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By that time I had finished up my AA degree at BCC  began working

Summary: By that time I had finished up my AA degree at BCC  began working full time mostly anyway in my chosen profession and was in the process of establishing my own household   Having finally managed to move out of my parents house and no I was NOT living in the basement nor does their house even have a basement and gotten an apartment of my own I made my one reckless ill advised nobody can tell me what to do anymore purchase   An arcade game of my own    For the price of $250 I bought an old and somewhat decrepit   arcade cabinet which had originally been a dedicated cabinet for some now obscure 80s football game but had later been converted to JAMMA a standardized connector used for practically all arcade boards made after 1985 or so to allow easy conversions from one game to another and came with Strikers 1945 a mid Nineties WWII themed shmup that wasn t all that high on the list of games I was buying one of these things for but it was cheap so I had it included   Eventually I began to accumulate a collection of various arcade boards and I now have about 7 or 8 depending on what you re counting   To be honest I haven t used it nearly as much as I thought I would when I got it and I haven t ever gotten around to doing the major control panel overhaul I ve been meaning to do almost since I bought the thing but it s kind of nice to have one around for the occasions when I just feel like playing some obscure manic Japanese shooters   It also makes a nice little conversation piece assuming the den is clean enough to allow visitors into which probably isn t the case right now as I m writing this   I also haven t given much thought to what I m supposed to do with the thing when I move out of this place but on the off chance that I happen to end up married at that time I suspect that my wife would be the one making the decision for me   I also suspect that the thing would be the very first thing to go as well   Might as well enjoy it while I can right From the outside it looked like any other dark slightly dingy arcade but the selection of games in that particular arcade was unlike any to be found anywhere else   I spent quite a bit of time ar this particular arcade while I was attending evening classes at BCC and had time to kill before class I usually tried to get to the area early to avoid the traffic   and it had by far the biggest collection of shmups 2D shoot em ups such as Gradius Raiden R Type and similar games I had seen in any arcade   They also for a time anyway had some of the nicest looking best maintained pinball machines to be found anywhere around here including a Twilight Zone machine with everything working much more the exception than the rule with pinball around here the volume on the machine cranked so you could practically hear it from the Old Country Buffet and all this for just a quarter a play   I have not found a Twilight Zone in that condition since then   Other highlights included a Gauntlet Legends machine without the standard life drain which kind of makes the game a bit too easy but you could play for a lot longer that way the only Radiant Silvergun machine I ever saw in the wild that was the game I eventually bought a Japanese Sega Saturn  for but never got around to actually buying but that s another story and a lot more   If my memory serves me correctly the place hung on until 2006 or so before finally shutting down By that time I had finished up my AA degree at BCC  began working full time mostly anyway in my chosen profession and was in the process of establishing my own household   Having finally managed to move out of my parents house and no I was NOT living in the basement nor does their house even have a basement and gotten an apartment of my own I made my one reckless ill advised nobody can tell me what to do anymore purchase   An arcade game of my own    For the price of $250 I bought an old and somewhat decrepit   arcade cabinet which had originally been a dedicated cabinet for some now obscure 80s football game but had later been converted to JAMMA a standardized connector used for practically all arcade boards made after 1985 or so to allow easy conversions from one game to another and came with Strikers 1945 a mid Nineties WWII themed shmup that wasn t all that high on the list of games I was buying one of these things for but it was cheap so I had it included   Eventually I began to accumulate a collection of various arcade boards and I now have about 7 or 8 depending on what you re counting   To be honest I haven t used it nearly as much as I thought I would when I got it and I haven t ever gotten around to doing the major control panel overhaul I ve been meaning to do almost since I bought the thing but it s kind of nice to have one around for the occasions when I just feel like playing some obscure manic Japanese shooters   It also makes a nice little conversation piece assuming the den is clean enough to allow visitors into which probably isn t the case right now as I m writing this   I also haven t given much thought to what I m supposed to do with the thing when I move out of this place but on the off chance that I happen to end up married at that time I suspect that my wife would be the one making the decision for me   I also suspect that the thing would be the very first thing to go as well   Might as well enjoy it while I can right From the outside it looked like any other dark slightly dingy arcade but the selection of games in that particular arcade was unlike any to be found anywhere else   I spent quite a bit of time ar this particular arcade while I was attending evening classes at BCC and had time to kill before class I usually tried to get to the area early to avoid the traffic   and it had by far the biggest collection of shmups 2D shoot em ups such as Gradius Raiden R Type and similar games I had seen in any arcade   They also for a time anyway had some of the nicest looking best maintained pinball machines to be found anywhere around here including a Twilight Zone machine with everything working much more the exception than the rule with pinball around here the volume on the machine cranked so you could practically hear it from the Old Country Buffet and all this for just a quarter a play   I have not found a Twilight Zone in that condition since then   Other highlights included a Gauntlet Legends machine without the standard life drain which kind of makes the game a bit too easy but you could play for a lot longer that way the only Radiant Silvergun machine I ever saw in the wild that was the game I eventually bought a Japanese Sega Saturn  for but never got around to actually buying but that s another story and a lot more   If my memory serves me correctly the place hung on until 2006 or so before finally shutting down

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