The Pinball Blog has a short write-up on an apparently new home pinball machine from Zizzle, this time with a classic Atari theme. It looks great, and by my calculations, will be their third generation product. If you remember, I have the first generation model, shown in the photo at the bottom of this blog post. The second generation added a few minor improvements, including more environmental lighting. Both models sold for between $100 - $500 depending upon when and where you were able to score one.

EDGE Magazine has posted a neat article called The Making of Asteroids. The article features quotations from Ed Logg. There are also design sketches and other materials you won't want to miss if you're a fan of the game.

We write about videogames and we all have some opinion on just about any game out there. But how do we play them? Are we any good? Or do we stink? Well playing the games is where it is all about isn't it! Here's how I play.

Here's a YouTube playlist embedded player that will automatically updated.

Space Aliens: Geek Haven in St. CloudHi, guys. I've been talking to a reporter from the St. Cloud Times about Woot, and he decided that we should do a photo shoot at a local restaurant named Space Aliens. This is a very cool establishment; pretty much a must-see for true geeks, sci-fi fans, and, above all, gamers. Although it seems to be focused mostly on kids, there is stuff here for adults, including a bar made up to look like the Cantina Bar from Star Wars--and there are those touch-screen arcade games to keep you entertained while you wait for ribs. Overall, it's a nice place, and I wanted to post about it so you can see what you're missing! (As of yet, there are only 8 locations.) Needless to say, I prefer this place to Chuck E. Cheese, though Gameworks is a very solid competitor (they have one of those in Minneapolis, but it's at least an hour and half drive there).

Well, file this one under possibly too-good-to-be-true, but I apparently just bought on eBay a used - but seemingly in great shape - Midway TouchMaster 4000 Countertop Touch Screen Arcade Machine for about $200 shipped (it has no bill acceptor - this is set to free play). While I was reserving the space on one of my end tables for a real skill stop slot machine, for what is ultimately less than that would have cost shipped, I have this: http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?db=videodb&id=5735&page=thumbs . Stunning. The seller has 100% feedback (it's an arcade supplier) and I conducted the purchase through eBay and Paypal, so I'm 100% protected as well just in case. Hopefully this is not only a win-win, but a win-win-win. Between this and the joy I'm getting out of my new (refurb, arrived yesterday) white iPhone Touch 16GB - which itself is almost a total pleasure after much tweaking (with some still left) - I've been on a personal technology roll. I'll try to blog about the machine after it comes. I'll also leave open the possibility that my wife will be upset with me, as I didn't get a chance to get her approval on this before pulling the trigger, but the plus side is we could easily sell this for much more than we paid if she insisted (we have to get new garage doors, family dental work, etc., so I'd certainly understand).

Luckily, on the last day of our San Francisco trip devoted to filming amazing interviews for the feature film, "W00t!: The Videogame Revolution", Matt and I had a chance to visit the The Museum of the City of San Francisco, The Musee Mecanique. Among the great stuff there were two vintage pinball machines in really great shape. It's amazing how different they are from modern pinball machines that began to appear in the 1970s! Check out the casual videos below:

Luckily, on the last day of our San Francisco trip devoted to filming amazing interviews for the feature film, "W00t!: The Videogame Revolution", Matt and I had a chance to visit the The Museum of the City of San Francisco, The Musee Mecanique. Among the great stuff there was a pristine "Death Race" arcade machine from 1976, which was the first controversial videogame, supposedly inspired by the 1975 cult classic movie, "Death Race 2000". The object? Run as many "gremlins" down with your car before time runs out. The question is, are they "gremlins" or people? Regardless of the answer, hearing the screams as they're mowed down is surely memorable! Check out the casual photos and videos below:

Next year Pac-Man is going to be 30 years old. Namco is going to celebrate with a new game developed by Hirokazu Yasuhara - the man responsible for Sonic the Hedgehog.

I had recently blogged about and posted photos of the current state of my home arcade machine and the surrounding area. I've been going through my network backup drive and came across some interesting photos from when I first got the machine in February of 2006 that I never did anything with. When it was shipped, several wires inside got knocked loose and I was planning on documenting the restoration and the internals in great detail. That never happened, but I did take a few photos in anticipation of that. These are those photos (this is back when we were living in our previous house). I'm not going to describe each photo like I did in the previous blog entry, but they should still be interesting nonetheless for those wanted to know just a bit more about what's going on inside of the thing. When I power the coin slot in the future, I'll take updated photos, but these should suffice for now. Click here for the album of 38 photos or here for the slide show. Enjoy.