[FSPA] Arcade fun: Ocean City, MD and Rehoboth Beach, DE

[ethan at 757.org]

Via a crazy craigslist deal to pick up a used and slightly broken 
commercial frozen drink machine I ended up doing a quick trip last weekend 
to Ocean City MD. My goal was to buy said dual node frozen drink machine, 
and do the duty of checking out as many arcades as possible in a 
reasonable amount of time.

So I trekked out on Saturday morning to meet the craigslist seller who 
agreed to hold the equipment that I was hoping to purchase before the 
upcoming MAGStock camping event. Deal went down easily, and crazy enough 
the guy used to work for Silicon Graphics and his kids are involved in 
diving so he spent some time over in Utila, Honduras recently with dive 
operators that I was familiar with. Small world! Chatted a bit about 
Silicon Graphics and loaded the 117 pound thing into the truck. It was 
taller than expected, so it wouldn't fit under the solid bed cover which 
means I had to leave it open while off doing arcade hunting. Brought tarp 
and the machine is this awful olive green color so I figure no one would 
take it.

I found that parking at Ocean City, MD was fairly costly given my simple 
intentions but took advantage of the Park-N-Ride lot. Park right off the 
strip, pay $3 and the bus will drop you off on the strip. Perfect, but 
bring exact change for the bus.

Once on the strip I found the arcades to be pretty well stocked with the 
current high end redemption crap just like Dave and Busters. Instead of 
one fish bowl transparent LCD ball drop ticket dispenser there was 3!

Playland in Ocean City MD had the highlight of my MD exploring, and that 
was a Namco made vid called Final Furlough. You basically straddle this 
big stupid looking horse thing and have to bob it up and down faster than 
the other player to make your horse win the race. It's entertaining to 
watch, and it's been on my "Want it for magfest" list for a long time but 
they're kind of rare, crazy heavy and not sure how they would hold up 
getting played nonstop for 4 days. It was fun running into that machine 
first on my trek, since it is of interest. When it comes to pins, Playland 
had a solid lineup with Iron Man, PoTC, IJ Stern, and X-Men. No or low 
classics, but a lot of the modern huge redemption things which to be fair, 
are what pays the bills in modern arcades. The pins had players on them, 
which is awesome!

On to Sportsland in Ocean City MD. Another large redemption filled cade of 
decent size. The only two pins there were Elvis (down) and JJ Wizard of 
Oz.

Final stop for Ocean City MD was a location called Fun City. Once again 
the money maker redemption crap (Though I like the design of some of the 
machines! I've been thinking I'd love to build a pinball using the large 
transparent LCD trick but the servicability would suck with that under the 
playfield glass!) BUT, chilling in the Fun City was a Stern Family Guy and 
another JJ Wizard of Oz.

All three arcades were pretty large, none of them had much in the way of 
classics which isn't a surprise at this point but all three had solid 
recent pinball machines.

I was able to spin through all the locations pretty rapidly, and wasn't 
really in a rush to get home so next stop Rehoboth Beach, DE. I had gotten 
a tip from a coworker that there are pinball machines on the boardwalk. I 
moved to the DC area from the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area, and Virginia 
Beach only ever had one arcade on the boardwalk. So it was a surprise to 
me that these other places have multiple competing 'cades with similar 
machines.

It didn't take too long to get to Rehoboth Beach, and I just parked at 
some metered spot. I was using google maps, searching for the Arcade 
keyword to find locations with very little prior research. The first and 
only place I really found was...

Playland! Playland was a let down IIRC, I don't have any pictures of it. 
Needed to use the bathroom and while trying to find that I found...

Ryans Mini-golf! This one didn't register on the map search but was really 
close to Playland. The lineup there... yea

Ghostbusters (BAM), Wizard of Oz, Aerosmith (whaaaat?) and Batman 66! 
Someone there cares about pinball or they just refreshed their line up! 
Finally I coudln't resist anymore and instead of just looking at machines 
I spent my time there playing Aerosmith and actually got my initials on 
GB, meaning good players haven't been there yet ;-)  An interesting 
suprise. 75 cents a play as I recall. I played GB the most just because I 
was getting good runs on it. Aerosmith has a cool feature where it tosses 
the balls upwards for lock though. Both Aerosmith and Batman66 had the 
color LCD system from Stern (anyone know how that works under the hood?)

Got home, unloaded the heavy sticky machine of frozen goodness. Next day 
was the moment. Did I outsmart the prior owner who might not have 
understood how the safety interlocks work on the slushie machine? No. 
After like 3 hours and hands covered in sticky old slush syrup the culprit 
was a broken gear in a gearbox that makes the augers stir the slushie on 
the right. But I managed to buy all the parts that were missing online and 
the slushie machine should hopefully have it's transmission rebuilt for 
the right side before league tonight.

I didn't have much time to work on the slushie machine this week.... 
because... work trip to Chicago datacenter and personal fun trip to 
Brooklyn for computer security conference / nerd rap music concert (next 
post.)

  -- Ethan O'Toole