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

Mon Jun 5 15:51:25 EDT 2017

Ethan wrote:

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!

The game you're talking about is Final Furlong.  Final Furlough is the game where you get sent home and don't get paid.

Final Furlong should definitely be at Magfest.  Not only is it fun to watch others look like they are doing not so nice things with a horse, but a game on there is one hell of a workout!

There is a related game called Rapid River which is the same idea, but you're in a raft and have to actively paddle.

Personally, I would love a Derby Owners Club with the full 12 slots at Magfest.  I probably would never leave if I got to play that for hours on end.

Joe K

________________________________
From: FSPA <fspa-bounces at fspazone.org> on behalf of ethan--- via FSPA <fspa at fspazone.org>
Sent: Monday, June 5, 2017 6:35:25 PM
To: fspa at fspazone.org
Cc: ethan at 757.org
Subject: [FSPA] Arcade fun: Ocean City, MD and Rehoboth Beach, DE

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
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