Pick Date: 7/24/08    Thursday late afternoon. Raining. Bleh. The day prior I won an auction for a Xevious. I'm not a big fan of buying arcade games site unseen on ebay, but if the price is right then what the heck. I was watching an auction for a Xevious several states away with a low starting price and only one bid. I put in my bid at the last moment and won the game for $30 more than the starting bid. Awesome, that means it's ROAD TRIP TIME!

OK let me check again were this game is. Louisville, Kentucky, wow that is far. I arrange with the seller to pick it up the next evening. My calculations show it will be a 4 hour drive. One way. I ask a few of my kids if they would like to go to Kentucky with me. They didn't need much convincing, it sounded fun to them. So I pack up the van and off we go! Rain followed us sporadically as we drive through Illinois and Indiana. In Indiana we stop at a cute little rest stop which had the coolest retro styled bathroom. I had to take a picture below. I buy the kids ice cream and cookies from the vending machines at the rest stop. That was a cool little place. After getting back on the highway a stunt plane dive bombed us a couple of times and we passed through the Hoosier National Forest in Indiana. We even passed a little town called Santa Claus, Indiana... no joke! Finally we cross the Ohio river into Louisville, KY and arrive at the sellers house. During this time we had crossed a time zone so it was actually one hour later when we arrived than what our watches said.

The seller had an awesome arcade collection. He had well over 30 games as well as several vector games like Black Widow and Space Fury. He invited us to play a few games which of course we did. Afterwards I finally take a look at my Xevious for the first time. The side art was complete and in great condition for its age, with the usual minor nicks and scratchs. I fire up the game and squeeze off a few. Everything worked and sounded great! It was going to be a long ride back so I load up, say our goodbye's and get back on the road.

Dinner of choice on the way out was burgers and fries from Rally's, most excellent. I cross back over the Ohio river into Indiana and head back home. By this time it was dark, really, really dark. Halfway through Indiana I stopped for some extra refreshments to help keep me awake. I picked up a Hoosier scratch off ticket, mainly because I thought it was funny and also it would have been a blast to win some other state's mega-lottery. I also picked up a Rockstar and Monster energy drink, the choice of champions to keep those eyes open on the dark highway. After getting back on the road again I chugged my energy drink and put in a little Bohemian Rhapsody. Gotta love it. After many hours I cross back into Illinois and then finally see the Gateway Arch in the distance. Ahhhh..... St. Louis.... home. By the time I get to my house it is 1AM in the morning and I had put 655.7 miles roundtrip on the odometer. The game gets unloaded and plugged in just to test that it made the trip in one piece. The game fires right up and I squeeze off a quick game before going to sleep. Another one in the books, another game in the basement arcade!

The one thing I noticed when shopping the game was there was a second speaker in the lower part of the cabinet that had no sound. When playing the game all the sounds were present so I was a bit baffled. I traced the speaker wiring and it was in parallel to the top speaker, so it was the same sound channel. The lower speaker probably gave the game a bit of a bass effect. I was lucky enough to have a spare speaker the same size. I replaced it and sure enough I had lower speaker sound also. The game also has a second fluorescent light in the control panel that lights up the lower area. This of course wasn't working. I had to replace every part to get the second light working again but it was worth it. The game now completely lights up and gives it a unique appearance in the dark.

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