fatherpain
Professional
Hello, my name is Tom and I live in Fullerton, CA. Started collecting in 2004 until around 2012 then my OCD priorities shifted towards a new job, managing our boys' club soccer teams and volunteering to help the organization and the families it served as an unpaid board member for about 4 years. Though not an aspiration, eventually became the club president (also unpaid) and served in that capacity for about 1.5 years. Between all this nonsense, there wasn't much time for anything else, so the games languished and sat neglected since 2012. Here is my garage as of 4-18-21.
For the past couple years, I've no longer been associated with soccer in any type of role, beyond just being a parent (thankfully, heh), and while my job still requires long hours, I had a little bit of free time again so got into car modification and driving at the track.
A couple months ago, my wife got on my case for abandoning my previous hobby: Arcade games and gave an ultimatum to either get rid of them or get it going again...So chose the latter
Before real life intruded, had a goal of having a game room in the garage, so set about clearing it out. Took a week off work to focus just on cleaning and organizing.
Pulled the games out for a thorough clean and assessment. Found about 35% are non working or have issues *sigh*. However they used to all work and I am confident they will all eventually work again someday
Picked up one of these old style letter boards from Wayfair to keep track of high scores... But thought it may be better used to keep track of what's on tap. The (4) columns above are dedicated machines. The columns below are bare PCBs and Neo Geo Carts that are playable in (3) candy cabs that aren't listed.
It took about a month and a half of the OCD overdrive, but hosted an small event this past Saturday. The game room is still a work in progress, but here are some pics of how its coming along. Added some black lights from Amazon to try to recreate an arcade vibe.
Had a AC mini split installed to keep the room cool. Garage is on its own sub panel so everything can be turned on without anything tripping. Here is my son and his buddies getting some time on Warlords. My friend Paul Dean and several KLOV members were kind of enough to cruise by and hang out a bit.
Games are all set to operate on quarters. Have an old change machine that is kept full of quarters for guests to use.
Though it was time consuming to get the garage ready, it was fun to host again after being away from the hobby for so long. The good news is now that the first one is out of the way, it will be much easier to host again moving forward.
Have some other ideas to hopefully implement in the near future. For now will start focusing on trying to get the non working games fixed.
Anyways, things have certainly changed during the time I've been away, but am glad to see the hobby still thriving and am happy to have found this website. Hope to meet some of you in person at a future meet sometime
On other forums, I’m fatherpain on KLOV.... and Droid on Shmups/Neo-Geo.com so some of you may know me that way
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I'm right down the street from you! haha
