Kickstarter Arcade Project

Ok, most everyone that reads this blog probably knows me, at least in some manner.  They probably also know that I am a 'video game enthusiast'.  It's part of my nerd heritage, probably coming from Dad's early adoption and fervent defense of the betamax format and dedicated stereo room in the house in Chaumont.  That black globe-y thing with the multi-colored light bulbs that threw all the horseshoe image things on the walls and the mirror with the lights behind it that repeated the lights into infinity...very cool nerd-things.

This mirror...and it was cool as hell.

Having never really been able to acquire that piece of nerd-defining tech myself...that one item that stood out as saying 'Holy crap, this dude is possibly a little unhinged', an emptiness needed to be filled.

A couple years ago, I got my chance.  My wife (who still loved me at the time...or didn't...but at least liked me) had seen someone down the street had an arcade cabinet for sale.  An honest-to-goodness real live arcade cabinet, like the ones I used to kill time on in the arcade my uncle ran in Three Mile Bay.  I'd go into the arcade, drive my grandfather (who lived next door) nuts for quarters, fire up 'Electric Avenue' on the juke, and lose myself in Battlezone, Omega Race, or Burgertime for hours.

So I drove down to the place with the cabinet.  I knew it from the second I saw it that it was Data East cabinet, probably Bad Dudes or Robocop.  They're pretty distinctive, if not attractive, with a curved marquee and very definable lines.  The guy wanted 150 for it, it was a Bad Dudes and was working, but the colors were hosed and the artwork was all gone except for the marquee, which was broken.  I talked him down to 50 bucks and took it home.  I tweaked the innards some, getting the colors back to some semblance of normal, adjusting the pots on the monitor's neckboard, and was happy.  But I knew in the back of my mind, that once that sucker croaked, I was going to MAME it.  Meaning that I was going to put in a computer that could emulate thousands of arcade games.

It took about a year, but it finally croaked, and I put in a PC, all new controls, a PC monitor, and some other small tweaks, and MAXXX AWESOME was born.  And it is COOL AS HELL.  My piece of nerd-defining-tech.

Anyway, this is all just a really elaborate setup so that I can pimp someone else's Kickstarter project.  There's a forum that I read regularly about building arcade controls and the like.  Some of the people there are damn good at building these cabinets from scratch.  One of the coolest ones I've seen is a mini-cabinet, it's about 3/4 scale, maybe, and is perfectly kid-sized.  He designed artwork for it, the cabinet...everything, and it's kick ass.

And now he's got a Kickstarter project to sell kits made from the plans.  Go to his project,  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1604943853/american-ace-arcade , and help him out.  Back him.  Tell you what, if you back him to a level that gets you a kit, let me know, and I'll help you get the system together for the games.  It's really that cool.  This kit that he's trying to get the funds for is exactly the size of the next one I want to put together for the boys for their bedroom.