ccatalyst

Hello everyone, today i have updates on both the Arcade and Console fronts, We have now been open since Dec 27th , so we have not even been opened a month yet, And it has been a labor or love, with both the love and hate parts thrown in for good measure, Here are some reviews and talk about Arcade Odyssey for everyone to check out http://arcadeheroes.com/2011/12/31/arcade-odyssey-now-open-in-miami-fl/ http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=14103&start=60 http://www.villagebbs.com/forum/index.php/topic,12945.0.html http://www.yelp.com/biz/arcade-odyssey-miami Not too shabby for 3 weeks, Also i have implemented some new ideas in the Arcade, #1) Starting this thursday and every thursday afterwards, it's ladies night, which means all girls that come into the arcade after 5pm will get to play any game they want at the tournament table, till closing for free. #2) This saturday the 21st, we are having our first of many more to come, cosplay night, anyone that shows up in cosplay will get $2.00 in free tokens to play, and at midnight the sexiest/coolest costume wins $5.00 in tokens and a free Ramune and free pocky of their choice. Also i have had some requests for some updated pictures, and here they are http://www.facebook.com/arcadeodyssey you have to select the photo album weekend of 1/14/2012 to see the new photos, these are great and really capture the feel of our Arcade. There are additional changes that i will be trying to implement soon, some will really be on the edge, and hopefully push what an arcade is to new grounds, but i will save those for a later post. As for the console front, They are getting harder and harder to find something new - or should i say old?, and even harder to get the other collector to sell it, but here is the latest acquisition , it is a playtime light games system, here are the pics, hope you all enjoy, and see you on the grid. End of Line......

See you then, ask for me when you come in. Rick

And finally it has been a while since i have posted anything for the console fans out there, so here is my latest update,No you are not seeing double in the pic, it is a second RDI Halcyon laser disc player, i heard that supposedly there was a few of these floating around, but this is only the 2nd one i have ever seen, It is not the entire system but here it is, at least 1/2 of it, and now it has been added to the collective. well just got home from the arcade it is almost 3am, had a great time talking to the players and the support has been great, man am i pooped, see you all next post, or if you get a chance, drop by the arcade. Many Thanks Rick

Hey there Gabriel, Im very happy you had a great time, Sorry it took me a while to get back to you, we have been pretty busy getting everything setup for the consoles, & we are still not offically done, we worked out the console pricing from 6pm-9pm on mon-thurs for $5.00 & 6pm-12am fri-sat for $7.00, looking forward to seeing you again. Rick

Well everyone, the soft opening is done, and we are officially opened starting on tuesday the 3rd, it definately has not been easy, and we have had our definate trials and tribulations, issues such as coin mech problems, some pump it up sensor issues, 2 monitors go on us, buttons not layed out right,etc, etc, and we have been repairing them as fast as they happen, we ordered the sensors for pump it up which will be here in 10 days, and already replaced both monitors, and have fixed the coin mechs, we found out alot of people have been forcing & i do mean forcing quarters down the coin chutes, but i blame that entirely on myself for not having sign that says tokens only, we will fix that next week. but i have seen a lot of happy faces, and have gotten some great revues, see here http://www.yelp.com/...e-odyssey-miami and there is alot of interest in the gaming community down here in South florida, much more than i expected, we are adding 6 - Asus VH236H gaming monitors, 4 more 360s, 2 more ps3's and a 150lb 8ft tournament table for the fighting players to have a go at it. Now i know most of you are probably saying especially after the post i did earlier in the week, and the negative comments i got, "Rick are you crazy?" It is quite an investment, but after speaking to so many fighting gamers in the last week, and i mean these guys would talk with me for hours on end to try and show me how much they loved fighting games.But finally what really topped it off was seeing a large group of gamers walk in with monitors & joysticks under their arms, asking me if i would please put a box in a corner so they could play a tournament, and seeing the hope and enthusiasm in their faces, i said to my partner, anyone that is willing to go through so much trouble to show me how dedicated they are to fighting games definately deserves to have a place set up for such events. So these items will be installed and operational next week, and we will be having our first tournament. We also ordered Pulirula which i just won in a yahoo auction, if you do not know what this is, google it, you wont be sorry, that will be going in a cabinet in the next 2-3 weeks, and some of the games will begin to get changed out, we will be rotating games once every 3-6 weeks, depending on interest. On a final note when i was getting ready to start this arcade i had plenty of discussions with my peers, and with other gamers, and 1 of the topics of discussion was the female gaming community, and most of them agreed than it simply was not there, that there was 20 boy gamers for every girl gamer, the reason i mention this is because i had a group come in yesterday, which mainly consisted of Girls, and we spoke for over an hour maybe two, "i lost track of time", about gaming and japanese arcade titles, and believe me guys, these girls are every bit as dedicated, if not more so than alot of the boys i have met, and it is a trend i hope continues to grow, they were definately interested in the Japanese Schumps, and Japanese Anime fighters and i will continue to bring in many more titles along those lines for them to play. Anyhow that is all for now, many thanks to everyone that have visited the Arcade and posted in this forum, you have all been a great help and been an endless pool of inspiration and pushed me along, even when the pressure seemed overwhelming, many of you will remember "yikes and away". I am looking forward to seeing many more of you come on down, if you see me walking around the isles and have any gaming questions, please do not hesistate to ask, i love all video games and their history, be it home, handheld or arcade, and look forward to speaking to all of you. May you all have a happy, safe and prosperous New Years, see you soon. Rick

Well everyone, we had opened if only slightly last week, for a few hours, had about 20 people come in and play, we are still doing small fixes, ikaruga needs new coin switches, we have new switches arriving for tsumo next week, and the ramune's, pocky's and other jap snacks are showing up on tuesday, we allowed people in to play because they kept knocking at our door while we were working to get everything finalized. So after the 5th or so person knocked, we finally gave in and just kept the doors open, we were fixing as the people were playing,and we have had our fair share of postive and of course some negative comments, We got alot of praises and thank you's, from people that we were letting in , we were not officially opened yet, but we let them in to play reguardless, and if they found a problem we immediately appoligized then corrected the problem for them on the spot, We actually rewired and moved around buttons for one of our customers right then and there, i had the layout wrong, - "very long nights, as you all know from my posts", so i fixed it. while he played another game , by the time he was done with his game, the buttons were the way they were supposed to be. I would also explain to several of them how to play some of the games, if i saw they did not understand the game, i would show them how it was supposed to be played and i would even go as far as to put in another token for them to try it again, . I want to show everyone just how great an arcade can be. On the negative side,We did have a guy complain that we did not have super street fighter 4 Arcade edition 2012, i polietly explained to him that no one in the usa does, and that it would take me a couple of months of lost revenue + $800 to get these 2 updated, he said i should do it anyways, "because noone wants to play an outdated game", very frustrated, after that discussion, oh and then he complained about playing $1.00 to play it in the first place. Grind teeth, count backwards. Then we also had another one complain about our 3d, 42" monitors with 180 degree rotating displays and rumble seating with 5.1 surround sound and competition joysticks, that i should scrap the whole thing and replace it with a table and 23" 2 year old monitors, that that is what everyone wants. Not what i had setup.. boy that came as a surprise. I was also refered to as a collector and a purist - yes they actually posted that, and that i was putting out games that noone wanted to play, becuase if they were not fighters, it was not worth being put out on the floor. Do not get me wrong, I did get many positive remarks and i saw alot of smiles in these last 2 days, and that is what i wanted to build this for in the first place. So while i am sure i will continue to get what is a shump, noone wants to play that. - Yes i actually got that one too, with mushihimesama futari black label no less. But i am hoping the majority of people will come down, play and enjoy what i created here. We are going to be doing a soft opening starting tuesday after 2pm and a grand opening on friday. Hoping to see plenty of you there. Please spread the word around, we could use your help and support to make this one of the great arcade destinations in florida, heck maybe even the US. Merry christmas to all , and sorry for the rant, just had to get it off my chest. Rick

Well just got home, yawn it's late, we had a lot of people come by today, even though we were not open, apparently everyone thought we were going to be open today, but alas still too many things to get finalized, but it was encouraging to see so many people waiting to play, i gladly gave each one of them a personal tour and explained to them about the games and the machines, I can't help it, the game collector in me wins out every time. the stuff that remains to get finished is pretty minor, but still important, things such as garbage cans, cash register, phones, the drinks and snacks - which wont be here till next friday, 15 coin mechs, 1 ceiling tile, and 3 more games to repair, toys for the cranes, website, business cards, brochures that is pretty much it. As far as the games we are pretty much done you can see the current list above, well it's 2:30am im bushed, im going in tomorrow to try and get the last 3 games done, and test every single game out 1 at a time, from the coin mech to the controls, everything has got to work perfectly, i cannot stand an arcade that has 1/2 of the games broken for several months at a time, if i cannot fix the game in a week or so, then i am going to replace it with something else, i know it sounds petty, but believe me it makes a difference. Anyhow boys and girls, im off to bed, speak to you soon. Rikck

Well it has been a while since i posted anything on the console side, and thanks to Kevin, a fellow collector, i am now the proud owner of the Philips In2IT, it just arrived today, - Thank you Kev - you will notice in the pics that it is a box within a box, the external box is supposed to be a holder of sorts, i took a picture of the 2 tabs on the inside of the larger box, so you can see what they expected you to do with this. Enjoy the pics. Rick

Thank you Ax, i really appreciate the kind words. Here are more pics, we are almost there, missing 4 cranes, 2 air hockey tables, and we are going with gauntlet dark legacy as the final game, we are targeting this weekend to open. Rick

Thanks, i'm glad you enjoyed it, and thank you again for the well wishes. Rick

Hey there fellow gamers, Just catching everyone up on the latest developments, #1) We got 3 new wells gardner 42" lcd conversion kits for the 50" games screens, among them are Sega Nascar - big yellow one with Roll cage, Pump it up NX in Huge stage, and Sega's wave runner, we put them all in , and had to make some custom front lexan pieces for the pump it up , but it came out great, will post pictures tomorrow. #2) got in a new 150psi , ultra quiet 70db compressor for the wave runner, it is tiny, 20x24x17 , it fit right inside the cabinet, now that the 50" projection monitor was gutted out of it and a thin lcd was put in it's place, we had plenty of room to put this baby in place. #3) took some pictures of the t-shirts, both in black light and normal light, this was before i gave them back to my printer to get the wording done. I am waiting to see how the text looks before i begin with that. #4) the games list has been slightly tweaked and now looks like this Sega Wave Runner crazy taxi Dance Maniax 2nd Mix Jap Append Tsumo Ball simulator with 6 games to select from House of the Dead 2 House of the Dead 3 House of the Dead 4 Trophy Hunting Midway Multigame Williams Multigame Punch Mania The Act Melty Blood Actress Again Mushihimesama Futari Black Label 2 - Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition - Jap Cabs - 1 player per cab Ikaruga Metal slug 6 Terminator 2 pinball Terminator 3 pinball 2 - Spawns linked together - we have 4 kits, but we will start off with 2 and maybe hook up all 4 for tournaments Arctic Thunder - we are waiting for the ultimate upgrade to arrive. 2 player side by side Planet Harrier Area 51 & maximum force multi cab Star Wars Trouble Witches KOF XIII - jap edition Xmen 6 player 4 - prize cranes 2 - hydro thunders side by side virtual on - 2 player side by side Vapor trx Pump it up NX - 42" lcd huge cabinet. Guilty Gear Accent Core Sega Nascar Bass Fishing 2 - Air hockey tables with digital overhead scoring we are trying to get silent scope 2 working, but if we cannot, we will be probably end up putting in a gauntlet dark legacy. Almost everything is in except for 5 games, & the 2 air hockey tables. Well i have got to work on some more games this weekend to get them ready for opening day, coin mechs, seat adjustment repairs, amp repairs, monitor repairs, t3 pinball repair, speaker repair, etc. Hopefully we will get most of these completed by sunday, i am hoping to have a soft opening next week, im just not sure when, but i will post it here before any where else, darn it, i just realized i have got to get the jap snacks/ramunes ordered , they take over a week to get here. Oh heck, im bushed, see you all tomorrow with more pics. Goodnight Rick

Not yet, but we are getting very very close, we need to bring in another 11 games,order snacks, and tweak everything just a bit more to get get it all just right. Rick

Yep, i know it's scary, but hopefully people wont bang them up too badly. Time will tell, I'll post it in this forum, if i end up throwing people out for being too rough on the machines. And yes again, I got 8 night vision cameras installed and recording. Rick

Oh i almost forgot, i finally got my t-shirts and they look great, we paid a bunch for 10 color seperations on the shirts and did not skimp at all on the quality of the print and the shirts, heck , they even glow under the black light, like i said they look great except for 1 small problem , they put the logo in the back, i wanted it in the front, so now i have this black shirt with a great logo in the back and nothing in the front, i was thinking of putting some video game quotes in the front to just add something else, i have 150 shirts, so im going to divide them into groups of 15, i will leave 15 plain, for the purists, and then i will group them into 9 groups of 15, and put 1 saying per each 15 shirts, in a very bright blacklight glowing white font, here are the ones im thinking about #1 ) Shoryuken!!! - Ken - Street Fighter series #2 ) Time to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and im all out of gum - Duke Nukem #3 ) All your base are belong to us - Cats - Zero Wing #4 ) Thank you, Mario! But our Princess is in another castle! – Toad - Super Mario Bros. #5 ) I see only what i've come to destroy - Kratos #6 ) The cake is a lie- GLaDOS - Portal #7 ) Would you kindly? - Atlas - Bioshock #8 ) I'm the grim reaper, Lardass, and you're my next customer. - Manny Calavera - Grim Fandango #9 ) Finish him!!! - Fatality!!! - Mortal Kombat I have gotten both good and bad responses to my idea above, remember it is only 1 quote per shirt, Also i came up with a quote myself to put it on all the shirts instead of the ones above that reads In these hallowed halls of Champions - Respect is not given , it must be earned!!! Now shut the hell up, put in a token and prove yourself!!! Not the most classiest of quotes but hey it's something, could be the arcade slogan, let me know what everyone thinks, i have got 2 days to make a final decision. I will post a pic of the shirts tomorrow. Good night Rick

Thank you all for those words of encouragement, believe me they go a long way, especially when everything seems to be going against you. Well we are getting ever closer, machines have started to get moved in, we had to paint the inside windows with a rubberized black paint to keep the light out, i thought the window coverings would do the trick, but when the sun is in front of the mall, it just makes everything inside blue, like if you were staring at it through a blue balloon, so rubberized paint to the rescue, after 5 coats to kill all the sunlight, we finished mounting the monitor that faces out, and have brought in about 2/3 of the games in so far. Fortunetly my other workplace is around the corner so we actually have been walking the games over, you can see my partner and his dad bringing trophy hunter over, everything has been walked over, also our 100mbps internet pipe is up, sort of helps to own a colocation facility, and it helps even more to have said ISP/Colo about 500ft from the arcade. The games that are in so far Sega Wave Runner Xmen 6 player Dance Maniax 2nd Mix Jap Append Tsumo Ball simulator with 6 games to select from - this will be coming over this week - not looking forward to it, it weighs a ton. House of the Dead 2 House of the Dead 3 House of the Dead 4 Trophy Hunting Midway Multigame Williams Multigame Punch Mania The Act Melty Blood Actress Again Mushihimesama Futari Black Label 2 - Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition - Jap Cabs - 1 player per cab Ikaruga Metal slug 6 Terminator 2 pinball Terminator 3 pinball 2 - Spawns linked together - we have 4 kits, but we will start off with 2 and maybe hook up all 4 for tournaments Arctic Thunder - we are waiting for the ultimate upgrade to arrive. 2 player side by side Planet Harrier Area 51 & maximum force multi cab Star Wars Trouble Witches KOF XIII - jap edition 6 - prize cranes crazy taxi 2 - hydro thunders side by side there are a few others missing, but im drawing a blank right now, after moving several of these over im bushed. not all the games are in the Arcade yet, we hope to have them moved in by the end of this coming week, but you can see pictures how the build out is turning out, till next time. Rick

Well when i last posted i was bitching - "crap i have another leak", it ended up being a pretty sizeable one, and I got it taken care of, then we were really exited becuase the carpet was going in the next day, but murphy could not leave well enough alone, as the installers were measuring out the carpet to get it installed, 1 of the rolls had a stain, but no ordinary stain, it was about 6 inches across and ran the entire length of one the rolls, through the entire carpet front to back, the carpet mill was supposed to send us out a professional carpet cleaner, but of course we could not reach them in order to get the carpet cleaners paid and we ended up having to pay the cleaners out of our pocket and now we will have to fight with the carpet mill in order to get reimbursed. But the carpet is finally in, and we also got the counter moved and installed today, the monitors are mounted in 1/2 of the rear section, and the rocker chairs also setup and built in the rear, Also we ran across another problem, not enough blacklight, we had to install 3 more overhead fixtures to get it well balanced out, we also installed the front facing video monitors, and the outdoor facing monitor that will be used for competition display, I ended up bringing in mushihimesama futari, in 1 of the blast citys to make sure the cabinet did not glow under the blacklight, i was a bit worried that it might. But all went well, and you can see 1 of the images of my daughter playing Mushihimesama Futari while 2 other helpers, decided to paint their faces with the blacklight paint and are posing along for the picture, very classic star trek looking. Also you can see a close up the carpet glowing under the blacklight. Some more pics tomorrow. Rick PS: thanks for the words of encourgement Crazy Climber, it truly does help boost you up, when you got someone routing for you.

Crap!! water is leaking through the back wall, i think it is coming from the roofing repairs that are currently going on. Just left a message for the landlord. Yikes and away. Rick

Ok everyone it has been 9 days since my last post, so here are the updates. #1 ) Roofers had to rip off the entire ceiling of the strip mall im in, and i got a hearty helping of rocks, dirt and believe it or not, hot buring tar coming through the roof along with the lovely frangrance of burning tires, ahh the wonders of business ownership in a strip mall. You can see a couple of roof pictures here which show outside light coming through the ceiling. #2 ) Well the painters calculated 2 days to get the painting done, and it ended up taking the poor guys 1 1/2 weeks, the blacklight paint is horrible stuff to work with, it has the consistancy and texture of Mayonnaise, imagine sticking a fork into a jar of Mayonnaise and use that to paint a wall, well you now get what these poor guys were going through, even though the paint was very thick, it was very watery and runny, and would'nt coat at all, it took over 4 coats to get what you are seeing here, and then the whole thing had to be sealed with a special UV sealer, twice, i am happy the painters stuck with it, beleive me i ended up raising how much i was paying them, becuase i felt so bad for the job turning into such a nightmare. #3 ) We received the Luminglas from a distributor in china, - In todays show, we are going to package a large and heavy electrical glass plate, and protect it with plastic cover about as thick as wet tissue paper, throw in a heavy transformer and holder for it and place it loose in the package with the large plate and ship it across to the other side of the world, tell them what they get johnny. Well congratulations, you end up with shards and shards of sharp broken plate glass, covered in a ton of little plastic beads coated in flourescent powder, basically a huge dangerous mess, thank you for playing, cheap chinese packing. #4 ) The luminglas we got that was'nt a shattered mess, we managed to get installed in the ceiling, it took some creative work, - translation, we had to reinforce each of the tiles with wood to handle the weight of the luminglas and the put a piece of lexan to hold the luminglas in place, but the final product came out very sturdy and pretty cool, very borgish - star trek reference here. #5 ) We had to redo ALL the blacklights, the original design was'nt lighting up the walls enough, so we had to move the ones we installed and add more to completely light up the walls. #6 ) we finished the shelving, the network lines, the additional monitor mounts for the monitor facing outside and the security monitor #7 ) we now figured out that we will need to cover the entry doors, too much light coming through them, so we ordered them to be covered like the rest of the glass panels, unfortunetly this will not be done till next friday #8 ) we also had to redo the plans, 9 times as of our last posting, because of space issues and inaddequate walking space, security concerns, etc. We are getting closer, tomorrow hopefully we will get a bit further, we are going to be doing touch up and a clean up a bit, we were supposed to get the carpet installed tomorrow, but delays - of course - caused the installer to push it till tuesday, the arcade has turned out to be harder than we thought, problems and unforseen delays popping up constantly on a daily basis as you can see above, but as The Robinsons would say - Keep moving forward. and we stubbornly are, however the concrete walls we keep having to move forward through are starting to hurt a bit. Sort of reminds me of the daffy duck cartoon, where he plays Robin hood, and porky pig is friar tuck, Daffy is trying to get past the trees by swinging over them, and he keeps yelling yikes and away, and keeps hitting other trees, which he then chops down and repeats yelling and swinging and crashing into trees till he is a shattered mess, if you have not seen this, google it, it is really quite funny. Here are some pics for you all to enjoy, i will hopefully be posting lists of the final games going in in the next week or so. See you soon, Yikes and away!!! Rick

From one obsesive collector to another, Very well done. Rick

All blacklights are installed, you can see the paints on the floor that will soon be on the walls. These pics were taken in complete darkness, so im sorry for the grainyness on these. Rick

Hello everyone, Posting some updates today #1) we finished running all the hdmi and usb cabling for all the consoles. #2) we finished all the electrical work & installed all the mounts on the walls & shelving for the consoles #3) alarm and camera systems are installed #4) 100meg internet circuit is installed #5) got more tournament joysticks in #6) installed new speakers in the blast cities - damn those are not cheap. #7) have received 8 new chassis for the nanao monitors, only need 4 but it is always good to have a few spares. tomorrow we are going to be installing the gig ethernet switches for the networks, and ethernet lines, and hopefully we will be receiving the blacklight reactive paint we ordered for the walls, hopefully we will be able to get the carpetting in by the end of this week or next week at the very latest. Then the games start going in. On the negative side, 1 of the 29" nanao monitors broke, which really upset me since it broke against my chest when i picked it up, but after checking some problems we were running into with the chassis , it turned out that the yoke was already bad on this monitor , so it did not kill me as much to lose 1 of these monsters. Anyways we are getting closer, i also just got a new console which is on it's way down, it is an intervision 3001, i will post pics once i get it, i wouold post pics of the other work in progress, but other than wires hanging down, they are not so impressive, maybe by the end of the week i will have some new ones to post. Rick Oh what the heck, here are a few pics, you can see 1 of the nanao monitor chassis out of 8 and 1 of the 18 speakers we just got in, you can also see 1 of the cabs with the new speakers already installed in it, and you can see where the shelving with the xboxes and ps3 and all the cabling is going to be installed. that's all for now, see you all soon.

Roof Painting has begun, we chose a very dark blue, also hot and cold running water is now installed in bathroom. Roof Painting is extremly messy, we have some painters doing it with a spray gun, tomorrow they should be starting on the walls. You can also see the places where we will be installing the 3d monitors in the rear, and you can see the dual rotating mounts on one of the walls, we only got 2 of these as they were very expensive, however this will allow shmup players to play those games in all their vertical glory. Also even though i did not take a picture of it, the windows are 100% done, we were missing 2 panels all the way on the right, we will be installing a monitor behind 1 of these so people outside can see the different games and what is going on inside. Rick PS: i just got back from trick or treating with the family and passed by the arcade to take the pictures you see posted now, in case any of you have been following this blog from the beginning, you can probably guess im a pretty big halloween fan, i am really upset we were not open in time for halloween, i had chosen several great games from my collection to be setup for the occasion, among them are Spawn - 4 cab deathmatch Death smiles splatterhouse house of the dead 1 house of the dead 2 house of the dead 3 house of the dead 4 satan's hollow melty blood actress again trouble witches i think a lot of people might have enjoyed playing these games, however l am going to have most of these installed on opening night anyways, sort of a sentimental halloween gesture i guess, See you all next post, and Happy Halloween everyone. Rick

Well another long evening, worked on alarm panel today, im including a pic of our finished women's bathroom, and 5 of our joysticks for the console section, we hope to have between 12-16 joysticks like these for our patrons to use. Until Next time. Rick

Thank you climber for the info, it really helps to see what is and is not working for my fellow arcade operators, however it is impossible to determine what sort of crowd we are going to end up getting at the facility, whether it will be new games, jap games, classic games, 360/ps3, or maybe an atari 2600 system, i guess we are going to have to gauge it and see. Rick

Hello everyone, well we have gotten window coverings now, permits coming hopefully on monday, fire alarm is in, permitted and monitored, im installing the facility alarm and automation unit for the power and lighting tomorrow. We have been receiving tournament and collector edition joysticks for rental within the facility, i will post pictures of those tomorrow, all the ceiling tiles have been redone, even though they are all going to be painted a very dark blue, but it still nice to have brand new ones put in, all new doors have been installed in the rear of the facility, we are getting closer. Here are some images, more to come tomorrow. Rick