Just a little over a month later, and here we have yet another arcade auction! Talk about Deja Vu. Same employees, same callers, same guy with the mullet who works every auction. I don't know what they were thinking, but at least this one fell on a nice sunny Saturday. Honestly, this auction did not have a good selection to start with, and it wasn't the biggest turn out either. I don't know why, but somehow I was fixated on a Golden Tee. I never understood the hype of these games, the turn on to want to feed them with quarters, but I was willing to give it a shot. Every family and friend seemed to ask me if I had a Golden Tee. Now I'm a classic gamer, and a classic collector, but I have been building up a nice selection of up-to-date drivers recently. So I thought, why not?

I played it at the auction and instantly fell in love with the gameplay. I now know what the hype is all about. I bought a 2005 version, which means the graphics are nicely done but without an overly inflated price tag to go with it. A little know fact about these Golden Tee's is that they weigh a cool 500 pounds, that is a quarter of a ton. WOW. Yep, I found that out after moving it from the auction to my arcade. After moving that game I now need to take a load off my feet and play a little Golden Tee. Now, if I can just remember the difference between a birdie, par and bogie I'll be all set. FORE!

First Responder on Craigslist on a Friday night! Yes! This non-working Zaxxon was practically being given away to the first guy who could come get it. That guy, was of course me. The game boots up to a beautiful picture of a scrambled mess, which more than likely the game board is bad. Good news is that it has a beautiful monitor, and the power supply was spot on with the correct voltage. I'm also amazed at the beautiful intact side art on this game. The game also came with 2 sets of keys. I can't remember the last time I bought a game and it came with keys. Nice! Until I get a new game board, I'll just look at this one and smile.

Almost a month ago I bought two candy cranes at an auction. Twins. They were a matching set. However, I didn't really want two candy cranes. I can't ever imagine a sitution in the gameroom where there are two kids fighting over the same candy crane machine.

Just like superman I would step in and say "Hey young man, don't be sad, I have another candy crane machine. Come over here, play this other one instead." I just can't see it happening.

The auctioneer sold me the second one for half price. I couldn't say "No", could I? I bought two, but I only wanted one. Let's see now, what would be the logical choice, hmmmm, wait a sec, let me think, I almost got it.....

SELL IT! So I sold one the twins, broke up the pair, dumped his brother on Craiglist. May you live to serve more candy. Yes, it is now sold. Apparently it is going to some grandparents who have a cool gameroom down at their lake house. That's a nice retirement. Don't feel bad for the game.

New game? Well kinda, sorta, not really. I put this together over the course of this year and finally got around to posting about it. It is in fact a VS Super Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros made its way to fame in the home market with the NES, the Nintendo Entertainment System. Every kid with a gaming console played this game back in the day. What most people don't know is that the VS version of the game is the superior, bigger brother of the Super Mario Bros. This is one game I just had to have.

This cabinet is a Nintendo playchoice cabinet, which is swappable with all Nintendo VS games of that era. I picked this up non-working from the Starlite drive-in raid last year. At the time it had a VS Golf in it. The monitor was going into immediate shutdown when turning on and the sound was barely audible.

The monitor voltage was extremely low causing the shutdown. I did a cap kit on the monitor and replaced the B+ pot. This fixed the monitor right up. Unfortunately the sound on the board was bad, so I had to replace the board. I sold the bad board and the VS Golf chips and picked up a new board and Super Mario Bros. chips. Super Mario Bros. requires 2 CPU's to run, so I had to pick up another one of those also.

Finally to top off the game I installed a new marquee and bezel. All Super Mario Bros. marquees in the wild are faded and yellow, so I purchased a new repro marquee. A bezel for this game never existed. You were supposed to turn the bezel around and just have it black. How boring. Someone created a custom bezel for this game which I purchased and installed. The final product turned out pretty nice. The game is now wedged in nicely with Nintendo row.

Earlier this year I traded for a huge deluxe sitdown Sega Rally Championship game. This thing was so big I nicknamed it Samson. With that trade I received working spare parts from a second unit from which the TV monitor went bad. I was contacted recently about those spare parts and an Australian wanted the ROM board from that game. Pictured is that board. It has now been boxed up and airshipped to Australia. May you resurrect another game from the graveyard.

You can read about the crazy Sega Rally Championship road trip here.

You put a quarter in them, grab a joystick, and play a game wanting a desired result. That makes an arcade game, right? Why would a candy crane not be considered an arcade game? Sure it is not a video game, there is no video monitor in there. But its a game, you pay money, your goal is to load the dispensing chute with candy. Yes, I have some candy machines. You put in a quarter, turn the crank, out pops your candy. This is not one of those. This cool thing has a power supply, an onboard computer, motorized controls, joysticks and flashing lights.

About 1 year ago I did a warehouse raid at the Starlite drive-in and spotted several candy cranes. I wanted one of these.

You can read about the Starlite drive-in raid here.

Unfortunately during that little adventure I picked up a few videogames, and after trying to contact the guy to go back and get more, including the candy crane, we couldn't get ahold of him.

Ever since then I wanted a candy crane, and this last auction was the place to pick one up. I not only picked one up, but two of them. I devoted the last update on the auction and the much desired Crazy Taxi. I'll now focus on this cool candy crane.

Click here to read more about the Candy Cranes I picked up.

A Tuesday night arcade auction? Really? What is up with that? I couldn't tell you the logic of an auction on a work night, but it ran from 7PM to midnight. This was one of the better auctions I have been to in a long time. Lots of collector friends went home with goodies.

And I... yes I... went home with a Crazy Taxi sitdown driver and 2 candy cranes. Why 2 candy cranes? Click here to read more about my Crazy Taxi, a couple of candy cranes and this awesome arcade auction.

A bit of back to school fun opening up the arcade for gameday. Its good to see the games getting a workout. The only casualty was a broken bar on the basketball hoops. All the arcade games held up rock solid.