The Basement Arcade

Previously on
The Great Star Wars Road Trip -
‎• 9 hours in the car
• Rain
• Sirius satelite radio
• Energy shots
‎• Hangout in an awesome gameroom
• Meet an awesome family
• Pick up Star Wars arcade game
• Eat dinner at 11PM
• Get hotel room
• Go to sleep at 1AM.

If you haven't read part 1 of The Great Star Wars Road Trip then click to read Part 1: Prelude To A Gameroom.

And now, back to the road trip: Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz...... Alarm goes off at 7:30AM. Were am I? Wait a second, I'm in a hotel room in Minnesota. What time is it? 7:30AM? Why am I getting up at 7:30AM? Oh thats right, I'm getting ready to go to an arcade auction even though I already have a Star Wars arcade machine in the van. What the heck am I doing? So here we go, Todd and I get up, take showers, load up the van and check out of the hotel room. No time to waste, breakfast gets skipped.

Well, its an arcade road trip, might as well go to an arcade auction. On the way to the auction we pass through the town of New Hope. Deja vu. Oddly enough the original title of the first Star Wars movie was called Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Knowing that this was not a very marketable title those smart Hollywood executives simply used the title of "Star Wars" for the first Star Wars movie. Anyways after a short 30 minute drive we show up in a town called Maple Grove. We find the auction and WOW, the turnout is low and there are a LOT of nice machines. Now what I mean by nice machines is that someone took care of these games and gave the monitors a nice picture before being sold. I felt jipped by comparison. Every auction we go to in the St. Louis area looks they have all been to hell and back, completely beat up, tore up, hellcade conversions, with half working monitors. Now here several states away are all these nice looking machines. Yes, Todd and I were drooling. They had several Buck Hunter machines that Todd wanted, several Megatouches that we both wanted, a Harley Davidson game that I really wanted, a Centipede cabaret and a Tapper that I both wanted. There was also a really cool Lucky & Wild game, where 2 people play and 1 drives the car and another shoots with a gun. Really cool concept.

The next thing we do is pick up auction bidder cards. We ask ourselves, what are we doing, how are we going to get any more games home? Here is the other interesting part. One of the auctioneers recognizes us from the auction near St. Louis that we attended just the week before. He is a little confused what we are doing in another state. No matter, we told him we are there to bid and ask him if he has a measuring tape. He gets us one and we go measure out any empty space left in my van. Sadly, there is hardly no space left. Possibly enough room for a few Megatouch touchscreens and that nice Centipede cabaret, but thats it. This is were we get desperate. I tell Todd that the van has a trailer hitch, lets call some rental places to see if we can rent a pull trailer. Todd calls his wife back in Missouri, explains to her he is at an arcade auction (much to his wife's dismay) and asks her to find a phone number for a U-Haul place. He gets a number, and calls U-Haul. The U-Haul headquarters informs us that there is not a single pull behind trailer available for rent in the ENTIRE state of Minnesota. WOW, way to keep your customer base happy. Next he calls Hertz rental and Penske rental and neither of them carried trailers, only trucks. I tell Todd that if it comes down to it I'll just buy a pull trailer and he can reimburse me the cost of a rental towards the purchase of the trailer. We were desperate, I'm not kidding you. The deals were that good.

So the auction gets started, and games are going low, really low. Ouch. I couldn't help it and bid several times on the Centipede and Tapper. In the end I get outbid, only because I had to take into consideration how I was going to get them home. Really they still sold ridiculously low, and if it was in my home town I would have kept bidding. Next come several Deer and Buck Hunter games. Todd is bidding on them for the parts only. He figures if the games go low enough he'll strip all the parts out (which will fit in the van) and leave the wooden cabinet in the dumpster. In the end he gets outbid, and again he would have bid higher if this was our hometown. Finally it comes down to the row of Megatouches. Now every game in that place was going really low, so we figure we will at least pick up a few Megotouch games which would fit in the van. Now wouldn't you know it, but every person in that auction had their hearts set on just the Megatouch games, and bidding gets ridiculous. Todd bids a few times and finally gives up. The auction was half over and we were already beaten.

By this time its about 11AM. We still have a day of activity at Mall of America and an 8 hour drive home. We decide to lick our wounds and leave at this time. At least I didn't leave the auction empty handed. I pull out of the parking lot, look back at the Star Wars arcade machine in the back of my van, and smile knowing I'm leaving with the best machine out of the entire place. With that we get back on the road.
Next stop, Mall of America!