Tour the Hammargren House of History

From the Classic Las Vegas Blog, the fine folks committed to making sure they don’t implode every old building locally, comes the reminder that this Sunday is Hammargren tour day. I lived a block away from Lonnie for a couple of years, and always viewed the treasures looming over his back wall with awe and reverence.

You’ve seen the back of the house as you pass by on Sandhill in the Paradise Crest neighborhood. The Space Capsule that peeps over the fence along with the observatory and more! Well, to long-time residents it is known as the home of Dr. Lonnie Hammargren.

Our pal Uncle Jack LeVine calls Dr. Lonnie the Godfather of Preservation in Las Vegas. Dr. Lonnie has been collecting pieces of Las Vegas and Nevada history for years. In addition, he has been an avid collector of American history as well as Internationally. He also collects the arcane and little known artifacts as well. Over the years, Dr. Lonnie’s collection has grown so much that it now fills up two houses and spills out over the yards.

For 364 days a year, a tour of the house is only available by invitation only. But once a year, on the Sunday following Nevada Day, Dr. Lonnie and his wife, Sandy, open the doors and invite everyone to join them in the celebration.

The Annual Hammargren House of History’s Celebration of Nevada Day will be on Sunday, Nov. 2nd from 1:00 - 5:00 pm. This year, to help cover costs of organizing and putting on this wonderful event, the charge will be $5.

It’s a new morning in America… fresh, vital.

[via jwz]

Craft Day for the arcade cabinet owner.

1) Buy a handful of acrylic photo keychains. I went with the Lifestyles Photo Keytags that Walgreens sells, two for three bucks.

2) Download flyers for your cabinet. The Arcade Flyer Archive is a perfect resource, and you’ll want to find two good pages, for both the front and back sides of the keychain.

3) Clean up and resize the artwork. Some of the scans can be pretty rough, so if you’ve got the knowhow, now is the part where you’ll want to do any color correction and blemish removal from the flyer artwork, otherwise don’t worry about it, they’ll turn out fine enough. Once everything looks good, size ‘em down. If you’re using the Walgreens keytags, you’ll want the print size to be 2×2.875 inches.

4) Create a printing template. If you have Photoshop, feel free to use the one I made, formatted roughly to size and for 4×6 glossy photo paper.

5) Print your artwork. Let your printouts dry for a bit, then trim as needed. Place the front and back flyer images in the keytag, snap in the acrylic cover, loop in your cabinet keys and you’re good to go!

Dead Snow.

Neo-Geo MVS-2-13 restoration

The lack of free space in the garage aside, I’m really enjoying the whole arcade restoration thing. This hobby strikes so many of the right nerves for me: the strong nostalgia kick, the tinkering, the collectibility, and the research and skill acquisition required to go from start to completion.

If you were a gamer in the 80s and if you’ve got the room, I recommend taking on your own project — thanks to the current state of our economy, cabinets are selling for cheap, and with a bit of exploration and patience you could easily wind up with your own personal gaming holy grail sitting in your workspace. There are plenty of small shops out there selling parts and reproduction artwork, and many active online communities to help with the hunt for specific pieces and technical questions.

Anyway, on to the latest.

A Neo-Geo MVS-2-13 – more commonly known as a Neo Mini or Cabaret – was one of my personal picks from the warehouse raid a few weeks back, and my first project from the lot.

Full story, after the jump »

Now you can own the World’s Largest Lite-Brite.

Just stumbled across this while digging around on ebay:

World’s Largest Lite-Brite -DaVinci’s “The Last Supper”

The pegged image itself measures approximately 4′9″ tall by 9′9″ wide and is comprised of exactly 124,418 brand new, original Lite-Brite pegs. After running out of clear/white pegs from my initial bulk peg order from Hasbro, I had to buy out the entire Lite-Brite stock of every Toys-R-Us, Wal*Mart, and Target in a 15 mile radius several times over just to replenish the shortage of pegs in that color.

An actual Lite-Brite toy has a black background which utilizes blank spaces as “black”, but does not have actual black pegs. For artistic and Guinness certification purposes, I was unable to leave blank spaces. What to do? Unused pegs were painted black with several layers of a special glossy paint made specifically for plastics. The result is a strong-bonded paint that doesn’t chip or flake in the slightest.

The pegs are fixed to the “canvas” with 8 layers of glue. Not just any glue, but non-fogging cyano-acrylate (the most expensive and hard-to-find of the super glues). This non-fogging glue was chosen for its unequaled bonding strength and the fact that it wouldn’t discolor the pegs, inhibiting light transmission.

Buy it now for $5000.

link love 10-16-08

Two link loves in a row without a content post? Oh hell! To top it off, I forgot that today was recycling day, and the bins are full! Oh hell!

schild’s interview with Raph Koster is up, covering subscriptions, Metaplace, and fun. I still have problems reading the word ‘metaplace’ correctly.

Start to Finish: Publishing a Commercial iPhone Game.

IndieGames insightfully reviews 2D Boy’s World of Goo. I think I’m gonna get the Wii version.

Lux Touch is a free Risk-like game for the iPhone. Fun to play, definitely worth downloading, but not much in the way of options (that’s all coming in the later pay version). For me, Risk and Apple have always gone together; we played the hell out of Risk Deluxe on the SE back in school.

link love 10-08-08

A Wii Ware Cave Story makes me very happy, because a) it’s a wonderful game, and b) I’ll have a reason to turn on the Wii again. More details here.

Danc’s Rules of Productivity. Good stuff as usual from Lost Garden.

Here’s a tiny pinch of TR2N info from AICN. You know those Star Wars geeks that lined up for Phantom Menace like two weeks before the movie started? Yeah, I’d be that guy with this one, if it weren’t for the whole job thing.

Guinsoo, the creator of DotA-Allstars, is entering the commercial game arena with League of Legends. This is gonna be huge.

S&D’s Ultimate Arcade

Update 11-11-08: Well hell, looks like this place is already closed, everything but the pins and air hockey tables was cleared out, without any sort of notice on the door. Anyone have the scoop?

Here are some shots of S&D’s Ultimate Arcade, the first independent arcade to open locally in years, and the first 24 hour arcade since Mary K’s back in the day. The arcade is at 5597 S Rainbow, near Russell Rd, and shares a strip mall with the Moto Cafe and Living Dead Tattoo.

Update 11-11-08: Well hell, looks like this place is already closed, everything but the pins and air hockey tables was cleared out, without any sort of notice on the door. Anyone have the scoop?

The game selection is somewhat limited (they just opened Oct 1st), but Dov, who runs the arcade with his wife Sabine, is working with local operators to fill the place up. As it stands, the highlight is currently the selection of new Stern pins, including Spiderman, Indiana Jones, and The Dark Knight.

While I’m still rooting for someone to open a barcade-like establishment here in town, it’s nice to see businesses like this cropping up.

Finished: Beyond Good and Evil

“The war has arrived at the gates of Hillys!”

Prior to finally completing it last month, I’d attempted and then abandoned Beyond Good & Evil at least three or four times.

While the game is a bit slow to start (after the spectacular introductory sequence), the lack of a full playthrough was simply the result of my falling prey to a constant barrage of newer and shinier things. I’m not particularly known for my discipline.

But this time, this time, bolstered by both age and a sense of duty, I finally beat the damn thing.

Visually, Beyond Good and Evil holds up very well, particularly when played in progressive mode on a PS2 or PS3, and Christophe Heral’s score (he’ll be returning for the upcoming sequel) is considered to be among the best of the previous generation.

The game plays a bit like a stealth Zelda, with a hub-like overworld and a smattering of dungeon crawls, physical puzzles, and platforming segments. The photography and reporting aspects were my favorite part of the game, and I hope they lean heavily on those elements for the sequel.

Things seemed to wrap up a bit too quickly at the end, but I did enjoy the story, and found myself genuinely caring for the primary characters and their crusade.

With the second installment on its way, pick up and play BG&E if you haven’t. It’s available on Windows and all three of the last gen platforms, and can easily be had for less than ten bucks.

Plus/Minus:
+ Game starts off with a bang, throwing me immediately into a boss fight.
+ The button displays in the top left corner show relevant commands and are shaped and positioned like the buttons on the controller (varying per system). Yeah, everyone is into minimal UI these days, but this was really helpful.
+ The circular repeat-scrolling number/letter entry system is great! Much better than an onscreen keypad when using an analog device. I’m so stealing this.
+ After dying, the game sends you immediately back into play at the last (invisible) checkpoint. No loading saves, etc.
+ In-game hints from supporting characters were a nice touch. I rarely felt directionless or unable to progress.

- Being forced to select the language every single time I booted the game.
- The camera! The camera in interior spaces! Argh don’t do that!

? The final boss. I’m undecided, was it genius or really annoying? I was frustrated until I realized that holding the controller backwards was the secret, and then I felt brilliant for figuring it out. Still, how many players will just quit during the feeling frustrated part?

Final grade: A-