The Belgian road-trip: Space Invaders, Power Drift and Asterock

[Level42]

Did a road-trip last weekend to my good friend Luc in Belgium. Had to pick up three machines:

Space Invaders, Power Drift and Asterock.


Check out the enire road-trip story here:

http://www.dragonslairfans.com/smfor/index.php?topic=904.0

[SirPeale]

Does that mean you now have two Asterocks?

[RayB]

I never realized how big Space Invaders is. (Or is Asterocks a mini?)

[Level42]

No, that's just the one Asterock that I mentioned before here...

Ray, it's both true. The SI is a big machine, especially the lower part. It barely fit in my car, in which I had transported the Meteor, Centipede, Puckman and Joust with ease.

On the other side, the Asterock is really a thin lady. It's definitely not a mini (it's even taller than the SI) but it has a very small width and it's also very un-deep. (The last thing mainly because of the ingenious CP set-up). I've noticed that European cab builders tend(ed) to keep their machines a bit smaller compared to their US counterparts.
F.I. The Euro Joust and Robotron are a lot smaller than the US version. My (Elektrocoin) UK-built Double Axle was also much leaner than the US version of the upright.

I actually love this as I can use every cm. of space in my gameroom

I still can't get over the fact that there is an Atari sticker on the Electrohome monitor in this bootleg cabinet ! Gotta love that they used the original monitor somehow....

[Mauzy]

 

I always enjoy a good road trip story. Even those that are relatively uneventful I still find interesting, especially those in Europe where cabs can be picked up at 140(90) kmph(mph)!

I've seen your posts about Luc and I have briefly looked at his site, but I did not realize he owned a grocery store. Did I understand correctly that his games are under his store? I know they are in a parking garage, but it sure looked to me in one of the pics of a game being moved up a ramp that they're kept under his store. That's a really wild idea!

[Level42]

Yep pretty uneventful and only about 1 hour and 45 minutes drive (with that speed) up to Luc's place.

Mind you, speed limit is 120 km/h in both The Netherlands and Belgium but I must admit 140 (on the meter, which means about 130 in reality) is my cruising speed too usually. Only with a van like that it seems to be a bit faster.

Yes he and his wife own a large supermarket (Delhaize, top range supermarkets in Belgium). Above the store there are a number of apartments he rents out and that's (partly) why he has the parking garage under the store (for the people who live there). He also owns an internet provider company and now he started with his own beer-brand. Busy guy !

A large part of the central parking space is full with the driving games and a number of arcade games. There's two "garage boxes" where he has all his "top" pinballs ready to play. Then there are a couple of boxes where there are a good number of pins waiting to be brought back to working order......In total he owns about 150 pins.....

The disadvantage of the games in the central area of the garage is that the stuff the cars put out there is _not_ good for the machines.....