As I mentioned just a few posts ago, I had the chance to go and check out a warehouse full of games today. I am kicking myself however as I forgot to bring my camera along for images/video. So I’ll just have to describe what I saw and when I get to go back hopefully I’ll remember the camera and they will allow me to film it.
Of course with the way everything was setup there it might not have worked out too well recording video as I have never been in a warehouse with so many games. And not only did they have a lot of games, there was very little space between them so I had to do a lot of climbing over things and standing on games to get to the back. Good thing I’m skinny.
When I first arrived I was walked to the back through their main workspace that also had many games laying around although most of those were being worked on and weren’t up for grabs AFAIK. They had some rare pins there, including two Medieval Madness pins and a Revenge From Mars. I saw a couple of Crisis Zones, two Dark Legacy cabs, several Artic Thunder cabs, a Wangan Midnight cab, Ballistic (by TrioTech) Wild Ride by Sega (which I had never heard of before), a Maze of Kings and an SF Alpha, just to name a few.
Arriving in the back I got to see what I was up against – about 8 rows of games stacked back to back along with other cabinets sprawled about. Keep in mind most of these games have a problem of some kind whether it was missing the board, dead monitor, busted controls, etc. Among the many games I looked at I saw a couple of Area 51’s and a Site 4 cabinet; a Time Crisis 2 cab w/o the guns; a Revolution X, a SF Rush 2049 w/o the board, several Crusin’ games including USA, World and Exotica; a Virtua On; a Konami punching game that used motion-capturing boxing gloves but it was different from MoCap Boxing – it instead had physical targets to punch called Fighting Mania: Fist of the North Star (thanks Paul); and this was only on 1 row. Hit the post break for more!
Continuing on with what I saw:
Several BeachHead cabinets with a couple of different configurations – a couple had both BeachHead 2000 and 2002 on the same cab, others had only one BeachHead game and used a trackball, the others used a joystick
A CarnEvil cabinet with a gun that had a broken shell
A Rampage World Tour
2 Mortal Kombat II cabs
Several Golden Tee cabinets with a variety of versions represented. I think they had more GT cabs than anything else.
A few different Ms. Pac-Man cabinets with two or three in an original cab, others being conversions
A couple Galaga cabinets, also with one or two in original cabs, the others in something else.
A Hellcade cabinet – Superman put into a Tempest cabinet. This was the worst conversion I saw.
A Harley Davidson game with a motorcycle seat broke in half
A T-Mek that was in pieces. It sucked to see that, I’m not sure how salvageable it is.
A Tournament Cyberball 2072 cabinet, with the dual screens and all.
A couple of NBA Showtime on NBC cabs that were originally NBA Jam cabinets
A couple of Breeders Cup cabinets
A Vs. Playchoice cabinet w/ no marquee
A Mars Matrix cab – I hadn’t heard of this one before but it looks interesting. The graphics from what I see on KLOV remind me of Blazing Star.
An SVC Chaos: Capcom Vs. SNK cabinet
A Sega Sports Jam cab
An SNK Irritating Maze cabinet that was an original. I’ve heard of this one before, I didn’t know that they made a special cabinet for it though.
A Captain America and the Avengers cabinet
A Mighty! Pang cab by Capcom. I’m not familiar with this game.
A few Deer Hunting 2 cabs
A Ridge Racer 2 cab but it looked like it was in really poor condition
There were about 6 or 7 cabinets for a game named “Frenze Express”. I hadn’t heard of it before but it’s a foot scooter game. None of them had the scooters but I was surprised to see so many there where I had never seen this one in an arcade locally. I guess it didn’t do to well commercially.
A cart game from Midway, I didn’t catch the full name though and I can’t find any kart racing game from Midway on KLOV. EDIT: Thanks to Paul in the comments, this is Cart Fury.
A Namco Classic Collection cab (Volume 2 I believe) – at first I thought that this was some sort of MAME cab or a pirated cabinet but then I found out that it was an official release. I think they changed the marquee though which is why I thought that it wasn’t an original as this was another one I wasn’t familiar with.
An Atari Roadblasters
For now that is all I can remember – I know I missed a couple but they weren’t anything special. They also had some token changers – I need one so I will certainly try and get my hands on one.
As I mentioned, if I manage to get some pics/video next time I go I will post them here.
That kart game was Cart Fury, and the boxing game was Fighting Mania: Fist of the North Star.
I’m really interested in how you heard about this place, and especially what were they charging for the games? I’m going to develop my own collection of games and always want to know how a collector can get word of places like this.
Thanks Paul, I’ll update the list. Cart Fury – I was using a K that’s why it didn’t show up. 😛
I heard about this through my distributor. I was telling the sales rep that is working with me that I needed some cabinets to put some of my kits into and he brought it up, saying that the guy was going to throw all the games out and he didn’t want to see that happening. I should know by tomorrow what kind of deal I’ll be able to land with this.
Virtual On! That takes me back – there was a cabinet in the local Sega Park, it was one of my favourite games during the time it was there. The Saturn conversion never did match up, though I played it with some twin sticks at the Classic Gaming Expo a few years back and it was a better experience (though still imperfect).
Mars Matrix is very cool, I’m familiar with the Dreamcast port. It isn’t particularly friendly to new shoot-’em-up players, though. There’s a good review here: http://shmups.classicgaming.gamespy.com/reviews/marsmatrixrev2/index.html
Why did your distributor recommend another seller to you? Isn’t that like HBO recommending you check out Showtime? Awfully charitable.
As it turns out, this other distribution company is owned by the larger one that I’m working with so there is no conflict of interest. It seems like large distributors have good relationships with smaller ones in their geographical area, I guess they rely on each other to keep going.
I’ve seen Virtua On in action but never played it. It looks fun at least.
I should know soon what the prices are on the games and what is working and what isn’t. I’m trying not to get too excited about what I could get until I know for sure.