Once Upon Atari part four and part five are online.
Chasing Ghosts, that other movie about breaking arcade high score records, is finally going to see a release, with several airings on Showtime in December.
Also from Peter Hirschberg, an iPhone version of Adventure!
Check out this beautiful home remodel and arcade.
Couple food blog additions to the local RSS folder: Kristi’s Vegas Musings, and Eating Las Vegas by John Curtas.
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.
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.
This year I decided to focus most of my game-playing time on classics, great games of previous generations that for one reason or another I’d missed.
Last weekend I took that to its extreme.
There are two things every arcade game nerd should do: attend an auction, and participate in a warehouse raid, the finding of an old stash of arcade cabinets, usually belonging to a former operator, and the retrieval adventure that follows. Visiting an auction is something one can plan, but warehouse raids requires luck, timing, and persistence. Fortunately, I stumbled across someone who had all three, and I got to ride along.
It begins.
The cabinets were split up between two places, which made for a bit of a logistics puzzle. The smaller lot was a group of about a 10-15 cabinets in storage units, so we took care of those during the evening and night of the first day.
Out of this group, Ray (the one who got this whole thing rolling) took home a Star Wars cockpit, Q-bert, Ms Pac-Man, Mappy, Track n Field cocktail, Make Trax, the Pole Position cockpit, and a handful of others. There was also a Road Riot 2-player cockpit that a former coworker came by to pick up the next day.
I took home a Xevious, the Neo MVS-2-13, and a Choplifter-in-an-I, Robot (missing the hall effect stick and boards, unfortunately). A Zombie Raid, Paperboy, Nintendo VS (Super Mario and Dr Mario), and Super Monaco GP are also in my garage waiting to be cleaned up and sold.
After a bit of cleaning and rebuilding the guns, this Zombie Raid turned out to be in beautiful shape. A few cosmetic blemishes, but the guns work great and the monitor is bright and clear:
I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it, but I am a very tall person.
Day two tomorrow.
The Liberty Belle B-17 bomber is at the North Las Vegas Airport this weekend:
There’s no need for a time machine this weekend – just make your way to the North Las Vegas Airport and you’ll set yourself back about 60 years.
The B-17 Bomber, named “Liberty Bell,” is visiting Las Vegas for the weekend and giving valley residents a unique opportunity to physically touch and see an airplane once used for combat during World War II.
There were originally 12,000 of these airplanes, but now only 14 remain.
Tour flights will be held this weekend – however, they will cost you $438 for a 30-minute flight.
The flights are pricey, so the crew does allow spectators to walk inside the grounded airplane before the first and after the last flight of the day for free of charge.
Saw her sitting on the runway this morning as we drove out towards Nellis to load up the arcade cabinets. Beautiful airplane, hopefully I’ll have time to go by before they fly out.