ccatalyst

Ok everyone i have a few questions to bounce off all of you, we are only going to have about 45~50 arcade games at the most in the facility, and hopefully 8- 360/ps3 42" 3d stations with the rumble chairs, now my questions to you are on the candy cab side, i was thinking of linking up 4 cabs like i did this weekend and put games like spawn/heavy metal/gundam, etc for 4 players to battle it out, i thought it was great fun, but on the other hand it takes away from the variety of having an additional 2-3 games , such as powerstone 2, Guilty gear accent core, senko no ronde duo rev b, etc. #1) Do you think the 4 player hookup would be a great idea, or would you prefer more variety? #2) I was going to be changing out the games every 4 weeks or so - i currently have over 260 arcade games/Pcb Boards now,and just ordered some more, so at around 50 in the physical arcade, i have quite a bit of rotating i can do to keep the arcade scene fresh & different, do you think switching out the games every month is too frequent for your tastes, or should it be every 2 months? I can let the earnings decide, but i want to hear what the Public has to say. #3) I just ordered a tondemo crisis pcb among a few others, to me they were alot of fun, I am hoping other people will enjoy these different arcade experiences, Are you ok with playing japanese games, you may not understand the writing but they are great fun, would you play a game you cannot read the instructions on? Many Thanks Rick

Sign is finished, will post pics tomorrow, just got home after getting 2 - sega naomi 2 and 2 naomi 1's to link up, slapped in my 4 spawn carts and it worked great, finally got to see an actual 4 player spawn deathmatch, it is really a blast to play with your friends, reminds me of the old days when we used to play network quake, we were playing at least until 1 of the monitors died, however i already ordered a replacement chassis from japan, actually ordered 8 of them, just to be prepared. it looks like we will be putting in 11 sega blast cities and 1 netcity, actually 12 blast cities if you count "The act" that we are also putting in the arcade. We are getting several carts of the linked naomi games so we can repeat what we did with spawn, tomorrow if we have time, i will try out the heavy metal carts, we only have 3, but i know where to order a 4th, yawn, it is very late 2:16am, and i have got to go and repair more systems tomorrow, so i will post pics then. Goodnight. Rick

And the buildout continues, sign is going up, still needs a little adjustment, but you will get the idea. Rick

Well it depends, in my situation, i negotiated to not start the lease payments till my facility was done and ready to move in, then i asked for a 30 day window for me to complete my side of the buildout - cameras, alarms, painting, carpeting, installation of machines, etc. And finally in my lease i arranged for a 3 month window to grow my business before my first payment is due. Now i still have been paying for storage in a 5000 sq ft bay for the machines to be held since april, that is costing me a pretty penny each month, but less than 1/2 compared to the rent in a retail zoned BU1A location like where arcade odyssey will be. But besides the storage you must also have enough put away to handle, putting down 3 months of payments for security deposit, additional monies towards repair of the facility, storage of games/items counter parts for the games, spare monitor chassis, drives, boards , gun parts, etc new games like kofxiii, or super sfiv arcade upgrade kits carpetting, lighting, painting - ceiling & walls special effects like blacklight paint, or lightning luminglass in the ceiling, 42" 3d Monitors, 50" video monitors signage, brouchures, cards, web site development, dns domain registrations email account hosting dedicated webserver with forum & backups advertising, alarm panels, security cameras, wiring, pc's, xboxes, ps3, games for consoles, tournament edition joysticks for consoles, rumble chairs, stools, cabling, headphones for consoles, headphone covers 3d glasses monitor mounts both tilting and rotating for vertical shooters 7ft x 4ft glass door refridgerator snacks & drinks t-shirts ethernet switches automation systems for the games and lighting surge strips licensing county & tax permits certificate of occupancy & cert of use cash register credit card machine token creation token machine token acceptors dollar bill acceptors for machines new locks for everything air compressor for motion games shelving 100Mbps redundant internet connections brought into facility UPS's enterprise firewall for network Phone system insurance fire alarm monitoring alarm monitoring bank account setup partnership document creation not everything came in that order and of course a blood, sweat , tears, a ton of time & expertease for cleaning/repairing/getting the games up, & all the networking/security/programming/monitors/systems ready. Boy that was a great excerise on what it takes to open an arcade up, almost a punch list for someone. I wonder if i missed anything? Oh well, it's a starting point. Rick

Certificate of Occupancy, done! Certificate of Use done, done! Dade county tax license for Vending machines, done! all final inspections finished and approved. But alas it was going too well, i went into the facility today to take some final measurements, and we have 8 water spots on the ceiling tiles, crap, we have leaks on the roof, i told the landlord about it, along with 35 ceiling tiles and 25 light covers that need to be replaced, along with the left rear door that is also going to be replaced with a new one. Had the keys in my hands for a full hour today , before i had to turn them back in so they could correct the remaining problems. Worked on setting all the naomi cabs to 31khz, and am now ordering more cables and parts. Man it never ends. Sometimes the end seems so close and yet when you step back and really start looking at it, you see you have quite a journey left to go. Rick

Hello again everyone, really long day today, on the console front, just got my 2nd hanimex sd70, but this one is in much better condition and it has the box, sort of. On the Arcade front, We just got past all out permits and got our Certificate of Use, and we have filed for our certificate of occupancy, so we are still treading along, just got in 3 more naomi's so now we have a total of 8 and another taito x2, so now we have 3 of those, also we got in 8 naomi communication boards and naomi fiber cables, i already have 4 spawn, 4 powerstone2 and 3 heavy metal geomatrixes ready to try out for competive play, we have been working on the cabs everyday for over a week now, you can see some of the naomi stuff under the hanimex, and we have been changing out coin mechs, fixing monitors, changing key lock mechs and redoing wiring looms till our fingers bled. Oh i also forgot to mention with the x2, we got continuum shift 2, trouble witches and kof xII, we just ordered kof maximum impact and homura, so hopefully we will get those next week, here is an image of the arcade games taking shape, till next time. Im hitting the sack. Rick

Wow, very impressive, incredible collection, thank you for sharing. Rick

Whoops, I forgot to mention, on the console front, received 3 optima laser assemblies today and used 2 of them, i used 1 to fix a jvc xeye today, so i now have 2 working units in the collection, i have a 3rd unit that i have working 100% thanks to a new laser, but after 1 minute or so it craps out, not sure what it can be, tried swapping out the entire laser assembly, but it did not fix it, and if you hit the reset button it just dies, and i have to power it on and off again, but to be honest, i just labeled them and put them both away in the totes to be stored, have too much going on with the arcade games and the buildout right now. Still searching everyday for those 5 systems that continues to elude me. Got a few answer backs from all the emails i sent out, but no dice on any of them. Darn it, Oh i also won another Hanimex sd-70 to add to the collection , this will be my 2nd unit, always good to have a spare, especially for these rare ones, coming from france so should be here in a couple of weeks of so, this one has it's box, will post pictures soon. Till next time. Rick

Well getting a little farther along with every post, on the arcade front, we have received all the new locks, and coin mechs, we have begun the long arduous process of changing all of these out, it is a true nightmare on the blast cities since they require 4 locks each. We are also getting the wiring looms installed and testing out all the monitors on the blast cities, the rest of the games are moving along alot quicker, we needed coin catcher buckets for some and all of those have arrived today, We should be posting pictures of us working on the games tomorrow. As far as the facility, you can see the bathrooms taking shape and the water fountains installed, the rear doors have been completed with all their hardware, at this rate we should be ready to file for certificate of occupancy by next week.

While I admit horrible jealousy and disgust over his having more toys, this is not as much a collection as a business. If you don't have to suffer to get it, I'm not sure they should put your picture on wikipedia as the definition of collector. AX Well to answer your question " this is not as much a collection as a business" Im sorry but i have to disagree with you Ax, You first posted about the collection back in oct of 2010,the business part came just recently, in march 2011 to be precise, i have been collecting for many years now, and i do so not only for the love of the games, but also the great advances in technology they represented for their time, such as 3d with the sega SMS, laseractive, virtual boy and vectrex systems, virtual reality with systems like the tiger R-zone, - i know im stretching that one a bit, but you have to admit it was still very cool for it's time, simulators & body controllers - such as the nintendo glove, the running pads, & of course all those guns, robots such as the nintendo bob or the wonderswan wonderborg, and finally the nostalgia of my younger years. I have always loved games, but did not have that many growing up, In fact my first and only gaming system was a TRS-80 Coco when i was 10 years old, my next computer/gaming system did not come into my life till i was 18, and i got my first PC, believe it or not I did not even own an atari, I would go and play these game systems at a friend of mines home, whom always seem to have the latest and greatest, so what i learned about games growing up, i got from playing at his and several other of my friend's homes & from reading magazines or seeing them in toy stores. And of course then there is my sweet spot, those wonderful arcades, My little brother, and I would sometimes walk over an hour just to go play $1.00, we would not take the bus, becuase that would cut down on our gaming funds, when the money ran out, we would just walk around and bask in the Wonderful sounds and Glowing crt's of those great towering machines. When i got my first car, we would drive over an hour to a 24hr arcade to play at 3am on a saturday morning. We had the whole arcade almost to ourselves, man those were great times. When i was younger i used to watch the silver spoons tv show and always dreamed and wished - someday i will have an arcade like the one on that tv show, well i had to wait a few years till i grew up, and married a very patient and understanding wife - trust me on this guys "you cannot be a kid at heart and not have have an understanding wife" but hey at least my kids, and their friends had the benefit of living my dream. As i have gotten older, and my collection seems to be close to completion - at least on the game console side, my new dream is to build sort of a video game history museum /arcade museum. As for the collector vs business debate, I still search daily looking for the few missing systems i need to complete my collection, in fact 2 weeks ago, i searched video game sellers in korea and singapore, and wrote to over 20 of them looking for a zemmix cpg-120, last week i wrote to several ebayers located in ireland looking for a katz media kmp2000, and last night , i spent 4 hours searching for and sending out over a dozen emails to people i feel may be able to help me find an olivetti envision. So even though im hoping the business does well enough to allow to get the museum together, i have to say, im a collector first, and hoping my business skills/bit of luck will allow me to realize my game museum/arcade goals second. 1 final note as for the suffering part, If anyone here has ever owned or run a business they can vouch for me on the suffering, it is a lot worse than collecting, believe me, i would rather spend days hunting down a game system, more so than a single hour dealing with a county zoning or Tax issue. I hope everyone enjoys the pictures and information that have i post in this forum, i have gotten alot of encouraging emails & posts from fellow gamers about the arcade build out, and to all of you, all i can say is thank you for your support & kind words, i hope what i end up building down here will at the very least bring a smile to your faces. Many Thanks & see you next post. Rick

Well the sign is in, there is a picture of it in my hallway, before the installers came to pick it up, the bathroom walls are completely up, and the pylon sign is installed. Things are beginning to really move quickly now. Rick.

Hello again, well we have some updates on the arcade front, there is a chance we may be getting our street sign tomorrow, so if we do, expect to see those images. As for today, we have bathroom walls, yes, it is truly a wonderful thing, im so looking forward to having working bathrooms also i had to go to the post office to get the key to my mailbox, and had to order and get installed 2 phone lines for the fire alarm monitoring, fun , fun, fun. Here are the images, and hopefully we may see you all again tomorrow. Rick

Well good news today on the arcade front, the final permits for the fire alarm passed, and now supposedly the contractors are working full tilt to get the the arcade build out finished, as for the signage on the street sign, it was also approved and it is going to be over 9ft long, now this is not the signage over the arcade itself, that one is going to be over 43ft long, im hoping to have the street facing one up by next week. Also the double doors are up and the bathroom doors and door frames have arrived, so we are still moving, slowly, but definately moving. On the console front, we just finished repairing 4 xboxes, & 1 wii, you can see in the tote the 4 xboxes, and alot of game guides, underneith all those guides, there is the atari 5200, an atari 2600 4 switch and an atari jr, from my post back on sept 4,everything is getting ready for storage in the attic, i also just ordered new lasers to fix 2 jvc xeye's, so im hoping those new lasers will get everything working nicely. I had mentioned to everyone in my prior post that i was finally starting to organise my games, i just used to put all the games in totes or boxes and just worry about getting the systems, but not anymore, you can see the 2 bookshelves that we put in my wife's office, and you can see the beginning of the organisation process, in just the first nook, where i have the nes carts there are over 120carts in the 1st space, the shelves are rather deep so it aids in getting stuff packed in there. We will be bringing down the 40 or so totes that are currently sitting up in my company's attic hopefully soon and can start getting the rest of the games out and into these shelves, so expect to see more pictures of them. On top of the shelves you will see the 2 backup laserdisc players for my pv-6 msx ld system, 1 of my IM-1's in it's original box and my RDI Halcyon laserdisc player, now freshly refurbished. Overall the week is closing out rather nicely. Well that is all for now. Many Thanks Rick

Very nice collection, Good luck hunting those rare consoles down. Rick

Thank you all for your kind words and encouragement, i continue to walk the line, and believe me reading kind words on this forum definately help. Just today i was arguing about the placement of my sign on the pylon facing the street, frustrating but nothing was finalized. On the console front, i just got back my RDI Halcyon Laserdisc player and it is like new, the entire guts were reworked by an excellent laserdisc repair company - Bayview electronics, if any of the ld collectors out there have any issues you will definately want to contact this guy, his name is Duncan and his website is Bayview Electronics, this is definately a guy to know for classic LD systems repair, he has repaired several of mine including arcade laserdisc players, If you do use him, let him know Rick in miami sent you. Also today i have updated my lists at the beginning of this post, and i have begun to organise my games as you guys probably saw in my earlier posts, i will be posting pictures of all the games neatly stacked in 2 large bookshelves i just put in the office soon, so stand by for those. Thanks once again to everyone, and see you soon. Rick

Well it has been a heck of a month, construction is moving forward, although slowly, but it is moving ahead, you will be able to see where the bathrooms are taking shape and where the double doors are being installed for bringing the games into the facility, you will see some pipeing that is going to be used for the dual water fountains, and also the opening between the front and the back of the arcade had to made almost 3 feet wider and you will see that also in the pictures. At this rate im hoping to be in by november, but we'll wait and see. As for the console front, a good friend of mine is leaving florida and sold me his entire collection, so we rented a 26ft'er and went up to move it on down, you will see me packing everything to go into my attic at my warehouse, and you will also see a box with starfox2, but alas it is an empty cart box, so no i do not have it, i did however get a a few carts and disks i was missing, and in 1 of the pics you can see my son's friend, helping to organise and sort all the item we just received for duplicates, in another shot you can see my son's legs as he helps put away a bunch of genesis for storage in the attic, and in my game room you will see a few ataris and jvc xeye's that need to be tested, you will also see 3 more monitors that we just put into the blast city cabinets, which we are getting ready for the arcade. There were also a couple of other arcade cabs we picked up from , such as a sega naomi universal cab, a sega lost world cab, although empty, and another empty sega generic cab, i may be able to use the monitors out of those. But that is everything for now. Hopefully we'll pick up more steam in the next few weeks coming ahead. I will let you all know as we progress. Many Thanks Rick

Hello again everyone, the arcade permits were finally all approved, and demolition is complete and construction has actually begun, i will try and get some pictures soon, on the console front, i got 2 new LD's for the msx system, Rolling blaster and an educational title call spacedisc, views of earth, volume 5, well i guess that pretty much does it for the msx, i have every ld made for it as far as games go, and 1 educational title, now i just need 3d austailia for the laseractive and i'll be done on that side also. I'll post the pictures of the last 2 titles, and will get back to everyone with the arcade construction later on. Many Thanks Rick

Been very quiet lately, still waiting for the county to give approval and issue the permits, on the console front got an entex craxy climber this friday, here is a pic of it. Keep those posts, thoughts, suggestions, coming in. Many Thanks Rick

Will do, Many Thanks Rick

It is going to be located on 12045 SW 117th ave, but it is still not open, we are currently building out the new bathrooms and installing the water fountains, we maybe looking at 3-4 weeks till completion,we will be posting additional updates and news every week or so. Thank you so much for your interest. Rick

New items today, on the Arcade front, we got our token machine up and running with 2 MEI acceptors, with the latest firmware, and 2 hoppers with the extenders, we also got 2 main boards, just in case 1 blows, so as far as token changing is concerned, we are pretty much covered, everything is redundant and fails over to only 1 if needed. We also got our tokens minted,10000 to start off with, we had to tweak the design a bit, but i think it came out ok. As for the arcade itself, we have gotten an architech to do a drawing of the facility and i was asked to put the layout where everything was going to go,this will hopefully get zoning off our backs so we can finally get our COU - certificate of use, you can see pictures of the Arcade layout and his final design which includes 2 bathrooms for the famales, and 1 bathroom + 1 urinal for the males, 2 water fountains, and of course our main layout, these are in pdfs, so you may have to open them to see them, the blast cities will have everything from metal slug 6, to dolphin blue, to kof XIII, to spawn, to melty blood actress again, i want to really give gamers alot of options for new games they may never have seen before, this is just the layout, i may be able to squeeze maybe 2-4 more games in there, maybe i'll add a tron, a gauntlet dark legacy, a midway multigame, and a williams multigame, which will bring my total # of games to 55, in the facility. As for the console front , i just won my second imagination station, this one came with a few tapes, but also came with almost every issue of the club newsletters for the apf, among them are NATIONAL IMAGINATION COMPUTER CLUB, and IM-1 in a Million, in fact this package is so complete, that it also came with it's original box, original invoice , including the original credit card receipt and cc# that bought it and the basic cart and manual all in very good condition. Well that is all for now,on to the images. Rick arcade layout.pdf Final design plans.pdf

New updates today, arcade still being worked on for zoning purposes, and money is hemoraging like a leaky old faucet, but we did get some neat new items today, on the arcade side, we received a bunch of cave shumps, among them are, musihimesama futari platinum collection, Espgaluda 2 black label, platinum collection, mushi mushi pork & pink sweets Limited edition, death smiles 2, IIX limited edition, on the back ordered side we have akai katana shin limited edition and do don pachi daifukkatsu black label, this should round out the shumps portion of the arcade, these will be running on xbox 360's japanese and US versions depending on the game and 42" vertically mounted monitors, we are still missing 2 of the cave shooters they will hopefully arrive here soon. We also recieved melty blood actress again for the Naomi and Dolphin Blue for the atomis wave, Hopefully the arcade players will like those 2, as they are not very common out there and are a heck of a lot of fun to play. On the console side we received a Nintendo donkey kong Jr - white, which completes my collection of the nintendo tabletops, here you can see all 5 in all their glory, and after waiting over a year, i finally got my channel f multicart and pac man cart for the channel f system. Here are the pics, keep those posts and emails coming. Rick

New update today, the arcade odyssey is definately getting alot harder, I went to the county to apply for a certificate of use so we can get started, and we passed electrical however we failed, fire, derm, mechanical, building, zoning, & plumbing, when i woke up from the shock, i called the mall management and they are trying to see what can be done to get these items passed,on a positive note, the carpet arrives on tuesday, we have purchased a bunch of 3d tvs and tested them extensively for any lag or anything determental to any game player, we were very, very pleased with these units, and over 20 different gamers tested them with different games, from fighters to shooters, to music games, excellent performance, you can see the testing station in our kitchen , with the xrocker chair and the 3d monitors along with all the xboxes and ps3, several of the software titles and by the front door you have the token changer with 3 plasma monitors to replace the 50" screens in some of the arcade games, plus you get a glimse of what used to be my office,but it is now cluttered with arcade items. Well as they say in Meet the Robinsons, "keep moving forward". Here are some pics for everyone. Rick

The Latest handheld to be added to collection arrvied today, it is a Dingoo Technologies A330. It came with a USB Cable, headphones, charger, and A/V cable for a tv set, realy neat, the emulation is a bit slow on the newer titles, but still a neat little handheld,Here are the pics. Rick

Nope, and i thought i knew everyone in the game trade down here, I will keep my ears open for his name at the gatherings / auctions. In the arcade news, We purchased 6 xbox 360's today, 2 ps3,s and a bunch of games , we are testing both passive and active 3d tv's for the displays, and we are looking into the controllers we will be using. and more arcade parts showed up. Baby steps every minute. Rick