Funkenstein
10-16-2005, 02:23 AM
Today, a lifelong resident of New Hampshire finally got off his lazy keister and made the scant hour-long drive to Funspot. For those of you not informed, Funspot is more or less the Mecca of the Calssicophile. They actually refer to the game room as The Museum, and it's a perfect moniker. 200 or so arcade games from the 70's and 80's, 99% up and running in excellent condition, and they still cost only a quarter.
It's really a thing of beauty. A huge room packed to the gills, pinball machines of every flavor lining two of the walls, aisles and aisles of arcadey goodness organized by publisher (all the Bally in one section, Midway in another, Nintendo in another) with signs hanging from the ceiling so you can locate your favorite group, all under red gel-filtered light so there's not a hint of glare on any of the screens.
I'd always said I was going to go, and I'm kicking myself for not having gone sooner. I saw Kiss Pinball in the best condition you'll ever see a pinball machine in. I saw the Pac Man cabinet the world record was set on. I got to play an original Galaga machine. I got the high score in Duck Hunt for pete's sake. I was grinning like a kid on Christmas.
By far my favorite game in the place was this little oddity off in a corner called Foreign Legion. (http://marvin3m.com/arcade/foreign.htm) The basic meat of it is a little model battlefield with targets that pop up like the old air rifle carnival games (with two model planes on sticks even) and you have sixty seconds to see how many of them you can shoot with a light operated machine gun. The cool thing is everything is down in the machine pointed up vertically and reflected off a horizontal mirror that has a blacklight shining off it, so you can't see any of the workings making the tanks pop up or the planes flying through the air. Everything has a translucent, otherworldly look, compounded by the fact that these are very clearly physical objects with actual depth you're shooting at as opposed to pixels on a a screen. Very bizarre, very cool, very very fun.
I won't go on and on about it, it's not something you need to plan an entire vacation around, but if you get a chance to hit this place for a day, do so. I put a twenty in the change machine, played nothing but the cream of the arcade crop for two and a half hours, and somehow managed to walk back out with more than twenty dollar's worth of tokens (which have the year they were made stamped on them) in a cup. (The cup being provided by them which is very nice if I do say so.) That's a day well spent.
It's really a thing of beauty. A huge room packed to the gills, pinball machines of every flavor lining two of the walls, aisles and aisles of arcadey goodness organized by publisher (all the Bally in one section, Midway in another, Nintendo in another) with signs hanging from the ceiling so you can locate your favorite group, all under red gel-filtered light so there's not a hint of glare on any of the screens.
I'd always said I was going to go, and I'm kicking myself for not having gone sooner. I saw Kiss Pinball in the best condition you'll ever see a pinball machine in. I saw the Pac Man cabinet the world record was set on. I got to play an original Galaga machine. I got the high score in Duck Hunt for pete's sake. I was grinning like a kid on Christmas.
By far my favorite game in the place was this little oddity off in a corner called Foreign Legion. (http://marvin3m.com/arcade/foreign.htm) The basic meat of it is a little model battlefield with targets that pop up like the old air rifle carnival games (with two model planes on sticks even) and you have sixty seconds to see how many of them you can shoot with a light operated machine gun. The cool thing is everything is down in the machine pointed up vertically and reflected off a horizontal mirror that has a blacklight shining off it, so you can't see any of the workings making the tanks pop up or the planes flying through the air. Everything has a translucent, otherworldly look, compounded by the fact that these are very clearly physical objects with actual depth you're shooting at as opposed to pixels on a a screen. Very bizarre, very cool, very very fun.
I won't go on and on about it, it's not something you need to plan an entire vacation around, but if you get a chance to hit this place for a day, do so. I put a twenty in the change machine, played nothing but the cream of the arcade crop for two and a half hours, and somehow managed to walk back out with more than twenty dollar's worth of tokens (which have the year they were made stamped on them) in a cup. (The cup being provided by them which is very nice if I do say so.) That's a day well spent.