"The Graveyard"
This is a work in progress. I plan on including this story in my upcoming book about buying and selling arcade games. It is a true story and I hope you enjoy it. -Rob
-----
... I’m standing in the doorway of an unmarked, nondescript warehouse. The building is one of a dozen identical looking warehouses all in a row off the same alley. It’s dark, but even without working streetlights I can make out the form of my own breath in the cold night air. An unknowing observer would probably assume I was there to buy drugs, or guns, or plutonium.
Slowly, the warehouse lights begin to warm up. The buzz from the flickering fixtures is the only sound in the otherwise still warehouse. As my eyes adjust to the dim light I can begin to make out arcade cabinets – dozens of them, maybe more, packed tightly side-by-side and in rows, taking up nearly every square inch of the building’s floor space. The owner, climbing over dead monitors and discarded parts, works his way from the breaker box back toward where I’m standing. Just as I begin to make out the man’s shape in the dimly-lit room, the lights power on with full strength. I squint for a moment while my eyes adjust to the burst of brightness; when I’m able to open them fully, I get my first true glimpse of ‘the graveyard.’
Centipede. Donkey Kong. Pac-Man. Ms. Pac-Man. Battlezone. Dragon’s Lair. The line of cabinets read like a who’s who of arcade classics. It’s strange to see this many games all in one place, silent; the emotion is hard to describe. I feel excited and sad at the same time. Perhaps that’s what nostalgia feels like.
I’ve arrived at the warehouse this cold night to purchase a Golden Axe arcade game. Unfortunately, among the sea of cabinets, neither the owner nor I can seem to find it.
“I think it might be behind these machines over here,” he says, climbing on top of an obviously dead Ms. Pac-Man cabinet. He places his hand over his eyes to block the bright fluorescent lights, appearing more like a mountain explorer than arcade vendor. After scanning the rows of machines from his perch, he spies it.
“There it is,” he announces while hopping down off the machine. “Give me a hand,” he says as he motions toward a stack of back doors. Arcade cabinets have back doors to allow operators easy access to a machine’s guts. Typically the doors are attach to machines with hinges and locks, however if a person is going to be working on a cabinet for an extended period of time, it is not uncommon to remove the door. Leaning up against the cabinets next to us are at least 30 doors, all black, of slightly different designs. The owner begins hanging me doors, and I begin stacking them behind us. As each door is handed to me, I’m told what it goes to. “Pac-Man…” he says. “Ms. Pac-Man.” “Midway.” “Pac-Man.” The pile of doors is quickly relocated.
Soon, the warehouse becomes a real-life sliding-tile puzzle. Moving the doors freed up Double Dragon, which is moved to in front of the front door. That frees up Burgertime, which then opens up Defender, which opens up the game behind it. Each cabinet screeches as it is slid across the concrete floor (none of them have wheels), occasionally leaving a trail of bits of wood and flakes of paint behind them.
Finally, after several minutes of sliding heavy wooden boxes around, the Golden Axe cabinet appears, standing before us – although technically speaking, it actually leans in front of us. Due to years of water damage and wood rot, the left hand side of the cabinet is at least an inch shorter than the right. As we begin to slide the game out into the aisle we’ve created, large chunks of the cabinet begin to crack and break off.
“It works great,” I’m promised. As the seller moves behind the machine to plug it in, I stare at, what at least once was, a good looking machine. The side art’s not bad. The control panel’s dirty, but complete. The marquee isn’t in bad shape. If it weren’t for the fact that the entire machine was “listing to port” and completely rotten, it wouldn’t be too bad.
The seller pops his head around the side of the cabinet. “Get ready for the pop,” he says jokingly. I fake a laugh while secretly preparing myself for a pop, a fire, or a glass explosion. Instead, we get nothing.
“Maybe this plug is bad,” he says, as he begins digging through a nearby pile for an extension cord. Maybe the plug is bad. Or maybe the game has breathed its last breath. After the immediate search fails to produce an extension cord, it’s back to the breaker box. Several switches are flipped, one of which starts a radio blaring. “We’re in business,” he says, as we wiggle our way back to the front of the warehouse.
“Get ready for the pop,” he says again, and plugs the machine into the wall. The machine limps to life. The marquee light flickers, the monitor begins to glow, and a loud, monotone buzz emits from the speaker. The game coins up, but as the owner begins to play even he can no longer maintain the façade.
“She’s in pretty bad shape,” he says. Regardless, with our heads cocked 45 degrees to match the Leaning Tower of Golden Axe’s angle, he manages to play through most of the first level, the two of us providing our own sound effects over the machine’s constant hum.
Eventually, the seller says what we’re both thinking. “I can’t sell this to you,” he says, which alleviates the stress of having to tell him I didn’t want it. “I had forgotten just how rough this one was,” he says.
It’s easy to do; It’s easy to look past the scratches and dings and see these machines for what they once were rather than what they are now. I get excited when I see the three Dragon’s Lair cabinets sitting along the far wall; when I express an interest, he informs me that new laser disc players will run more than $500 per machine – which explains why they sit there.
The rows of games show their age upon closer inspection. This one needs a monitor. That one needs new paint. All of them need something. Some of them are beyond help. I learn that Golden Axe will most likely be parted out. The marquee, the bezel (the artwork that goes around the monitor), the control panel, the coin door, and other parts will most likely hit eBay; the owner will triple his income on this particular game doing this. The monitor will be repaired and added to the pile of working monitors, waiting for game transplants. Like a parasite, the machine will be scoured until no working part is left behind. The rotting carcass of a cabinet, along with anything that can’t be or isn’t worth removing, will end up in the dumpster across the alley. The seller tells me he’s always looking for helpers to help break apart old cabinets with a sledgehammer.
As we begin sliding games back into their final resting places, I run across a Robocop cabinet. I actually have a Robocop game in a crappy cabinet (not as bad as the Golden Axe was, but close). Secretly I hope the machine doesn’t work – I can save some money that way, as all I really need is the cabinet itself. The machine fires up; however with a bad monitor and a chunk of wood missing, the seller figures it’s worth about as much as the Golden Axe was. We exchange cash, and begin the machine-sliding game once again.
As we maneuver 300 pound cabinets around the warehouse floor, the seller tells me a story. It’s the story of a guy who loved arcade games, and a guy who eventually went on to work in the arcade-repair industry. Through a stroke of luck the guy ended up with a sizable chunk of money, the majority of which he invested in old, “fixer-upper” arcade games. Some of the money went to stock. A lot of the money went toward warehouse rental; space ain’t cheap, and this is just one of his three warehouses. There were dreams of opening an arcade, dreams which for one reason or another didn’t materialize. Fixing and selling games pays the rent some months, especially around Christmas, but more often than not it doesn’t.
And now, the money has begun to dry up. Slow sales have pushed the seller closer to plan B, “liquidation.” More than once the seller reminds me that “everything’s for sale,” as we make our way through the stacks, piles and rows of arcade history.
Indeed, everything’s for sale. Even nostalgia.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Technosis
'Good story. Thanks for sharing.
