Cub Scout party

My nephew had a party in the arcade today to celebrate graduating from cub scouts to boy scouts. He invited his entire den, and I think they each brought their entire families. It was pretty busy! Not as much as it was on Game Day I don't think, but with so many kids the gameroom was rather well-loved today.

I shot some video but I need to buy another firewire cord before I can upload it. For now, here's a couple photos of the cub-scoutin' action.

New Arcade Website

I've created a new website for the arcade, lunacityarcade.com. I moved all the arcade-specific content from my personal website to there. I still have to rework my personal website now to point to lunacity.com.

Note for people looking to sign up to my mailing list - it is here:
http://lunacityarcade.com/mailinglist.htm

More articles on my gameroom

Here's something of a weekend wrap-up for some links to articles that I haven't posted yet.

VH1 Game Break: "What A Home Arcade Room!"
Switched.com: "Working Stiff Builds 1980s-Style Arcade On the Side"
Retro Thing: "Peter Hirschberg's Private Arcade"
Wired News: (radio interview) "A child from the 80's grows up and builds his dream arcade"

My Game Room on Engadget.com

"The 2400 square-foot private arcade"

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/08/the-2400-square-foot-private-arcade/

My Game Room on Fark.com

"Good: Collecting 65 classic arcade games. Great: Building a private 2,400 square foot arcade with black lights and 80's soundtrack. Awesome: Your kids leave it alone because they want to play Wii"

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3376135

The comments are pretty funny.

Wil Wheaton on my Gameroom

Wow. I'm honored to be mentioned on Wil Wheaton's blog:

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2008/02/the-luna-city-a.html

If you don't know who Wil is, go here.

Wil, email me dammit! I contacted you a while back about my gameroom and you didn't reply.

My Game Room on Digg.com (again)

"Retro Arcade Gaming Fan Heaven"

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Retro_Arcade_Gaming_Fan_Heaven_PICS_and_VIDEO

It was previously on Digg back in 2006 when the collection was still in my basement.

Article on my Game Room on Gizmodo.com

"Retro Arcade Gaming Fan Heaven Is Worth Infinite Quarters"

http://gizmodo.com/352147/retro-arcade-gaming-fan-heaven-is-worth-infinite-quarters

Article on my Game Room on Kotaku.com

"Pretty Amazing Personal Arcade Collection"

http://kotaku.com/351987/pretty-amazing-personal-arcade-collection

The coolest part is all the comments at the bottom.

Speakers

The replacement speakers arrived to replace the 2 damaged ones I got before Christmas. Out of the 4 I got, all were damaged somewhat, but I decided to only exchange the 2 worst ones.

One of the new speakers arrived fine. The other arrived like this. I'm not kidding.



This isn't funny anymore guys! I also had to return the amp that I bought when it died after a couple weeks. I repeat - I am very disappointed with Pyle!!!

New Washington Post article about my arcade!

This was in today's Sunday Washington Post newspaper.



It's also available online if you can't get a print copy!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/02/02/ST2008020201061.html

This article is somewhat of a follow-up to an article in the Post from 2006.

Game Day article

Vicente Martinez attended my Game Day last week, and he has posted this cool article about his experience. It's actually kind of weird for me to read about Game Day from someone else's perspective. :-)

Here's the article:
http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8598287&publicUserId=5798509

Sam Blackburn at my Arcade

Sam Blackburn, former Battlezone champion and one of the stars of the movie Chasing Ghosts, paid a visit to the arcade for my last Game Day. It was really cool seeing you again Sam!



Here's some video of Sam playing one of my Battlezone machines.

Game Day Video

Monday's Game Day was a HUGE success! Thank you to everybody that came!

We had about 40-50 people there. Insane! It was really wild seeing and hearing all the machines going at once, and seeing all those people milling around. I haven't seen anything like that since the early '80s. It was pretty trippy with everyone walking around video taping and taking photos.

Here's some video from the event!



We'll be doing it again in the next few months.

Updated Arcade Photos

I've updated my website with pictures of the new arcade!

http://www.peterhirschberg.com/arcade/gameroom.htm

It's all ready for Game Day except Gravitar blew up last night. I hope nobody is a Gravitar fan. The brand new amp that I bought also died the other night. Between the amp dying and the speakers arriving all broken up, I'm very unimpressed with Pyle.

GameTap Interview

Today I had a video crew out to interview me for an upcoming GameTap segment called "Tapped In". I was interviewed about my collection, the new gameroom, Missile Command, and the Vectrex console. I was interviewed for about 5 hours and was pretty tired by the end of it, but it was fun.



If you’d like to check out the series, go to http://www.gametap.com/home/views/watch/watch.jsp, click GAMES on the left hand side, then click Tapped In. Unfortunately you have to install a player to watch, which only worked in IE for me. Bummer. I'll keep people posted when any of the interview shows up on the GameTap site.

Construction Update

Yay! The steps are finally done! I called the builder last night and left a voice mail saying that we've got this big party coming up, and it would be REALLY nice if the steps were done, and he had his crew come out today (on a Sunday!) and finish it all up!

We just need to tell the stain guy that it's done and he'll come out to stain the new parts.



I've worked my butt off all weekend getting the place ready for the next Game Day. I'll take photos after I get the place tidied up a bit and vacuumed. I got all the pinball machines set up, and also put up this cool Asteroids scene in the bathroom (that's why I wanted the walls black in there), and a couple Space Wars ships on the ceiling.

Construction Update

I got the shelving installed for the stereo system. I'm still waiting on an RMA number so I can send back the 2 speakers that were damaged in shipping (actually all 4 were damaged when I got them, but 2 were particularly bad).



And the proper blackout film for the windows showed up yesterday. Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to install it.



Nobody has shown up the last two days to work on the steps. Grrr.

Construction Update

They actually got quite a bit done today on the steps. Looks like they are almost done! I'm glad they showed up today. The weather was in the 70s (in January!), so I would have been disappointed if they had squandered the day. It's supposed to be nice tomorrow too. Maybe they'll finish it tomorrow??

Construction Update

Today I prepped and painted the wall that needed repainting. Tomorrow I can put up the shelves where the stereo components go.

Here's a photo that also shows the Chuck E Cheese sign.



And the other sign.