Classic Arcade News Feed: May 2019

[The Arcade Blogger]

Here’s a summary for you of the latest arcade-related news! This month, I thought I’d mix things up a bit and pull together bunch of videos detailing what’s new relating to the hobby. Don’t forget to let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Paul Johnson is a 2D animator with a penchant for 80s/90s Japanese style cartoons, and he’s come up with this cool animated short which pays homage to classic Irem shooter R-Type. It’s really well done and worth a look:

Tempest maestro Marc Klinger dropped a comment onto a previous article here on the blog, and linked to a video showing the 40 credit and level select cheat that can be activated on Dave Theurer’s signature arcade game. It’s a great deep dive into the inner workings of the programming:

If you want to see more of Marc in action on Tempest (and it’s worth taking notes!) check out his incredible 1,000,000 point game here:

Jersey Jack, creator of one of my favourite pinball machines The Wizard of Oz, have launched a new table based on the Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory franchise. It looks great and I can’t wait to get my hands on one! In this video, there’s some gameplay footage, and an interview with industry legend Pat Lawlor, designer of the table:

And talking of pinball, I came across this recent video about collector Michael Schiess, founder of The Pacific Pinball Museum. He has over 1700 machines in his collection. Michael chats about the collector mentality, and how and why he’s on a mission to save pinball:

A new arcade documentary is in the works! Arcadia The Movie looks at the history and collecting of classic coin operated arcade machines from electro-mechanical efforts, through to the explosion of video games in the early 80s. It looks to have very high production values. Check out the trailer here:


More info about the movie can be found at this website.
As well as being a perfect host during my recent visit to San Francisco, Andy Welburn is regarded as probably the most knowledgeable arcade PCB repair guy in the world. Check out his latest repair video, where he fixes a problematic Fire Truck PCB – it’s a bit different – finally, someone has made repair videos interesting!

And finally, I thought this vid was pretty cool. Small Change Arcade, take original arcade hardware pulled from trashed cabs, and repurpose them into pint-sized replicas of the original machines. Owner Matt looks to do nice work:

Thanks for checking out the blog this week. If you have anything to add, or have a news item that you want to see featured in a future post, let me know in the comments below.
See you next time!
Tony


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