A bit of a chaotic morning as we still had laundry to do and had to be out of the room by 11a. Woke up, ate hotel buffet breakfast, nursed the laundry, and got out just before 11a (though our laundry wasn’t technically done until just after 11a — shhhhh!). While that was being finished up I went outside to see the river that completely surrounds our hotel (and only our hotel) like a moat. There were a couple of people fishing and I tried to talk with them but their dialect was a bit inscrutable in parts. Oh well, I’m sure they had a hard time understanding me too!
Ile de Holiday Inn, Tilton, NH
Our rear passenger blinker had gone out the day before and I spied a dealer while driving around the prior night so we took it to their “QuickLane” express service to get it replaced. A mere twenty minutes or so later and $17 poorer I was feeling a lot better about our safety on the road. The people were super friendly and one of the guys was originally from Dunn and had a son at Fort Bragg. Small world.
Got some sweet tea at McDonalds for our short drive to FunSpot in Weirs Beach, NH. The drive was short, about twenty-five minutes, but passed next to some gorgeous lakes and through the resort town of Laconia, which was popular particularly in the late-1800s.
Lake near Laconia, New Hampshire
North of Laconia we entered Weirs Beach and turned into FunSpot, the largest arcade in the world and home to hundreds of pre-1987 arcade games. We happened to enter via the third floor entrance — the floor that contains all of the classic arcade games.
Third floor entrance to FunSpot, home of The American Classic Arcade Museum
Now “The American Classic Arcade Museum” is a bit of a misnomer. Other than a display case right as you enter, some placards describing the significance and history of some games, and some newspaper and magazine articles and memorabilia (posters, etc.) on the walls it isn’t really a stuff type of museum — rather all machines can be played. As I’ve seen many sites post pictures (and even video) of the classic games floor of FunSpot I’ll post some of mine — if they wish it pulled just contact me, please!
Entry display case showing some early videogame artifacts, strangely heavy on the Odyssey
$20 got us 100 tokens and since we printed out a coupon before we arrived we got an additonal 50 on top of that. It worked out to roughly 13c a token, and the games took their original token count — in other words, most took just one. Playing Pac-Man, Dig Dug, etc. at 13c a play was a deal and a half!
Glorious, glorious pile of 150 tokens!
Funspot has much more than just the classic arcade games. It has putt-putt (indoor on the original 1952 course or outdoors), kiddie rides, rope and zip line activities, bowling, more modern video games, skee-ball, whack-a-mole, bumper cars, and of course some pinball machines. I focused on the classic arcade games, however, most of the time (while the kids and Michelle played a ton of skee-ball and bowled).
Now, as far as the classic arcade game area — it’s a large room with some spill over into two other areas. It is fairly dimly lit with a reddish light and they have 80s music playing. I had an almost zen moment when one of my 80s favorites, Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out” came on. It gets the feel down pretty well, I suppose, but there isn’t the garish neon purple and green, geometric shaped gaudy carpet designs or anything else I remember from my youth. Most of the machines were in decent working order (with some exceptions, like wonky monitors and such — and only a few (less than ten) out of order). Not bad at all.
The collection is quite good, though Michelle and I were very disappointed that Q*Bert was missing. Turns out it was normally available to play but had been rotated out for a while. Grrr! We found plenty of other games to play, however, and Michelle latched on to Time Pilot to assuage her Q*Bert blues. I started with Sinistar (“I Live!”, “I Hunger!”) and got the top score — well, top daily score.
Top o' the World!* -- *today only
We decided to eat a quick lunch at the snack bar — pizza and rootbeer for me — then go back upstairs to the classic arcade room. I then proceeded to play tons of games (at least 50), including: Zaxxon, Joust, Joust 2, Defender, Robotron, Ms. Pac-Man, Dragon’s Lair, Xevious, Bag Man, Super Sprint, Double Pong, Frogger, Crossbow, Chiller (remember that one with all its gore?!), Kick Man, Crystal Castles, Tempest, Moon Patrol, Space Invaders Deluxe, Millipede, etc. etc. Tons of games. I played many of them with Addison (and a few with Genetta — she liked skee-ball more) and we particularly enjoyed the co-op ones like Joust (cocktail version) and Gauntlet II (stand-up). It was a great time and I think the kids have a new appreciation for the “old games.”
I was struck by how much fun many of them still are. The ergonomics of the games leave a bit to be desired, particularly for a 6’5″ person, however. After a while my back and hands started hurting. Dang, too old to play videogames! I was also struck by how ingenious some of the display methods, particularly for those in the late-70s and early-80s were. Space Invaders Deluxe sported a painted backdrop and a multi-color projected playfield. Video Pinball used a physical pinball playfield and only rendered the flippers, ball, and drop targets. Warlords was really special. It had a painted backdrop with actual depth AND they used colored acetate squares to make the neutral area yellow (since it is a fireball being tossed around) and the four players in the corners all have a distinct color — despite all the rendering of the game being in monocolor white. Wow!
Brilliant, simply brilliant
I also noticed how many of the early games had dedicated control systems (which would become standardized by the late-80s and JAMMA, by and large): the “Coke can” of Major Havoc, the left and right only joystick of Lumberjack, the spinner of Tempest, and this gem called Space Zap that used four buttons for the cardinal directions and a separate one to fire — presumably before the joystick?
Many of the machines were grouped by manufacturer or series. Particularly impressive was the Pac-Man row (and I think Daniel’s Super Pac-Man is actually better than theirs) and the Donkey Kong row (shades of King of Kong).
Row of Pac-Man series games at FunSpot -- check out the sweet Pac-Man Halloween costume on the wall!
Row of Donkey Kong series games at Funspot
They also had many historically significant games like Pong, Computer Space, and Death Race. Everyone knows 1972’s Pong, I won’t rehash that here. Computer Space pre-dates Pong by a year and was the first commercially released electronic video arcade game. Death Race was a 1976 game that stirred up a media firestorm — pretty much one or two players drive around and run over “gremlins” that look a lot like people.
Computer Space, released in 1971, the first commerically released video arcade game
Death Race (1976) -- Grand Theft Auto 0!
I guess where the disappointment came in (other than Q*Bert no-show, grrr!) was the lack of any videos or books covering the contents of the “museum.” I’d pay some cold hard cash for a book that profiles each, pics on the left, text on the right. Or a video walk-through of the entire floor. I tried to make one of my own but it’s very amateur. There are also some on YouTube as well. C’mon FunSpot, I WANT to spend my money on this!
The pinball section wasn’t in as great a shape. I read online that the number they have has been shrinking because they are a maintenance hassle and just don’t get the play that the more reliable video arcade games get. Still, below is a shot of Black Knight lest anyone think I am biased! They had quite a few more, but not a tremendous amount, such as: Fire, Addam’s Family, Playboy, Funhouse, etc.
Black Knight pinball at FunSpot
After I played enough classic arcade games (or, more correctly, felt that we really needed to hit the road) I sauntered downstairs to find the family bowling. Turns out they had cashed in their skee-ball winnings for a sweet FunSpot glass! I watched Michelle finish beating the kids (though she didn’t break 100) and then the kids asked if we could play the other bowling-type game they add — candlepin bowling. Turns out it is a New England and Maritime Canada thing only but it was great fun. It uses a much smaller ball, slightly bigger than a softball, that has no holes. The pins are smaller and one gets three balls per frame. The pins do not reset until after all three balls are bowled, making for some interesting strategy hitting fallen pins to swing into unfallen pins. Two frames are bowled at a time. It is definitely a lot harder — and the top score every recorded is 245 out of 300. No perfect games in this variation!
Candlepin bowling pins
After candlepin we played some skee-ball for a tiny bit to kill the rest of the tokens. Left FunSpot about 6p and headed to our hotel for the night in Rutland, Vermont. It was a couple hours drive and, despite many moose crossings and it being the perfect time of day to spot moose, we saw none. Grrrr!
We did drive through some beautiful country, however. Mostly mountains with rivers and brooks alongside the road for long stretches. We went through Woodstock, Vermont, which seems to be quite affluent — a playground for the rich in skiing season, I imagine. Most other towns were not nearly so well off — we saw lots of hotels, restaurants, homes, etc. for sale or abandoned. It seems the recession has hit fairly hard here. Shortly before entering Rutland there was the most beautiful sunset, one which I was fortunate to capture with my camera.
Beautiful Vermont sunset
Checked-in but didn’t unpack as we were super hungry. We went immediately to the nearby 99 Pub & Restaurant (apparently a Boston chain) and had a very decent meal. Since the Red Sox had won the previous day (though they were getting hammered by Cleveland this night) Addison even got to eat free! Addison and I had top sirloin, Michelle some honey chicken wrap, and Genetta chicken fingers and a salad wedge. They printed the calories for everything on the menu and it was shocking — and definitely influenced my choice of dinner. I wish everywhere would do that — I thought it was the law already.
Hauled our crap to the room, by this time I wasn’t feeling well at all. Soldiered through the blog and researched some stuff for when we go dark tomorrow at Indian Lake — won’t be able to blog until the weekend. It’s been fun, hope you’ve enjoyed reading it and look for the Fort Ticonderoga, Adirondack days at Indian Lake, and the wrap-up this weekend or early next week!
Route for August 1, 2011