I'm Here to Tell Ya

That this would be in a place of honor in my lottery fueled game room in the new house.

It's an Ultimate Arcade II Cabinet MAME - which means it has a 'puter running MAME software capable of running old video arcade games. It also has a decent sound system - which, considering the tech at the time, mostly needed to be loud. More importantly, it comes with a bunch of games preloaded - some really take me back!

Most important (in my mind) is Defender. No keyboard or commercial joystick ever really replicated the original arcade version. It took mad skilz to play that game with it's myriad buttons - I could and did "roll it over." Other blasts from the past include Joust, Robotron, Sinistar and Spy Hunter - some of my old faves. There are several others, but these would do. All it needs now is Galaga, Ms Pac Man, Centipede, Missile Command - oh well, ya get the idear. And Gorf - that one is pretty hard to find. In my ideal post lottery winning days, I could just purchase the necessary MAME goodies to play those as well. Actually, just between you and me - if I resurrected some old drives, I'd find some of those old MAME games I downloaded back in the day, when they could be picked up for free. The new games are certainly impressive with their superior graphics, sound and so on - but they leave me cold.

I can remember the first good (Pong got boring real quick) video arcade game I ever played - it was a two person console version of Tank at a resort hotel near World's of Fun in KC. Our high school Honor Society sponsored that trip, and some of us future geeks managed to tear ourselves away from that game long enough to ogle some of our hawt classmates in their bikinis. Just barely.

I guess my chances of winning the fool's tax would increase dramatically if I would actually buy a ticket once in a while. I suppose I'm getting tighter than bark on a tree in my old age....