Death of an Arcade Machine (humor)

[farfel]

http://www.gamespy.com/dailyvictim/index.asp?id=476

[sniperCCJVQ]

wow! great story :D

[ubersaurus]

I hear everytime an SNK vs Capcom Chaos machine dies, an angel gets it's wings.

[charitycasegreg]

eh...thats too long for me to want to read

[farfel]

Crib's Notes:

- A Sinistar machine dies.
- Gamer is sad because he's played that machine for 20+ years.
- Gamer buries it in Uncle's unused funeral plot.
- As final tribute, plugs it in.
- Strange voices emitting from grave scare groundskeeper to death.

[Jasoco]

It's only good if the story's True.

Is it True?

[leonk]

O_O

That can't be true..

anyways, I always believe that an arcade machine is so modular, that it can always be fixed.

If I was them, I'd rip the guts out and buy a new PCB on eBay! If one turned out to be way to expensive, I'd get an old 486 and MAME sinister on that cab..

Heck, 90% of all table top touch screen machines are PC's (running PC DOS, with a CD-ROM drive and special touch screen drivers) than why not do the same for this cab!?!

[Flack]

My guess is it was partially true. Just a guess, these guys probably did have a Sinistar game that died, jokingly said, "what if we buried it?" and the story came out of that.

Gray areas of the story:

#1 - The fact that the game is "unfixable".
Videogames are very modular. They have a monitor, a PCB, a control panel, a power supply, and wires connecting them. If the game "was" working and now it's "not", chances are ONE of those things went out. In the story the audio works and the game fires up, so it's probably a PCB issue. Here (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3279812342&category=13718) is a Sinistar PCB on eBay for $10. I'm guessing if it were the guy's favorite game of all time, he would have done a little more research into fixing it.

#2 - Reassembling the game.
After the whole game had been disassembled, why would you have a tech (that you're paying) reassemble a game that doesn't work and you're not going to fix? That doesn't make sense.

#3 - Empty plot in the cemetary
Why would you keep a headstone for someone that wasn't buried at a cemetary? I don't know much about cemetaries so maybe this is the norm but it seems odd and contrived.

#4 - The night watchman
Doesn't it seem a bit odd that the nightwatchman would have the exact same time patterns and everything from 15 years ago?

#5 - Digging the hole?
Videogames are really big. Again, I have no personal experience here, but can three guys really bury a videogame in less than 2 hours? There's the convenience of the top being "only a foot or so down" to set up for the kicker at the end of the story.

#6 - The Dialogue
Nobody really talks like that, do they? If so, my friends make Forest Gump look like Einstein.

#7 - The Power Cord
Again, why would there be an electrical outlet in the middle of a graveyard? Maybe there are ones, I don't know. My videogames have about a four foot cord on the backs of them. Assuming that the machine is 3 feet deep and buried deeper than the front which is a foot down, that would put the back of the machine at least 4 feet in the ground. I still have my doubts that three guys could dig that hole, but if they DID, that's one hell of a cord that that machine had. On top of THAT, if they were really worried about someone seeing the cord, couldn't you just either stuff it in the dirt, or cut it off? I can't imagine being worried about someone finding the cord -- more importantly, I'd imagine the groundskeeper might notice the FRESHLY DUG GRAVE that wasn't there two hours prior. Why would you even plug it in in the first place?

#8 - The End
Again, very dramatic, but c'mon ... do you think you can hear a videogame speaker buried over a foot in the ground? I guess if someone wanted to poke enough holes in this story they could fire up Sinistar on MAME and see if it says all those things (in that order) in attract mode. On top of that, they said that they were far enough away that they couldn't see his face clearly, but they could hear that speaker? In the ground???

With all that being said, I still think it's a great story and a fun read, and I probably looked into it a little too seriously. It's fun, but it ain't true.

I have a story that is somewhat similar and is absolutely true, if you all want to hear it.

[sisko]

Obviously it cant be true, but it was still funny LOL

[tholly]

very funny story...i enjoyed reading it...cant be true though

[Jorpho]

I do enjoy the Daily Victim on occasion. It actually has pretentions of being clever and original.

There was a sequel to this particular one... Sinistar is brought back from the dead, and hilarity ensues.

[Kejoriv]

That cant be true. Funny nonetheless.