Eight years I've owned the Simpsons arcade game. EIGHT YEARS! Thats a long time, this one has been a keeper with its instantly recognizable animated characters, and its 4 player cooperative gameplay. This game I won on an ebay auction when I was on vacation, and it resulted in a 5 hour one way road trip to Chicago. You can read about the roadtrip here at http://www.thebasementarcade.com/roadtrips7.htm.

So for eight years my Simpsons arcade didn't have freeplay. The original programmers never built it into the games operator menu and no freeplay kit has existed for it. To coin up, I installed pushbutton on the control panel to add coins. This has confused some, and for others they will put 20 credits on the game and walk away. This means the game plays for an hour straight doing nothing, its very annoying. So finally an individual on the KLOV forums altered the game code to allow freeplay on this game. One ROM, just one IC chip was replaced at location 15c on the game board. That's it. Now, Simpsons has new life in my arcade. No more confused players, no more extra coins added. Now just some sweet, sweet freeplay.

I really like this game. and now its time to crush Mr. Burns once again, in Simpsons...the arcade game.

The wonderful people at Zillow who professionally shot a video of the arcade (see post below), have posted a follow up BLOG article with Q&A. To read more about the arcade, click through to Zillow's BLOG article at Sanctuary: A Gamer's Vintage Arcade or copy and paste the direct link at http://www.zillow.com/blog/sanctuary-gamers-vintage-arcade-199064/.

Zillow (the online real estate company) sent a film crew out to shoot my basement arcade for a web based series called Sanctuary. I posted about this on 3/25/16 (scroll down to entry below). They finally finished editting the video and have now made it live online. Enjoy the video!

I love my Spy Hunter. It was an auction pickup back when auctions still had good classic games in nice shape. Spy Hunter was ALWAYS a childhood favorite, with its Peter Gunn theme song to the game play of driving and shooting at cars. Spy Hunter is one game that will never leave the arcade. Its just too much classic fun all in one. Plus, look at the side art on this game. Just look at it. That's a nice looking game! Now all games in my arcade are on some form of freeplay. The early 80's classic games were not built with freeplay options, not even in their dip switches. After all, these games were produced to make money, not be stuck in someone's home arcade. Over time, I have upgraded all my games with freeplay kits or roms that include those options. Newer games like the driving games and Golden Tee have freeplay from the computerized options menu. There have been a handful of games that don't have freeplay roms or kits available, so with those games I installed a credit button. I don't like to drill new holes into my cabinets, so I usually use a pre-existing hole left over from some operator's lock bar or similar. On Spy Hunter, the only hole availabe was a tiny one which I installed a tiny button. Most people who have tried to play my Spy Hunter, have a hard time trying to figure out how to coin up the game.

Thankfully, this minor annoyance is now at an end. I found a set of Spy Hunter freeplay roms which I ordered from Hobby Roms in Canada. These came in the form of 2 roms to swap out at locations 6D and 10D. The board stack is a 3 board sandwhich which have to be carefully disassembled to get to the middle board and swap the roms. Yes, it had to be the middle board. Anyways, after swapping out these roms, the screen now says freeplay. You can walk right up to the game, squeeze the trigger button and it will start up the game. Nice! A little known fact about Spy Hunter with the casual game players. If you play it long enough, you can go down a boat ramp and your car will turn into a gun toting speed boat, all James Bond style. Shazam!

There's been some minor changes around the arcade. A pinball table was added, a Frogger entered the arcade and I have added many more new lights and neons. So with that, it was time for a new photoset. Enjoy the photos!

It was a tough work week, let me tell you. I had been programming reports for a Board meeting as well as numberous other projects. One evening I happen to be browsing though some Craiglist ads and come across a Garage sale ad in my local area which had a Golden Tee and Pachinko machine for sale. I emailed the person, and didn't hear from them for 2 days. Honestly, I thought I missed out on this one. The garage sale was the next day and those items would have been open season for all garage salers and resellers. The day of my work's board meeting I get a phone call from the seller. I knew I had to get these fast before anyone else shows up. We agreed upon a price and I made arrangements to go straight from my board meeting to pick up the items. To my surpise the Golden Tee was a 2005 Complete which wasn't mentioned in the sale ad. I loaded up, got them home and soon after had multiple offers on the Golden Tee. Now I already have a Golden Tee Complete, so this one I flipped. My keeper was the Pachinko machine which I found out was from 1975. It was in a state of disrepair but after a couple of days I had it up and running. This one was in better shape than my other Pachinko plus this one has a recycler mechanism which allows rapid fire of the Pachinko balls, very fun indeed. Its been a long time since I had a nice garage sale find so this was a fun little adventure for the history books.

It was a tough work week, let me tell you. I had been programming reports for a Board meeting as well as numberous other projects. One evening I happen to be browsing though some Craiglist ads and come across a Garage sale ad in my local area which had a Golden Tee and Pachinko machine for sale. I emailed the person, and didn't hear from them for 2 days. Honestly, I thought I missed out on this one. The garage sale was the next day and those items would have been open season for all garage salers and resellers. The day of my work's board meeting I get a phone call from the seller. I knew I had to get these fast before anyone else shows up. We agreed upon a price and I made arrangements to go straight from my board meeting to pick up the items. To my surpise the Golden Tee was a 2005 Complete which wasn't mentioned in the sale ad. I loaded up, got them home and soon after had multiple offers on the Golden Tee. Now I already have a Golden Tee Complete, so this one I flipped. My keeper was the Pachinko machine which I found out was from 1975. It was in a state of disrepair but after a couple of days I had it up and running. This one was in better shape than my other Pachinko plus this one has a recycler mechanism which allows rapid fire of the Pachinko balls, very fun indeed. Its been a long time since I had a nice garage sale find so this was a fun little adventure for the history books.

Robots, retro computers, dinosaurs and laser battles. Can Rock Dad save the day? Includes bonus outtakes after the credits so make sure you watch it until the end! Playing video games, music, family and robots. It's a Rock Dad life.

This last weekend was pretty exciting down in the Vintage Vault Arcade. Zillow.com flew out a film crew from Seattle, Washington to film my home arcade for a new web series called "Sanctuary". The concept is about unique spaces or "sanctuaries" that people have created in their homes. Filming started Friday night and picked up again on Saturday from 8:30am to 6:30pm. They said that I was Episode 3 of the new series.

The crew was great to work with and even took the opportunity to play a few games. They told me that they were shooting with the same video camera that Peter Jackson used to film "The Hobbit". This was a Red model 5K camera. All video was being shot in 5K resolution at 48 frames per second. WOW!

This is a web series, and will take some time for editting and production so it will be some time before this episode is ready for viewing. Until then, enjoy the series of photos I took of the film shoot. There's been some minor changes around the arcade. A pinball table was added, a Frogger entered the arcade and I have added many more new lights and neons. So with that, it was time for a new photoset. Enjoy the photos!

I have a lot of arcade games. That is a fact. Probably more than the average collector. Now if you know anything about vintage arcade games then you know they made hundreds of titles in the 80s, and probably thousands or more large standups over the decades. I have done my best to collect the most wanted and remembered titles, rounded out with a bit of fun factor. Given this fact it astounds me how many times I get asked "How come you don't have *such and such* arcade game?" Maybe I don't live in a football stadium, maybe I don't have a bottomless pit of spending cash. Maybe, just maybe I don't like that particular title that you are so fond of. Yet....people still ask me.

One of these titles I happened to get asked alot about was from the moms.....where's the Frogger? Why don't you have a Frogger? Due to its popularity, Frogger has landed on every home console from the Atari 2600 all the way up to the Xbox and Playstation. All the moms like Ms. Pacman, Galaga...and Frogger... and I don't have a Frogger. Hmmmpphhhh. Now we arrive at the present. I was talking to a collector friend of mine who just picked up 2 Revolution X arcade games. He was fixing them up and enjoying the game so much that he blurted out "I guess I'm going to have to sell a game to bring this in the house, I'll probably sell Frogger". Frogger? Wait a second, I've been wanting a Frogger. Well that's all she wrote. I bought his Frogger and brought it home. I gave it the royal Vintage Vault Arcade maintennance treatment and relocated it to "Mom Row"...which is now Ms. Pacman, Galaga and Frogger.

Unfortunately this story has a sad ending. My arcade is completely full also, which means if I buy one, I sell one. What do I sell? I like them all! Well I had a newer Crisis Zone which I kind of liked but it didn't hold fond memories from my childhood, basically I wasn't married to it. So I sold the Crisis Zone and brought in the Frogger. Honestly, I couldn't be any happier with the swap. Plus this particular machine has the added bonus of a freeplay and high score save kit, and brand new sideart. Bonus! Hop on!