Many of you regular readers already know about my serendipitous meeting of Bob, and how that led me to arcade bliss time and time again. However, for those of you who don’t know, Bob has been operating coin laundries for over 30 years and was the operator of the video arcade in my town during the 80′s. When it came time to get new games, Bob never traded the old ones in – he’d either convert them or keep them. Some games he had at his different laundrymat locations, but others he stored in his basement or warehouse.
When I first went to Townview, there were a few games in operation, but most games were hidden by junk or stuffed in the corner broken. I arranged a deal with the owner for that every two I fixed, he would give me one in return. Over the course of almost a year and a half, I have now had to repair every single game in some way. (yep, even the ones that were working at the time had something go wrong with them). I take that back, there is one game that has been playing like a champ for two years without a hiccup – Final Blow. Pretty hard to believe seeing as how he leaves these games on 24/7.
I had been putting off doing some repairs over the holidays, but there were several issues that needed my attention today. On the agenda was: a monitor swap for P.O.W., new power supply for Cabal, Figure out why Tekken 2 wouldn’t coin up (corrosion), and joystick replacement for King of Fighters. Since I had to go do some repair work anyway, I figured I would take pictures so the rest of you could see that there are still classics out in the wild earning money.
There are a couple things to note about the pictures. First off, yes, there are two Outruns in this location. We tried selling one, but when we couldn’t even get $150 for it, he decided to keep both saying “I did good with two of ‘em back in the old days.” It’s a good thing he kept both since one is now missing the steering wheel due to some kid dangling off of it with his full weight and snapping the screws off in their sockets (speaking of…anyone got an extra outrun cp?). Second, check out the cool old weight machine in the pic with the Zero Point. Third, for those wondering, the only game you can’t see because it is turned around is a Shinobi that is victim to a suicide board.
The top earners, in order, are: 48-1, Ms. Pac Man, Zero Point, King of Fighters, Tekken 3, and Super Pac. The laundry is pretty busy on the weekends, so the games get plenty of play. I have personally emptied full coin buckets before. It’s pretty funny, this coin laundry tucked in the middle of nowhere has more arcade games than the actual “arcade” in the mall.
January 24th, 2009 at 3:48 am
That’s so cool. I remember a few years ago I found a Sly Spy at our local laundry place. It was a conversion cab, but worked fine with the exception of the first player buttons, so you had to use 2 player buttons to do all your actions. Even though it isn’t a classic, I fell in love with the game. Just the whole James Bond theme gets me I guess. It is no longer there and I sure miss going over late at night and playing it while nobody else was in there. Its cool that laundry places have games in to keep people occupied. In fact, I know of another laundry place that has a Neo Geo game in it. Pretty cool, I have yet to stop and see it though. Wouldn’t mind finding more games around my area in laundry places. Nice Article. Thanks for the link.
Justin
March 16th, 2011 at 4:27 am
Awesome! Are these games still there? If so, my friends and I will be making a pilgrimage to Gainesville in the near future.
March 16th, 2011 at 5:17 am
as far as I know they are. However, I can’t speak to their current working status. I’ll let you know if I find out.