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

[ethan at 757.org]

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

Haha, ohh yea!

> 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!

Indeed! I played it once in a mall. Virginia Beach, Alladin's Castle. It 
made so much noise, I think the entire food court went silent as their 
stares burned into my soul. And I still lost!

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

We (MAGFest) own a rapid river! It was donated by a local op and we have 
gone through quite a bit to refurb it. Down to someone rebuilding the 
rewelding broken areas of the internal paddle holder from it wearing down 
in the prior owner's hands. It's LCD'ed and before MF 2017 we picked up a 
quiet air compressor so that it could service more boaters.

We got a similar game called Rail Chase that is also air compressor driven 
but gave it to the owner of Save Point in Westminister and it hasn't made 
it back to event yet (it's really heavy.)

> 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.

I've heard this one mentioned as being a recent Dave and Busters system 
but don't know much about it. Hmmm intarnet says it's Naomi (achievable) 
or Lindbergh (older of the newer PC based Sega stuff AFAIK.)

.... Noted!


The games at MAGFest are large and wide brought by collectors, the org 
itself doesn't own that many because of storage logistics and resources 
for repairing stuff but random stuff just falls into your hands sometimes. 
I had never heard of Rapid River until one had been donated to make room 
in an operator's warehouse.

People were sad about the lack of some other game and I hunted down the 
last known location of it in the USA... something called Samba De Amigo 
but the cabinet that was known to exist was trashed after it was damaged. 
After asking about it (possibly on Reddit) someone even had a youtube 
video of a fight over a fighting game (meta?) where someone fell into the 
Samba De Amiga cabinet which apparently damaged the rear proejction 
screen.

Can't find the other arcade where you stick the finger in the butt either 
(Boong-Ga Boong-Ga.) Friend said he asked overseas and the butts 
normally fell apart after being on location after a few years. There is 
a video on youtube I believe of one in the USA but no idea where.

So uh, if anyone runs across any of this stuff out there, I know of a 
home!

(Sneak Peak MAGFest 2018 - Get your Gamecube F-Zero GX 
memory cards ready.)




>
>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> FSPA mailing list
> FSPA at fspazone.org
> http://lists.fspazone.org/mailman/listinfo/fspa
>

--
Ethan O'Toole