The "What Are You Doing This Moment" Thread

[Slammed]

I think from memory the Aldi ones last year, which were basically just imported as complete cabs from overseas, were Gauntlet and Street Fighter in one and Galaga and something else in another and there has been quite a few hit the second hand market since. There was quite a few people complaining that they are 'kid size' and need to be sat on something like a milk crate for adult use, also that two player is cramped and that the controllers were not the best quality but most of those complaints came from people who paid full price of $499. Those who waited for the stores to discount them and waited for the first buyers to iron out the kinks got a bargain win they came down under $300. Otherwise you're looking at about $2000 for a full size cab made locally with all the right graphics and licensing.

 

[Satanstoenail]

A pinball is not worth it these days. They are nearly all propriety parts that only come from the manufacturer, the only techs who really know how to fix them are the techs from the manufacturer and anything from the service call to parts are fucken expensive. My brother in law has a $6500 dust collector in his possession these days because the parts and labour to fix a 5 year old machine are nearly $2500.

I’ve had a few customers with home machines that didn’t have these problems. One of them said he’d done a bit of maintenance work on it himself. I refuse to give up the dream of one day owning my own.

For cabinet games there is a couple of mobs in Sydney who really do a good job of full size cabs with licensed software but the hand crafted work and the license doesn't come that cheap. For the average mug the Aldi cabinet that came down to $250 last year are hard to beat, 2 games, the screen, an emulation board, all the controllers and about 2 hours work. But then if one isn't worried about paying licenses for 30 year old games they are all available for download, as is the emulator and you can make your own cab (without the cab graphics) running a standard PC, decent monitor, even go as fas as getting the car seat for racing games and you'd easily come out of it for $500 with a thousand games.

Do you know if Daytona machines are high maintenance? Owning one is one of my other dreams.

 

[Slammed]

I’ve had a few customers with home machines that didn’t have these problems. One of them said he’d done a bit of maintenance work on it himself. I refuse to give up the dream of one day owning my own.

Nothing is high maintenance if you have the skills but just like all the home mechanics who think car maintenance only extends to changing oil and rotating the tyres, or the home PC tech who thinks the only way to fix things is to replace parts, pinball/games machines require a knowledge to do anything beyond the most basic thing. With many of the cheaper video games running emulators on older x86 systems (or similar) much of the maintenance is nothing more than replacing bits until you find the faulty part. Of course knowing the faulty part or what makes it faulty is handy but not essential if you operate on the same principal 90% of computer techs do. The big difference with legacy machines and definitely pinballs is the propriety parts and how hard they are to get, even if one is knowledgeable enough to diagnose them. As to how long a machine will last without maintenance is on a par with how long will a new car last without a mechanic.

Do you know if Daytona machines are high maintenance? Owning one is one of my other dreams.

It's the age old question of how long is a piece of string. I know guys who have the original Sega Mega rally, one guy has never had a fault another had has nothing but problems. I've read of guys who replaced old parts on some machines with new parts and couldn't get them to work properly. Sega Mega Rally games are often picked up cheap with cabs that are in less than great condition, but Daytona's really hold their value in good nick. I've seen second hand Daytona's go for more than $8K. But I haven't seen a home based one in person since the early 00's.

 

[Bloopy]

I have Pinball Arcade on Steam and loved the shit out of it. Tales of the Arabian Nights is probably my favourite table on there. Need to try it in real life sometime.

 

[Slammed]

I've got Visual Pinball and Future Pinball on my desktop. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages but the number of people out there making ROM's for them is amazing and the number of 'authentic' tables that can be downloaded for nothing makes the game almost endless. Some of the ROM's don't always work perfectly but because they are freeware they are all editable so you can make improvements if you want to.

 

[Bloopy]

Yeah, Visual Pinball is impressive. The feel didn't seem quite as nice, but great for all those tables that aren't on Pinball Arcade.

I got as far as making this for a laugh. Seeing if it was possible to have a 'moon' switch that appears to change gravity:

 

[Slammed]

I don't use steam so a few years ago when I was going through all the old pinball machines on PC to see if they still worked (ones like Tristan and Epic Pinball) I came across Visual and Future and decided to give them some time. There is some shitty tables out there but when you can play classics from Bally, Stern and Midway etc it does add a new interest. I remember downloading all sorts of shit from the Lethal Weapon, to Addams Family, to Tommy. Of course it wasn't the same as the arcade but it also wasn't as expensive

 

[Funerary_Doom]

It's Mother's Day and I want to be a lazy bum, but my mother's older sister is here from Jamaica and is staying an entire month. So I think I'll take them out to eat. It's really rainy outside today though, and I just want to eat chips, listen to music, and watch The Act. Work is winding down and this week is all testing, pretty much, so I don't need to lesson plan until later on this week. Woot.

 

[CiG]

Is there any chance HP Lovecraft was Omni?

Interestingly, I was trying to find a post by him just now about a band I can't remember the name of, and I can't tag his name in this comment or in the search function.

@MetalAges any reason why his account cannot be tagged?

 

[PrincessHades]

Waiting for my phone to charge (the usb port is broken so i have to stick the wires between the batter and the terminals which is sketch as fuck and i cant use it while charging) and watching a Cam Finnie stream. if u dont know who that is check him out on youtube, he does album rankings which are really cool

 

[Bloopy]

Interestingly, I was trying to find a post by him just now about a band I can't remember the name of, and I can't tag his name in this comment or in the search function.

@MetalAges any reason why his account cannot be tagged?

The punctuation seems to prevent the drop down usernames from working, but the actual search and tag link still work: @H.P. Lovecraft

 

[CiG]

Weird.

 

[PrincessHades]

listening to the yardbirds and not working on online algebra thats due in 3 days and only 20 percent complete

 

[jimmy101]

Nice. Check out that Yardbirds song "Stroll On". Heavy as lead.

 

[PrincessHades]

thanks for the rec, sounds pretty good but its not exactly new lol

I always knew they had a few heavy songs but i never knew they got that heavy

 

[jimmy101]

"Stroll On" is a reworked version of a song the Yardbirds covered in their earlier years called "Train Kept A-Rollin". Yeah, it's pretty much the Yardbirds' heaviest song.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

View attachment 20016

this pic looks like a freeze-frame from a chicks-with-stap-ons video

@Terasophe
Killer Instinct Gold was awesome

 

[no country for old wainds]

stroll on is cool, i was introduced to that via blow up. johnny burnette's version is even better though.

my fav yardbirds song is:

 

[PrincessHades]

Just pulled out my two dreads...i decided that i was going to not brush my hair and let it dread about two months ago...i ended up with two half assed dreads that just looked stupid. I spent 3 hours working on getting them out.

I think im going to get my hair cut tomorrow, probably like a mulllet or some other sort of long hair style. If all else fails im just buzzing that shit

 

[CiG]

I think im going to get my hair cut tomorrow, probably like a mulllet or some other sort of long hair style. If all else fails im just buzzing that shit