19 July 2011

Vidhead Pin Collector



Pinside . com



Good MOJO ... games. Play as a route to insight and creation ... good mantra. Better karma yet if you resurrect an antique player and give it new life and love again (especially if you can learn something along the way). Chalk another credit if you can make others smile because of it too.
That's what it's all about and why I like doing this. I started collecting 80s vintage video games in 2006. Berzerk, Defender, and somewhere after 30 sweet more projects of blissful video collecting and fixing, a go-ahead from my long-quiet pinhead wife brought me my Firepower. I got my PBM skills brushed a bit then indeed and proceeded to fall into the same passion as the videos. I haven't stopped .. and I don't intend to.
I was 14 in 1980 .. played Death Race in the shopping mall and watched color come into being in those places as my Sears PONG home player wore out. I can remember riding my BMX over to the gas station and watching Eric master the (red) Donkey Kong sitting in the back. He'd flip the credits with a straw if he needed - although he didn't usually because he never had to stop his killscreen quarter except for the slurpee break. I watched big kids master the Major Havoc in our Putt-Putt arcade as I poured out my paperboy cash into the Berzerk over in the other small room. That Op had every cool game as it came into being. Dad would bowl some weeks and I would find the vid there in the alley and wrestle as many 25¢ I could from him those nights. I would walk up to our local bowling alley with friends as much as I could for a shot at that Galaxian high score. Like those golden age games, I was gone too by 1983 .. my Mustang and girlfriend kept me pretty busy by then as did HS and points beyond 'games'. (Little did I realize how much they fueled a good POV through my life). Heck, my first good color Mac in college got more Spectre time than any writing--it was Battlezone again!
The pins. The pins were always there (and they always will be). Sometimes we got a chance with the folks to get down to our huge places here in Denver. Places like Celebrity Sports Center, Malibu Gran Prix, or some bigger places in the S malls like Cinderella City. Oh man .. (long torn down now like all I'm sad to say) Celebrity had the best pinball collection - it was a shrine. Those early Williams machines especially just made that place an incredible powerhouse of sound and spectacle. It's cool that collectors around local still talk of those pins (which still hover around here in places) .. the Op there had CC'd the play fields before use. You can imagine ... the Black Knight(s) are still glassy fresh.
It's an honor to be a part of this restoration community. I constantly restore my 1895 abode here in Colorado and I really enjoy game collecting. Now that I own many of these games I so loved in the 70s and 80s I'm proud to share my quarter with you and play them again. Thanks for listenin' to my little story, fellow gamer. Find that game you love to play. Get yourself a nice soldering iron and a good digital multimeter, learn some things with some good friends online - trust me. You will have much fun and good mojo rising. I'll see you around the chats. Be well. : )
/Steve MacDonald (FastRMacR)

//www.the-quarter-byte.com


pinside.com/pinball/community/pinsiders/fastrmacr/

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