Austin, TX meet up thread

[the_dannobot]

sounds good! What time we planning on starting?

[wip3outguy7]

Sorry about that. Starts at 12 noon at Game Over!

[Pinballz]

Greetings!

I'm the manager of the new Pinballz Arcade and someone on AtariAge (where I'm the admin) gave me a heads up about the thread here on Racketboy. Just wanted to address a few items that have been posted here regarding the arcade. Without further ado,

• Yes, we know the hours are somewhat limited at the time being. As has been stated in the thread, this is a "soft" opening for us so we can work on getting all the machines in tip-top shape (which is a tremendous amount of work), get other aspects of the business going (Mikki's Cafe, party rooms, memberships, and so forth) and just tune things in general. We'll be increasing hours down the road--it's easier for us to add hours than take them away!
• The lighting is something we have plans to address. We also want the darker arcade ambiance, while not being too dark so you can't easily make out details on pinball playfields. It'll take a bit of time to get this dialed in properly, since it's an expensive proposition to change all the lighting in a 13,000+ square foot business. As someone else mentioned, we do have selective lights turned off during arcade hours to help prevent glare on the pinball machines, but sometimes those lights are turned back on when techs are working on machines. I personally cannot wait until we have the subdued, indirect lighting up and running, with various neon signs and embellishments on the walls that you might expect to find in an arcade from yesteryear.
• We're still working on getting the party rooms going. Ultimately we will have four party rooms. One of the rooms will be particularly large when it's completed and would we well suited for your gatherings. In fact, we have a large (90" I think) projector screen that we plan on installing in this one room, along with an appropriate projector. This room is located in the front-right corner of the arcade, if you look at the arcade from the outside (inside it's on the left as you look out towards the front door). This is the area that has several gray tables and red office chairs in it at the moment. We'll be installing a large glass wall to partition this room off. We're also installing window tinting on all the exterior windows to help cut down on light entering the building during the day.
• It's an incredible amount of work to get machines up and running initially, as not everything we've purchased was in pristine and/or working condition. But we are busting our tails to get more games online in the arcade. Pinball machines and redemption machines are the worst in this regard, due to their mechanical nature. But even video arcade machines need love and care, and we've installed many cap kits for monitors, outright replaced monitors, and fixed many controller issues. If you're in the arcade and you have an issue with a game, please let an employee know and we'll make note of the problem so we can fix it!
• Yes, we are continuing to add more games to the arcade. Right now we have about 85 pinball machines on the floor, which is pretty much an unheard of number for arcades. In the past two weeks we've added ten more classic video games, such as Tempest, Major Havoc, Missile Command, Xybots, and more. We have Asteroids, Stargate, and Gyruss cabinets we'll have on the floor soon. Someone already mentioned the four-player Tournament Cyberball. We also have four-player TMNT and Gauntlet II cabinets coming soon.
• Virtual On does have some issues that we need to fix, such as the right seat not having an adjustment knob, and the coin slot issues. It should be set to 50 cents and 25 cents to continue, and we've been going through and marking machines with stickers that clearly state how many quarters/tokens they take (we will have our tokens soon!)
• The list of arcade games on the Pinballz website is out of date. I will update it this week. The website is still an early work-in-progress and we have big plans for it, both functionally and visually.

I think that's it for now. If you have any questions or comments about the arcade, I'd love to hear them! You can post them here (I'll subscribe to this thread), send me a PM, or email me directly at [email protected].

..Al

[wip3outguy7]

Welcome to the Racketboy, Al. You guys are awesome. Please take any criticism or nitpicks with a grain of salt as we know you guys are in the middle of a soft opening.

Can't wait for some TMNT!

[Redline9]

More games, more fun, more prizes, and more beers with Redline at the cantina. Hype!

Hell yeah, cantinas are awesome!

Will bonsaibandit be joining us, or will he have already gone to the great cantina in the sky (Seattle)?

[Flake]

Will bonsaibandit be joining us, or will he have already gone to the great cantina in the sky (Seattle)?

He's lame. He'll be gone.

[wip3outguy7]

Will bonsaibandit be joining us, or will he have already gone to the great cantina in the sky (Seattle)?

He's lame. He'll be gone.

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

[Flake]

Will bonsaibandit be joining us, or will he have already gone to the great cantina in the sky (Seattle)?

He's lame. He'll be gone.

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

Yeah. And I totally schooled him in Fighting Vipers 2, Sonic and Sega: All Star Racing, and Guardian Heroes tonight. I guess he lost his man-card or something.

[wip3outguy7]

*spread the word bump

[indecks]

I checked out Pinballz this evening with a couple of friends of mine. I'm very impressed with the layout. Love the two level effect (with a path going down the middle, ni!) and the sheer amount of pins is staggering.

I've always sucked at pinball, so I can't say I get much enjoyment out of them myself, but they've always been a marvel to look at and admire. Plus, what arcade is complete without a set of pins making all kinds of racket?

Some of the games were a little goofy, what with wonky controllers and buttons, but those have been addressed in the reply a few posts back. I'm sure they'll be a lot more great fun once they're up and running at 100%.

Also, just a couple of suggestions, I'd love to see a few more dedicated machines in there. I saw a couple of dedicated MK4 cabs (hate mk4, lol) and a great looking UMK3. Unfortunately I didn't see any dedicated Street Fighter cabs. I did see some Ultracades, only one was functional though, but we got some good Street Fighter II matches in, even with the right joystick having some 10-o-clock problems.

I'd love to see a dedicated Street Fighter II (Champ Ed or Turbo), Super Street Fighter II turbo, MK2, an in-better-shape MK1, Killer Instinct 1 and 2, though KI1 is more important, we can forget about KI2. There are plenty of fighters there, but we need some quality fighters! That X-Men Vs Street Fighter cab did get some love from us tonite though, so thanks for having that.

I did like that nearly everything was operational and it's nice to see a *real* arcade in town again. Can't wait to go back next weekend.

BTW, whoever the op is that posted here, if you're interested in NeoGeo games for your Coming Soon cab, let some of us know. I wouldn't mind lending a couple or three of my MVS carts to the 'cade for a while, if that's allowable.

I'd love to get some good KOF98 and/or Garou matches in (even though I stink).