Arcade Visit Photos: Eight on the Break, Dunellen, NJ

A moth or so ago, I visited Eight on the Break (8otB for short) in Dunellen, NJ. Since my first visit in October of 2004, this has been one of my favorite arcades to visit, though it's about two hours from me, so I don't have the chance to make the trip often.

The front of the building. Pinball has been misspelled for as long as I can remember. It's more endearing than anything else to me at this point. The other portions of the sign (the name) are recently new.

One of the side rooms has a line of pinball machines. In order: Fun House, Star Trek, Dirty Harry, Attack from Mars, and the front corner of Monster Bash.

The other portion of the line of pinball machines, in order: Monster Bash, The Addams Family, Mustang, Spider-Man, and Sharkey's Shootout.

Close-up of Spider-Man and Sharkey's Shootout, which one of my roommates is playing. I think I remember him saying he'd never seen that table before and that it was fun. I know I've never seen it before, but I don't play a lot of pinball. (I'm bad at video games, but I'm even worse at pinball!)

My other roommate playing Beatmania IIDX, a fairly intense rhythm game.

Another picture of Beatmania. The screen is slightly less washed out here, but it's still not easy to see what's going on - this video is much easier to see what's happening (the video is one of the hardest songs in the game played by one of the best players, so it's not always quite that intense)

From foreground to background: Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 3, Snocross, Friction, Pump It Up Fiesta, Initial D 7, and Initial D 3.

From left to right: Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike, Ms Pac Man, Bubble Bobble, and Pop'n Music Sunny Park. The machine on the far left that's turned sideways is part of the same Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike machine - each player gets their own cabinet and monitor.

Another angle of the Pop'n Music cabinet. Pop'n Music is another rhythm game, similar to Beatmania, though it plays a little differently and has a much more light-hearted feel to it. However, it is still an intensely challenging and difficult game.

This was a then-not working DrumMania machine. The lights were on, but there was no screen image or sound. DrumMania is a drum simulator rhythm game made by Konami (who also made Beatmania, Dance Dance Revolution, Pop'n Music, and almost every other rhythm game pictured in this post)

A Namco driving game called Dead Heat on the left, and Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition on the right. Dead Heat is the only game in the arcade (pictured or not) that I haven't played, but I didn't realize this until now when I was typing up this post. I'll have to correct this!

8otB has a snack bar with a few notable highlights - this cheesesteak comes with fries and a drink for 5 bucks, and it's pretty good. It includes American (the only cheese they have), peppers, onions, and BBQ sauce, but I ask to leave out the peppers and onions.

The Wiffle - two toaster waffles deep fried and used as the outside of an ice cream sandwich, covered in chocolate sauce and powdered sugar.

Back to games - House of the Dead and a newer game called Friction are two shooters, with the snowmobile racing game Snocross to the right.

Time Crisis 4 - the currently newest game in the series, though 5 will be out any day now!

Pump It Up Fiesta (with a Pump It Up Pro 2 marquee - 8otB has a lot of mismatched marquees) and a better view of House of the Dead. Pump It Up is a dance game made by Andamiro, the only non-Konami music game I took photos of. (ReRave and DJ MAX Technika are other non-Konami music games at 8otB, but I neglected to take any photos of them.)

From left to right: a little of Time Crisis 4, another Street Fighter 4 Arcade cabinet (linked to the other cabinet the same way Street Fighter 3 is - each player gets their own monitor and controller), Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Tatsunoko Vs Capcom, and Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection.

A closer look at the Initial D 7 cabinets - they're pretty nice and each features its own card reader, though I wasn't able to get either to dispense a new card.

Dance Dance Revolution 2014, the newest version of the game.

Guitar Freaks 11th Mix and Keyboardmania 2nd Mix (the marquee says 3rd, but the software was 2nd). These two games along with Drummania can link together to have one session between the three machines, which is a REALLY fun experience! Unfortunately, Keyboardmania hasn't been produced in quite a long time, and each game only connects to comparable versions of the others, so finding them linked together to allow this feature is uncommon for GF/DM and incredibly rare for KBM. (The machines pictured are not linked.)

Air hockey and pool tables - when you think about it, "Eight on the Break" is a really cruel name for a pool hall.

Two really nice Street Fighter 4 cabinets that were currently out of service.

Two Neo Geo AES cabinets. The machine on the left is running one of the Metal Slug games, while the one on the right has four games installed. Having multiple games installed in one cabinet (therefore taking up less space) was one of the Neo Geo's biggest selling points to arcade operators, and the hardware carried some of the most popular software titles in the arcade world. To this day, the hardware and software maintains a huge fan following.

A wider shot of the front row, with a crane game to the far right.

All in all, this is still one of my favorite arcades to visit, and I'll be making the drive up a few times during the summer for sure.

Have a neat arcade near you? Let me know in the comments!

RESULTS: What you do with your quarters!

The results are in, and here's what was mentioned!

Candy Crane: This is like one of the crane games, but with candy instead of stuffed animals or toy watches or koosh balls. (Remember Koosh balls?) They also have the added bonuses of being a lot easier to win, and USUALLY will let you keep playing until you win something. Both of these features are nice for those of us (i.e. me) who aren't good at cranes.

Cyclone: A ticket redemption game. The concept is pretty easy: a light spins around in a circle, and you try to stop it on high numbers (or, ideally, the jackpot) for maximum tickets. Every credit inserted increases the jackpot. Though (as many on youtube have pointed out) the Jackpot is deceptively elusive, it's still a fun game.

Colorama: A redemption game with an interesting Roulette-inspired twist. A ball spins around in a bowl with different colored dividers. If you can guess which color the ball stops in, you win tickets - the smaller the color zone, the more tickets won.

Skee-ball: The classic! Roll the ball up the ramp and aim for the targets with the biggest points. There's tons of different versions of this one out there, but practically every real arcade has at least one of them, and they're fun even if you're bad at them! (At least, I think so. I'm pretty bad.)

Dig Dug: Namco's action video arcade game from 1982. The hero character (named Dig Dug, though his actual name is Taizo) digs through dirt battling dragons and weird ball-shaped enemies by either dropping rocks on them or inflating them with a pump until they explode. It's a tough game, but it's also one of the most popular arcade games of all time. According to the series storyline, Taizo has a son named Susumu, who has his own series of arcade games - but I'll have more on that in a couple days...

What do you do with your quarters?

Because I'm curious: When you walk into an arcade, whether it be mostly video game machines or pinball machines or crane or ticket redemption style, what kind of game are you most likely to play first? (Well, other than a change or token machine - those aren't really games!)

Be as specific (a certain game or activity) or as generic (a genre or maybe something with a certain appearance, or any other criteria you can think of) as you want, and let me know in the comments!

If you could own any arcade machine...

If space, money, and availability were not factors, and you could own any one arcade machine, which one would it be, and why?

For me, I am torn between three - Dance Dance Revolution 7th Mix: MAX 2, Time Crisis 2, and Galaxian 3.

I've been playing Dance Dance Revolution (which is too much to type, so I'm calling it DDR from here on out) since mid-2001 when I stumbled on a DDR 3rd Mix machine during a class trip to Six Flags in New Jersey. I'd already heard of the game from some friends online and it sounded both stupid and a lot of fun. If you're not familiar with the game play, the game will play a song while scrolling arrows up the monitor. When the arrows reach the top, you step on the corresponding arrow on a big pad on the ground. (Like this!) I played two or three rounds with random other people and confirmed that playing it made you look the fool, but it was also great fun. Soon after, I'd located pretty much every machine within easy driving distance and played at least weekly. When I started to progress to the higher difficulty levels, the newest version was MAX 2, which also had my favorite interface and a lot of great songs that were removed from the following release. The series still has new releases with more songs and lots of features, but MAX 2 is still my favorite. As far as actually owning one, though, they're fairly big, heavy, loud, and very apartment-unfriendly, otherwise I'd probably have found a way to squeeze one into my place. (Maybe replace that useless bed - I can sleep on the dance platform, right?)

Time Crisis 2 was the multiplayer sequel to Time Crisis 1 (imagine that). The original game was a single player light gun shooter that introduced a foot pad you would stand on to attack enemies and let go of to hide behind cover and reload. (It also had a tough-as-nails time limit that would force you to restart the current stage if you didn't play fast enough, which was abandoned for the rest of the series.) The second in the series expanded this concept to multiplayer, though unlike most light gun arcade games that restrict two players to one screen, this one gave each player their own screen and the option to play independent games or to team up and play through together. I spent a lot of time with friends at a local lasertag place going through the game over and over, and eventually was able to finish consistently on one credit. (One friend of mine could finish the game without taking damage at all!) The series has had three more games (Time Crisis 3 and 4 as well as Crisis Zone, with Time Crisis 5 coming soon) that offered extra features like multiple weapons, but for me, the gameplay of TC2 was the best of the series. Unfortunately, almost every cabinet I've seen in the last few years has one or both of the game's screens suffering major issues, and it can be hard to find ones in good condition. There's a really good home version for the PS2, though, and if you can find two copies of the game, two CRTs, two PS2 GunCons, and two older model PS2s with iLink ports (they were removed from the late-model fat PS2s and completely absent on the slim PS2s), then you can get a good home setup going.

The last one I mentioned is... well, as I said, we're assuming space, money, and availability aren't issues, right? Galaxian 3 is a shooter sequel to the original Galaxian and Galaga, both early top-down shmups where you shoot at alien invaders. Galaxian 3 differs in three major ways: First, rather than a shmup, it's a first-person perspective 3D rail shooter - you don't have control of your whole ship, just one of its guns. (Think similar to the Star Wars Trilogy arcade game that Sega put out in the 90s.) Second, while Galaxian and Galaga both supported multiplayer, it was merely alternating one at a time, while Galaxian 3 supports up to 6 players working cooperatively together. Third, Galaxian and Galaga were both standard size upright arcade cabinets, but Galaxian 3 is the SIZE OF A SMALL MOVIE THEATER. The game's "cabinet" is over 250 square feet and is literally a room that houses six chairs behind six gun turrets aimed at two huge projection screens. The game itself is designed as a cooperative experience: all players operate a gun turret on the same spaceship sharing the same life bar while shooting at the same groups of enemy ships - everyone wins or loses together. The game's visuals were very impressive at the time thanks to twin laserdiscs providing the prerendered (and therefore largely non-interactive) background with enemy ships rendered over top of the video, with audio powered by a Bose sound system. Between the huge size and $150,000 price tag, it's not a big surprise most arcades didn't pick one up. I had the privilege of playing it at Dave and Buster's near Penn's Landing a couple decades ago, and it was a lot of fun. 

Though it's not something most people would ever consider getting for the home, one person in Norway DID - and documented the process over the course of six years.

Okay, enough from me - what game would YOU want? Let me know in the comments!

Replacing a Mad Catz SF4 PS3 Fight Stick's PCB with an Arduino Uno

If you're anything like me, you have one of the Mad Catz Street Fighter 4 arcade sticks for PS3 sitting around gathering dust. It's not that it's a bad stick - it's at least decent for an entry-level setup. However, thanks to a strange hardware allergy to what seems to be Nvidia cards (though I'm not even sure of that), the stick isn't usable in a PC the same way most PS3 controllers are, which limits its use to PS3 games. That's not awful, but I'd really like to use it as a PC stick. Unfortunately, most of the tutorials I've found online for modding this specific controller involve swapping out the buttons and physical stick, not for making it compatible with other systems.

The good news: it's not hard to mod the controller for PC or other platforms just by busting it open and connecting a new PCB, just like any other fight stick. The controller is fairly standard wiring and not too hard to work with, even with no prior experience. Though I've messed around with wiring on arcade machines once or twice before, this was my first serious project.

Before starting, there's a few questions to answer: What systems do you want the controller to work with? How much are you willing to spend? How much programming are you willing to do? These will weigh into which PCB you want to use - some are fairly basic and easy to use, like the Cerberus or Ipac, while others are much more customizable but come with the drawback that you may have to manually write or modify your controller's programming, as is the case with an Arduino board (which is what I ended up using for cost reasons). Hit your favorite arcade parts or electronic hobbiest retailer and see what they have to offer. (I use Focus Attack and Micro Center, but it's really a matter of personal preference. Focus Attack is a specific online retailer for arcade stick parts, while Micro Center is a general computer parts retail chain that happens to have a brick-and-mortar a few miles from me.)

Initially, I found something called UnoJoy, a piece of software that claimed to turn an Arduino Uno into a USB joystick that was also compatible for PS3, so I'd be getting a stick that I could use on the PC while not losing anything in the process. I hit Micro Center and picked up the board, a baggie of 6" Male to Male jumper wires, and a USB Male A to USB Male B cable. (Amazon has a ten foot cable for cheap, with free Prime shipping, which is nice if you.) After that, I set to work.

This is what the Arduino board looked like after I finished stuffing wires into it. I ran out of digital inputs, so I overflowed into the analogs. I don't do smart things like properly read documentation, so all of the connected pins there are a result of guess-and-test, or connecting a button to an input and pressing it to see what result came up on the software display, then connecting the button that SHOULD be connected to that input. Blue wires are connected to buttons (8 total), grey connected to joystick directions (4 of these), reds connected to Start and Select, and the two black wires are grounds. The big thing on the left is the USB input, which supplies both power and connection. The LEDs on the board are status indicators.

The metal pegs in the white containers are the original connectors for the buttons. If you look closely next to it, you can see symbols that show which button each was connected to. The original connectors were held in place mostly by this gummy glue stuff. You can see a lot of it still left over. The red spots are a weak glue holding the screws in place.

This is how I connected my wires (the black pieces connected to the colored strands) to the old connectors (the white pieces). This is as ugly as it looks, and is really not a good way to do it, but I was looking for quick-and-dirty, not clean-and-professional. I can't suggest doing things like this.

As far as the directional stick itself goes, unlike the buttons, I ended up pulling off the white connector and sticking the wires directly into the black connectors. The issue with this is if the metal pieces touch each other, the signal can go from one direction to another - the controller will read that you're pressing two directions at once, even when you're not. (If it crosses with the ground, it will read you're ALWAYS pressing one direction.) Electrical tape around the exposed metal will prevent this.

The inside of the board, with as many of the wires removed as I could. The buttons are center left, the joystick is center right, the old PCB is upper right, and you can barely see the start and select buttons toward the upper left under some of the wiring.

With everything stuffed inside, there's not a lot of room. The large black twist-tied wire is the original USB cable for the old PCB, where the new one is the one connected to the Arduino in the upper right.

Though I had to fight with the software quite a bit, the new internals work very well on both the PS3 and my PC. The only downside is the original PCB had some autofire and turbo features that aren't present on the new board. While I don't use these features anyway, there's now several switches on the face of the controller for these features that don't do anything. More importantly, the PS3 Home button, which is important for bringing up the system menu on the PS3, is connected directly to the old PCB. The Arduino supports a Home button, and it may be possible to connect it, but I haven't gotten around to trying it yet. The good news is if I ever want to go back to the controller's original hardware, all I have to do is take out what I added and reconnect the old pieces, and it'll work just as it did before. However, I'm really satisfied with how this is working out, so I don't think I'll be reverting it anytime soon.

Any questions or comments? Let me know. Thanks for reading!

What To Expect: A Glimpse At Future Content

I've liked video arcade games and arcades for quite a while. There's something about a big dark room full of illuminated monitors and marquees blaring loud synthesized music or computerized sound effects mixed with the occasional slapping of buttons and coins falling into the dish of a change machine. A handful of quarters was a handful of possibilities, to be carefully distributed to causes of setting new high scores, defeating random strangers, or teaming up with those same random strangers to defeat the computer. Good times, good times.

This blog, over the next several weeks and potentially the foreseeable future, will be dedicated to the arcade experience, from individual game information and backgrounds to pictures and visits to existing arcades to information about building and maintaining the machines themselves.

Some specific things I'll be covering:

• Basic business models of arcades, past and present - how the modern arcade has changed
• Vintage vs Modern Games - how the hardware, software, and overall experience evolved
• Photo galleries and information from visits to current arcades
• How-to projects for home, such as making your own arcade stick for a home setup
• Maintenance and upkeep information, including (hopefully!) the restoration of a machine

My goal is both to revisit past nostalgic experiences and also to discuss current trends in arcade gaming, including conventions, tournaments, the community, and things to look forward to. There's a lot of ground to cover here, and hopefully we'll be off and running shortly.

Questions and other inquiries welcome!