This week I just decided that I will be attending the International Video Game Hall of Fame “Big Bang” event next month. The IVGHOF is a new organization based in Ottumwa, Iowa. The goal of the IVGHOF is to house a museum of every arcade game ever made, and a Hall of Fame of gamers of all eras. Why Ottumwa? Ottumwa was once the home of Twin Galaxies arcade, the famous arcade run by Walter Day. Walter had the idea of holding the “Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard” of arcade high scores back in the peak of classic arcade gaming. The Twin Galaxies arcade is no longer around, a victim of the arcade video game crash in the mid ’80s, but Twin Galaxies is still going strong as an online record book. The history of Twin Galaxies and Walter Day is very interesting and I recommend watching “Chasing Ghosts” or “The King of Kong” to learn more about it. Because of Ottumwa’s unique role in Video Game history, they have been proclaimed as the “Video Game Capital of the World”.

The famous Life Magazine photo of the top arcade game players taken in Ottumwa, 1982

The IVGHOF kicked off last summer with a large event featuring several gaming celebrities, tournaments, and presentations. This year they are again holding a big event that should bring video game personalities and fans from around the country to Ottumwa for a four day celebration. I didn’t have a chance to go last year, but this year I am excited to have the chance to go.

I’ve been working with Walter Day, who is helping organize the event, to bring my Joust machine to the celebration. It will be used for various events, and hopefully there will be some world-class players getting some time on playing it. I’d love to see Steve Sanders take back his World Record on my machine, but we’ll see if he’s up to the challenge!

I’m really excited to experience this piece of classic arcade gaming history and to get a chance to meet some of the arcade greats like Sanders, Billy Mitchell, and maybe Steve Wiebe. Wiebe is scheduled to be inducted in the HOF, so I hope he’s there.

You can read more about the Big Bang event, and the IVGHOF at the official site: IVGHOF.com. There is a list of all of this year’s inductees on the site as well.

For a great documentary of the history of Twin Galaxies, try to see the movie Chasing Ghosts. It never made it to DVD, but it has been shown on Showtime and may again be broadcast.

Check out Twin Galaxies Website to see records of almost all arcade games. There are several scores for MAME emulated arcade games, and consoles both old and new.

Last summer I found out on the KLOV Arcade Forums that Hallmark was creating a Pac-Man ornament for their Keepsake Ornaments Collection that season. After waiting patiently I picked one up. This year I bought the second ornament in the series – Galaga. They are great ornaments, with marquees that light up and authentic game sounds. The kids love them and always start them up when walking by.

Here are a few pictures:

All lit up!

This year we moved the tree to a different area of the basement. Coincidentally it is now right beside the real Pac-Man. It makes for a cool photo.

Big Brother!

I was flipping through some photos I took recently and thought I could spend a few minutes showing off a couple test devices that I use to help figure out problems with my games. I have two devices that I put together that are useful in testing both PCB boards and monitors.

Jamma Conversion Test Board

The first test device I use on a regular basis is my Jamma Conversion Test Board. I wired up a short Jamma harness to a bunch of terminal strips mounted on a piece of plywood. I then take edge connectors of different lengths populated with wires that have spade connectors crimped to the ends of them. I then can hook these up to the terminal points on the jamma board, creating a make-shift jamma harness. This allows me to wire up any board that can be converted to jamma with the normal power requirements. Then I plug the harness of the board into my jamma cabinet. I used this board to test my Frogger PCB last week. It works great and is really handy to test several boards without their cabinets.

My Frogger PCB wired up to the Test Board for testing in my Jamma cabinet

Jamma Arcade Cabinet-In-A-Box

My other device is something I came up after the third or fourth time I pulled parts together to try to test a monitor. I used to test monitors by putting the monitor on a bar stool, pulling an arcade cabinet away from a wall, and hooking the monitor into the cabinet for a quick test. This was difficult and dangerous to do. It was too easy to damage something by dropping the monitor, messing up wiring, etc. I figured out that could assemble the core components of an arcade game: Power supply, isolation transformer, controls, speaker, and wiring into a box. Then all I would have to do is hook up a Jamma PCB with a good test pattern, and a monitor, and I would have a working arcade game. My first box was made out of an old wooden coin box from a poker cabinet. It was made up of pressboard and got wet one day, which ruined the wood. My currrent box is just made out of a plastic tote. It is much easier to lug around, and looks better too!

Old Arcade-in-a-box

Backside of the old Arcade-in-a-box

New rig, top view

Inside view of the new rig

Using the new rig to test out my Centipede monitor after a cap kit

Both of these devices have helped me quite a bit. They were both really easy to put together and I highly recommend building them yourself!

This time it was for Donkey Kong Jr. DKJr is way harder than Donkey Kong, and I really stink at it. DKJr was another game that Billy Mitchell was a long time record holder for, until he was beat last August by a guy named Ike Hall. Steve beat Ike’s record by over 100,000 points setting a score of 1,139,800 points. Steve will be attempting to beat the Donkey Kong record on June 2, 2009 at the E3 Enterainment Expo in LA. It will be broadcast live on G4 Television.

Congratulations Steve! Good luck in June trying to set the Donkey Kong record again.

Here’s a link the the Twin Galaxies announcement of the record: Twin Galaxies Announcement

I let the room set overnight, and then moved all the games back in. I took several pictures of each cabinet, and of the arcade as I moved the games back in. You can see these pictures from my Photos Page. I haven’t had a chance to take individual cabinet pictures for the last several years, and I noticed that many of my games don’t have any good pictures of the final restorations. I will end up writing a post for each game eventually, but I wanted to get them all uploaded in the meantime.

Check out the pictures here: Games moving in and Game cabinets

They still aren’t plugged in yet. I am waiting on some new rope light hooks that I ordered on ebay to show up, then I will rehang all of my lighting. I want to see how the new wall color effects the lighting before I decide what accent colors and pattern I want to do for the wall. I also need to decide how many flyers I want to hang back up. I don’t like too much clutter in the decorations.

For years I’ve wanted to repaint my arcade. The walls have been white since I first finished the basement of my house. Over the years they’ve really been nicked up from moving all these games in and out of the gameroom. Now that I not moving as many games around, I thought it would be a great time to paint the gameroom. I still don’t have a final design for how I want to decorate the room when done, but there are a ton of great examples in a popular thread on the KLOV Forums showing off other home gamerooms.

The first thing I had to do was to move all the games out of the arcade. Even though I don’t have a ton of games, this many games still take up a lot of space. I moved all of them from the arcade except the Monaco GP cockpit.

No using the rest of the basement until I finish!

I broke several rope light clips taking the rope lighting down, so I need to buy some new ones. At least I can buy more to reduce the sagging in the lights.

I then taped off and trimed out the room in the dark grey color I chose for the project. I really hate this part. At this point, I started listening to the NCAA Men’s Basketball finals on the TV in the next room. Good thing the game wasn’t very good so I didn’t miss anything by painting.

Finally, I did the fun part. I like to roll paint on walls. Doesn’t take much to really make an impact!

My next step is to move the games back in, then determine where to hang some of the flyer artwork. I also plan to move the high score board into the gameroom, over the Monaco GP if I have the space. I also am considering painting the ceiling but I want to make sure it wouldn’t look bad. More to come.

I’ve had my Blackberry Storm for a few weeks now, and I noticed something funny the last time it locked up. Any of you Williams arcade fans recognize this?