...of the year?

[Donkbaca]

We should do a ... of the year thread:

Project of the year
New product of the year
Thread of the year
What the f*ck were they thinking? award of the year

[leapinlew]

Or you could just tell Pixelhugger, Knievel, Randy, Andy good job.

[Seith]

kijiji.com arcade cabinet listing of the year (nominating this for when we vote on 2012's best)  :

http://novascotia.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-sell-video-games-consoles-other-Insert-Coin-to-Continue-W0QQAdIdZ342442803

What is that?  An arcade?  Yuuup.  Put away your PS3, wave goodbye to your Wii, and do a 180 and walk away from your Xbox 360.  Now that all of the key search words are out of the way…

 

Look guys, if lately you’ve found yourself looking forward to a quiet night on the couch with your wife watching Grey’s Anatomy – or maybe curled up with your girlfriend in your matching snuggies and a cup of cocoa catching up on the past few episodes of Glee that you have saved up on your PVR, well it’s time to wake up and smell the loss of testosterone my friend.  Seriously man…….a Glee marathon?  NEVER tell your friends about that.

 

You know what you need?  A heavy dose of vitamin M.  That’s right – time to man up with your own home arcade machine.  Yeah I said it.  ARCADE.  Not a console.  Not a PC game.  And definitely not an app for your phone that gives you points for slinging ridiculous birds into innocent piles of unknowing targets.  A real life 6 and a half foot high piece of greatness I like to call “A Man Makeover”.  Comes complete with real joysticks for dude-sized hands and strong push buttons that will make you glad you have strong wrists.  This is gaming the way it should be.  Sorry couch potatoes.

 

Drop the console controller, save your thumbs from insanity, and quit clicking and dragging your way around tiny screens.  It’s time to play video games the same way that men pee – standing up and with a funny look on your face.

 

“Just what the hell is a home arcade machine” you ask?  Well if you are any guy between the age of 24 to about 54, you probably didn’t ask that question.  In fact, you are already likely to have dropped a small fortune worth of quarters into many an arcade machine found in a corner store, pizza shop, truck stop, or smokey arcade more than a dozen years ago.  Why did we do it?  Was it to impress chicks?  Oh hell no!  Was it for fame?  Yes – if your idea of fame is seeing your 3 initials in a list of top 10 scores of a machine.  No way pal.  We did it because we were guys without home gaming systems of our own.  It was for our own masculine competitive urges that we had to actually leave the house for.  So what could possibly be better than re-living some of your earlier fantasies in your own basement?  Absolutely nothing.  Well maybe something – but this fantasy involves the clean, wholesome fun of taking out bad guys without all of the blood or loss of life that some of us seem to crave from our current era of games.  No headsets.  No internet connection.  No spending yet another sixty bucks for a future drink coaster.

 

Imagine with me, if you will, for just a moment...

 

….anytime you want - Practice your Pac Man, Dive into Dig Dug, Gloat at your Galaga skills, and Defend your…..Defender.  The possibilities are endless.  About as endless as this ad appears to be when you keep reading it.  Well there is an ending eventually, when the game credits role and you are standing proud with bloodshot eyes listening to the soothing end game music playing after finishing your all time favorite game.  I just finished Golden Axe the other night for something to do.  It was possibly the best hour of my day, and I didn't even have to put on pants.  That could be you friend.

 

I know what you’re thinking right now - besides that the writer of this ad is pure genius with a capital Gee!   It’s true.  But the other question on your mind is, “Just what games can you play on this arcade?”  Well this actual arcade cabinet has been revamped with an LCD monitor, a dual core PC, and all the other parts and goodies you need to run MAME.  Google or Youtube it – crazy stuff.  This emulator lets you load up just about any of the arcade games you remember from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and even into the 2000’s when arcades were dismantled and sold for scrap in order to make room for three thousand dollar personal computers and hundred pound computer monitors.  Those same computers and monitors have now all been scrapped themselves to make way for laptops....which will all be in the dump in a few years too.  It’s the electronic circle of life my friend.  Someday your Xbox will be a piece of crap too.

 

But is a classic working arcade machine a piece of crap?  Pfffft – whatever.  This thing can still literally crush you like it crushed your spirits and your change purse years ago when you were trying to finish Contra.  But it wouldn’t do that.  No way.  It's like one of the guys I'm telling you.  Unless maybe you swear at it or kick it and try to tip it over for some stupid reason.  Why would you do that to one of your friends man?  That's cold. 

 

So is that it?  No way Jose!  The NFL Blitz theme has been maintained and this game still looks original straight out of the mid-90’s.  The marquee (top display) has a backlight that works great.  The side art is fantastic.  I think people rate them out of 10 so I’ll be fair and give them a 8.5.  The speaker system includes a sub woofer that gives you that added OOMPH to annoy the hell out of those pesky neighbors.  Seriously, you can barely put the volume up to 25% when you need to dig out the ear plugs.  The coin door and mechanism works fine so you can soak your friends or even the kids of their change.  The buttons and joysticks work.  The LCD monitor behind a tinted plexi is perfect and can even be rotated from vertical to horizontal for your game preference.  The PC has a massive hard drive and all the parts you need to run MAME smoothly.  Other than that the only other thing I have to offer you is my experienced guidance to setting up YOUR new arcade cabinet with everything you want.  I’ve done all the pesky hard work of tracking down details of customizing and perfecting YOUR cabinet with software, games, and tweaks.  Believe me when I say that you can waste weeks, even months of your life messing around with this stuff.  Luckily, other nerds before you and I have already done the leg work.  Imaginary high five for all the nerds!

 

So if you’ve come to realize that “Guy’s night” at your place sucks, and it does – your friends told me…. here is the perfect recipe to make it better starting in 2012:

 

Mix 1 bunch of your buddies – the kind with quarters work best

Add some selected refreshments of your choice

Toss in 1 retro-classic but cool arcade machine that has been preserved for about 15 years

Insert 25 cents to continue, repeat repeatedly, and Enjoy!

 

It doesn’t get much easier bud.  Listen to me, calling you bud.  It’s like we’ve grown closer in the few minutes it took you to read this already.  The only hard part is motivating yourself into peeling your behind off the couch long enough to becoming The Man who stepped up and actually bought this machine instead of just reading this ad repeatedly.  I predict many Kijiji window shoppers replying to this ad to ask if it’s “still available”.  Yes my friend, just as available as your ex girlfriend.  She’s looking great by the way.

 

So if you want this machine to permanently fix “guys night” at your place so you’ll be known at work as “the guy with an arcade at his house”, drop me a line and like any dedicated male friend, I’ll get back to you within a week with some answers.  I know there are many questions and I do have answers.  But I’m not looking to cater to anyone except YOU.  The guy who’s actually serious about buying this thing right freakin’ now!   

 

Now if you don’t have the money until your allowance, or you want to know if this will fit in your mom’s trunk (I know there’s a joke in there somewhere), or you simply enjoy wasting your time by dreaming about Kijiji items for sale – this ad is not for you and our relationship ends here.  Thanks for reading though and cheers for another ‘hit’ for my counter.

 

Ok.  Now man-up guys.  Waste no time on this one.  If you’ve ever dreamed about having a few hundred classic arcade games at your finger tips with the real deal feel of a stand up cabinet, I guarantee you will not come across another offer like this for a very long time.  This is NOT a project cabinet.  It’s not a fixer upper.  You don’t need to spend a small fortune to restore this thing.  You don’t need to worry about your wife thinking you have another lady on the side because you spend so much time away from her in your basement – though I can’t promise this thing won’t bring you one step closer to divorce…….that’s up to you.

 

If the lowballers are looking for the cheap way to do this yourself instead of paying the asking price, congrats on having hundreds of hours to waste spending on researching, building, and swearing over the next year or so.  This investment is truly worth it – take it from me.  I’ve had friends who’ve started their own cheapo alternative to picking up something like this – and it’s comical how much time of their lives they’ll never get back.  This cabinet cost me easily a thousand dollars and probably another one hundred or so hours of my own time.  I’m not saying you won’t want to tweak things – and I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it’s as close as you’ll get without shelling out a thousand bucks of your own.

 

Great job, you made it to the end.  Now click on that box to the right and get moving already.

[Vigo]

There has been a lot of interesting stuff here in 2011, I personally think this year has been great for mini projects. The bar has been raised and there have been a ton of awesome minis.

for the #*@(@$!? award I would like to nominate Ram controls.

[Hoopz]

Or you could just tell Pixelhugger, Knievel, Randy, Andy good job.

I think Pixelhugger would qualify for the "of the Decade" award.   

[GregD]

Pixelhugger absolutely wins the best product promotional video award!