School starts in 2 weeks so I had a gameday at the homestead for the church youth group. Kicking off back to school with a game day blow out is good for getting the adrenaline going. They enjoyed the video games, played some pool, played Rock Band, had some BBQ, played some basketball, went swimming in the 40 acre lake where I live, did some canoeing, jumped on the trampoline and even did some karaoke with the MP3/Video jukebox. My poor candy machines were nearly emptied. Also, I had just stocked my soda machine with 165 cans. It was half emptied also. My opinion? Thats what its all there for, everyone to enjoy. It was a day's worth of non-stop fun.

School starts in 2 weeks so I had a gameday at the homestead for the church youth group. Kicking off back to school with a game day blow out is good for getting the adrenaline going. They enjoyed the video games, played some pool, played Rock Band, had some BBQ, played some basketball, went swimming in the 40 acre lake where I live, did some canoeing, jumped on the trampoline and even did some karaoke with the MP3/Video jukebox. My poor candy machines were nearly emptied. Also, I had just stocked my soda machine with 165 cans. It was half emptied also. My opinion? Thats what its all there for, everyone to enjoy. It was a day's worth of non-stop fun.

Craigslist disappoints...first time ever! An add was posted on Springfield, MO craigslist for a couple of dead machines. One of them was a William's Blaster in a duramold shell for $100. The picture on the right is from the actual ad. I know time is off the essence for deals, but unfortunately I am 3 hours away. I call the guy up, ask him if it is still for sale and confirm he is selling it for $100. He says yes, so I tell the guy that the ad states it is non-working. I don't need to view it to make a decision, I am bringing $100 to pick up the dead machine. I also inform him of my driving distance to make sure he isn't going to pull the plug on me, and tell him I will be there in 3 hours. He confirms it, gives me directions, and I am out the door in 5 minutes.

I am on the road for more than 1 hour, and I get a phone call. He "informs" me that he has been researching this game, it is worth more than that, and he can no longer sell the game until he can research more thoroughly the "higher" price that he will be selling it for. I let him know I have already been on the road for 1 hour, and will have been on the road for 2 hours by the time I get home for nothing. He told me that he had made up his mind and was no longer selling it to me. So now I am out of 2 hours out of my life and approximately $15 in gas.

The morals of some people are just completely mind numbing. The fact that a deal is a deal, the fact that it was of no concern to him about all the time I just spent on the road is just wrong. So I turn around and come home empty handed, clutching my $100 in cash. I just don't know what else to say, but I think our public schools need to start teaching ethics or something. WOW.

So I usually cruise Craiglist for all things arcade related and I happen upon an arcade related post for a Tempest and DigDug. Someone was wanting to trade their Tempest and DigDug arcade machines for either a Joust or Defender. Now I have both a Joust and Defender, and I have been wanting a Tempest for some time now. So I shoot the guy an email and he was interested in either machine. He said he wanted to try both of them out and make a decision, but how could we do the trade? He was in Shiloh, IL which was 1.5 hours away and he could only haul 1 game at a time. I told him to bring the Tempest over to my house, check out the game room and pick out which machine he wanted, then I would follow him back to Shiloh, IL to pick up the Dig Dug. With that gentleman's agreement we were all set.

Now set in motion, the great trade and accompanying road trip began. Click here to read more about the road trip.

Now enter KLOV, an online forum for everything arcade related. I find someone selling an entire Hogans Alley kit for a low price. This kit includes the chipset, a marquee in nice unfaded condition, and a never used cardboard game topper advertising the game as "New". I buy the kit, and turn the Duck Hunt back into a Hogan's Alley. For the uninformed, Nintendo made grey Vs. Unisystem game cabinets which were made to swap out games. In my case, the game started as a Hogans Alley and was changed out at some point into a Duck Hunt. It was as simple as changing out 7 game ROMs and a marquee to turn the game back into a Hogans Alley. Of course I had previously fixed the gun and audio which was the first part of the transformation. The game is now in its original dedicated form.

Vs. Hogans Alley marks the 6th Nintendo game in the Vintage Vault Arcade and Gameroom. This follows behind Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. Donkey Kong 3, Mario Bros and Popeye. It also marks the first gun game in the gameroom. Click here to read more about Vs. Hogans Alley.

So I pick up this VS Duck Hunt real cheap from Craigslist. It had missing sound and a non-working lightgun, but the game came up, the monitor was good, and it coined up. So first thing I do is cap the audio board and replace the sound pot and then I had fully working sound. So the next thing I do is start to check out the gun. All wiring checked out, it was getting +5V to the electronic board in the gun, and the optic lens was good.

I decided to buy a Nintendo Zapper light gun from ebay for $6.10 and try to get it working with the cabinet.VS guns are expensive and rare, and NES zapper guns are plentiful and cheap. They were made for the NES, the nintendo home entertainment system. I manage to get the gun working 100% with my arcade cabinet, so VS Duck Hunt lives again.

Click here to read about the Nintendo Zapper Light Gun Mod tutorial.

I have been looking for a soda machine since last summer. I found one at a garage sale, went home, thought about it, came back to buy it and it was gone. You snooze you loose. So I had written off getting a soda machine up until now.

Enter Craiglist yet again. There were 3 items from the same seller, a 70's Pepsi soda machine, a 60's EM slot machine and a 1980 Space Invaders video game. A local collector wanted the Space Invaders and I wanted the soda machine. I went ahead and took the slot machine also. Interestingly enough the items were being sold by a local collector that lived only 5 minutes away from me. He had an awesome collection of pinball machines and the absolutely prettiest jukebox I have ever seen. Plus he was a real nice guy, that's always a plus. So that soda machine is a monster. Definitely around 500 pounds and was a pain to get into the gameroom. The slot machine is definitely a novelty with no computer components and all relays and mechanical wheels.

So the gameroom now has its own soda machine, stocked with Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Diet 7Up, Dr Pepper and Diet Dr Pepper. Now its time to do some more entertaining!

Mmmmm Ninty. That means another Nintendo cab. I picked up a Nintendo VS. Duck Hunt today from Craigslist. There is a sound issue and the gun has problems registering. However the game comes on and the picture is rock solid and colorful.

After I get this game working this will be my first shooter. This will also make the 6th Nintendo arcade game that I own. It will be a little crowded on Nintendo row in the gameroom once I get it moved down there. First things first though. I gotta get this thing working 100%. Nice score!

The Vintage Vault Arcade and Gameroom is the Gameroom of the Month in the June 2009 issue of Gameroom magazine. However, for those that do not have a current subscription you can view the article of my gameroom by clicking here or on any image below.

Craigslist never disappoints me except for this one time, where my Bump N Jump arcade game never sold. I even lowered the price a little bit. I finally managed to sell it at my garage sale this weekend.

It made a nice attraction for all the kids that showed up, and finally sold towards the end of the day. Don't worry, I received a fair price for it, more than the money I had into it.