Pick Date: 4/17/10    It was a warm, sunny Saturday, perfect for hauling with an open trailer. This is the largest game I have picked up to date. However, our story does not begin on a perfect Saturday morning, but on a Wednesday evening trauling Craiglist. I ran across an ad with the simplistic title "race arcade game for trade need gone". There was a short one sentence description saying stating various items that would be accepted for trade. There were no pictures. Interesting, very interesting. I'm up for a trade with no cash involved. Now my interest is piqued.

I sent an email requesting pictures. I received an email the next day and what I saw next shocked me. What came in my email was a picture of a really cool racing game, larger than anything I own....

...Sitting inside a mobile home kitchen. That's a trailer for the uninformed. I'm not knocking the guys home, but that is a really large game for such a small living space. So I shoot the guy a trade offer and picture of my trade, and he decides to accept. Now I'm a little scared. I didn't necessarily expect this transaction to really go through. How in the heck am I supposed to get that monster of a game home? Luckily I hit up one of my relatives and they let me borrow their trailer. I set up a time for the following Saturday morning to do the trade and now everything is set... Road Trip time!

I wake up on a sunny warm Saturday morning. Beautiful weather, all is good. Its a first, that its not raining or snowing or some other type of catastrophic weather. I hitch up the trailer and leave at 8:27AM. On the way there my GPS told me to connect to a crossing highway by "climbing a hillside". Somehow it thought there was an intersection there. When I missed that turn my GPS showed I was driving through grass for 5 minutes until it found a familar road. Fortunately this snafu only took me an extra 5 or 10 minutes to get back on track. I show up at the mobile home park and drive around in circles until I finally find the right trailer. I back up into the driveway and now the fun really begins.

In the picture below is the seller and the small mobile home where the game had resided in his kitchen.

I meet the seller outside and we step inside his mobile home. Sure enough just like the picture showed, there is that beast of a game sitting inside his kitchen. I look down at the kitchen floor and it was just bare plywood, no tile or lineoleum. I'm surprised this game never fell through the floor as it weighs a massive 1060 pounds. That is over a half ton of gaming goodness ready to break through the floor. Yes, I looked up the weight. His wife was also there and he explains that she is tired of it getting in the way and wants him to get rid of it, hence the trade. I try out the game and notice some screen convergence problems, where the color guns are misaligned and make it look like a 3D image. I know about convergence so this doesn't bother me. As part of the trade he has spare parts from an entire second game which I will be receiving. These came from a second game which the monitor wasn't working. He had long dismantled the second game and was going to give me all the spares. I was going to be taking home a lot more than I thought with the spare parts, but more and free is good. I tell him I'll do the trade and so we set about to taking this game apart. The game breaks apart into 3 pieces and the separate units barely squeeze through the mobile home door and down his steps. We load up the 50 inch monitor inside the van along with a ton of spare parts. Everything else was loaded on the trailer I was pulling. I was barely able to get it all loaded up between the van and the trailer. Once we removed everything from the guy's kitchen he looked at me and said something I'll never forget.       "Now I have some room to set up my tattoo equipment".       I'm not making this up, he's going to claim the free kitchen space to setup a tattoo shop or something.

With those parting words, I strap everthing down, shake hands, and I'm on my way.

Back at the homestead I had a heck of a time getting everything unloaded. I reassemble the game in the garage so I can get it cleaned up and fix any issues. For this game I had to realign the color guns in the 50inch monitor, fix the subwoofer underneath the seat, replace a bad potentiometer in the steering wheel assembly and replace the fluorescent light in the sign on top. After getting the game whipped into shape it was time to move it into the game room. Now this was easier said than done. I had to disassemble the game into 5 parts, the sign, the seat, the 50inch monitor, the front cockpit and the rear cockpit. Next I started to move the pieces from the garage to the walkout basement. This was easier said than done, as while I was moving the extra large TV monitor through the grass it started to rain. I had to run and grab a tarp and throw it over it until I could get it inside. The rain stopped so I moved the front cockpit next. It started to rain again. After I got it inside I decided to wait until another day for the rear cockpit. The next sunny day I decided to get the rest of the game in the gameroom. Unfortunately for me, the rear cockpit was actually larger than my basement door. To get it in, I had to removed the door off the hinges, take the plastic shell off the cockpit, and flip it on its side to get it in the doorway. Once inside, I finally get everything reassembled. This was such a chore to get in the house, I doubt it will ever be sold. The game is going to stay put forever.

The new racing game was put in the North wing of the gameroom. This used to have a kiddie car, a basketball hoop and foosball table. I sold the kiddie car, and moved the foosball table near the pinball table. After that I have moved a Rush the Rock and 2 linked Vapor TRX's in the North wing over the last month. All these are Atari racing games. With the addition of Samson, I mean the Sega Rally Championship, this now completes the racing theme for the north wing of the arcade. I'm really happy with how everything turned out and this Sega Rally is a blast to play. The seat rumbles, the 50 inch monitor puts you right in middle of the action. The cockpit really immerses you into the game. This is the perfect addition for what is one monster of a video game. Racing fans, start your engines!

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