis and frisby, and flying kites. On the edge of the beach were the promenades, with their ice-cream stalls and play-parks. Beyond that were the bustling touristy towns, filled with all kinds of magical outlets, catering to the holiday-maker’s every need, particularly if those needs centred around sweeties, comics and toys. There were even regular shops that stayed open well after our home town had packed up and gone to sleep.

In the space in between, the liminal zone between the beach and streets, were the amusement arcades.

My brother and I came to develop a sixth sense for these, anticipating where they might be, even before we’d seen them. Perhaps, in those days of analogue sound, our spongy young minds were capturing bleeps and bloops our ears couldn’t hear? Naturally, we also fell into the habit of pestering our parents to visit them on the way back from the beach, or on our return into town in the evening to see the sights, and maybe enjoy some chips. More often than not, they indulged us.

At the front of the bigger arcades, the machines would be spilling out onto the prom to entice the customers in – calling out to them with their futuristic siren-song. Once inside, the excitement was palpable, as was the cigarette smoke – something we tend to forget. And the sound wasn’t just emotive and immersive, it bordered on deafening. For many years, I’d emerge from those murky salloons with ears ringing, and hearing taking several minutes to return to normal. It was fantastic! Something I looked forward to enormously – something I enjoyed. But I suspect the impression it made on me was only as strong as it was because it was so fleeting. In my mind, I spent aeons of time in those places. In reality, it was never more than an hour or two, even as a teenager. I never really had my fill. And that kept me hungry for more.

As the years went by, the arcades spread. Like the interconnected-growth of some kind of fungal network, the machines moved out into all kinds of new locations and venues, including motorway service stations. By the early 1980s, they had become a major feature of our holiday journeys too. My parents would drive us hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles down the motorways of England and France in their pursuit of the summer sun and memorable holidays for us kids. This took a long time, with all the usual shenanigans you would expect with (by now) three over-heated children draped across the back seat for hours and hours on end. To beat the traffic and steal a head start on the holidays, we’d set off on a Friday after tea, and drive through the night. Now and again we’d stop to water the daisies, or to let my parents grab an hour’s sleep. And when we did, the arcade machines beckoned. Sites managed by Trusthouse Forte and Blue Boar were the best, but obviously not the only ones to feature arcades. And if there was gamage to be had, we would find it.

Like many kids of the 80s, I veered away from the arcades in the 90s, as other distractions and responsibilities came to the fore. While I didn’t really give it much thought at the time, I seem to remember feeling that the arcades would always be there, and that I could always come back to them again if I felt like it. That had been the story of my life for almost as long as I could remember, and it never crossed my mind that the situation could change. A bit like quite a few other things! But it was during those years that the video arcade as a phenomenon declined and disappeared, first from the service stations on the M6 and M1, and then from the seaside resorts themselves. The Universe wobbled. Life went on.

Southwaite Services, Cumbria, August 2023

Ultimately, the arcades had only really been a relatively small part of what, for me, had been a busy life. But smothered away somewhere deep-down in my synapses, my arcade radar has continued to tick over. It wasn’t something I was consciously aware of, or even something I was able to atriculate at first. It’s just that every time I stopped off on the road, or walked through a seaside town, I would feel a slight pang… of something. Then I worked it out. Part of my peripheral vision was wired to look out for a reassuring glance of my favoured childhood haunts. Not seeing them any more seemed odd, then sad. I suppose that – in a way – what I was experiencing was a sense of mourning for good times passed.

In more recent years, when the stability of encroaching middle age has given me the space to reminisce, and the means to explore those interests again, I resolved to seek out and capture the final drops of enjoyment from the last of the arcades, before they – or I – disappear forever. To do that, I have embarked on a journey back to my own spiritual Ithaca, the Golden Age of video arcade games.

In this part of the blog, I aim to document a selection of the adventures I’ve had on the way. Some of my earlier ‘retro gaming’ experiences seem pretty retro themselves now. So, here’s hoping I can get them down before I forget! I’ll begin, I think, with the most recent…

…to be continued in: An Arcade Ecosystem.