Gamesylvania

Gary Vincent is smiling. You can tell by the way his face lights up that he really loves talking about old arcade games. As the President of the American Classic Arcade Museum, a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization dedicated to restoring and displaying classic arcade games, of course he loves them. But to see him walking around in the classic arcade room at the Penny Arcade Expo, watching the people playing the games he brought from the museum at Funspot in Weirs Beach, NH, and asking them what they thought of their experience, you can tell that his passion runs deep. He really does love old arcade games, and he loves giving other people a chance to play them.

After finally tracking down the man himself, we head out to a nice, quiet (read: extremely busy and loud) hallway to chat about old arcade games. As I think about appropriate questions to ask, I decide to go back to the beginning and ask, “When did this all start?”

“The arcade museum started in September 1998. It was an idea I had as a long time employee at Funspot in New Hampshire. I had started there in summer of ’81 during the whole boom of video games, and I noticed later on as I had been working there that there were fewer and fewer places that had classic games left, and thats why in the fall of ’98 I had mentioned to the owner of Funspot, ‘I’m not seeing any place left where people can go and play games because, either games were thrown in landfills, destroyed, parted out, or they had wound up in private collections. But the average game player, they don’t know someone with a game collection. They’re not gonna be able to play these. Do you mind if I start, like, sort of a museum project?’ And he said, ‘Yeah! That sounds like a good idea.’ And that’s how it all started. And then in 2002 we incorporated the museum and applied for and recieved our 501(c)(3) non-profit status.

“I started in the business because I was a game player. In the summer of ’81 the folks at Funspot were short handed. They said, ‘Can you maybe fill in 3 or 4 weeks at the end of the summer to help out?’ I was like, ‘Sure!’ That was 1981. It’s still going!”

The museum lies on the third floor of Funspot, which has been called The World’s Largest Arcade by Guinness, with 250 video arcade machines and 25 pinball machines. It’s the place where Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell did battle in The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Their oldest video arcade machine is a Nutting Associates Computer Space, “the one that came in the curved fiberglass cabinet,” as Vincent puts it, but they’ve also got a Stop ‘N’ Go pinball machine from the 1950s.

Vincent elaborates on their oldest pinball machine: “It’s a static display. The machine does work but it’s from the 1950s and the problem is, our concern is it’s not going to be conducive to being shaken around like people want to do nowadays. It’s got a fragile ball-lift system, where everyone is used to putting a coin in and pressing start and the ball pops up, they don’t on the old machines — you actually have to push a lever to get the ball up, then pull the plunger. So, we just leave it out as a static display.”

Curious as to what Vincent considers a worthy museum piece, I ask whether it’s obscurity or novelty that makes a game more attractive. In his own words, he tells me that, “It’s pretty much a little of each. You can’t really go for all obscure or all novelty, you try to fill as many categories as you can, and several pieces that we get are ones that are just donated to us. Someone will call up or they’ll email me and say, ‘Do you have this game in your collection?’ I’ll say, ‘No.’ They’ll say, ‘Give me your shipping address.’ I’ve had people literally call the shipping company to come pick up a game and ship it to us. ‘Here ya go. I’m glad it’s going to a good home!’”

But the games in the museum aren’t just for show. I ask if anyone can play the games on display. Vincent enthusiastically responds, “Oh, yeah! That’s the whole purpose! We’re dedicated to preserving and playing the games, you know? So, people can actually come in and experience it. It’s a little bit of, we get the old purists who sometimes say, ‘You know, this game’s not a hundred percent perfect. I noticed that, you know, maybe one piece of side art’s missing,’ or this one may not have the original joystick, or it has some microswitch instead of a leaf. And it’s one of those things where you kinda have to draw a line somewhere. Do you wanna spend a sum of money preserving or restoring something back to new condition and then be sitting there, worrying, every single time somebody walks up to it that something’s gonna get scratched, or whatever? So, while all the games are in good to excellent condition — you know, some of them are near perfect — it’s just like I said, it’s a tough thing. You gotta balance what’s important: people being able to play games or trying to put things behind a velvet rope.”

“So, your goal isn’t to restore them with only original parts? Like, there are people who buy an old car and will fix it up and want everything original, and then there are people who will throw on newly fabricated parts that aren’t original but they’ll make the car look the way it was supposed to.”

“Oh, sure. Yeah, it’s more of a preservation, more so than, like, restoring things to collector’s condition.”

“As long as it works?”

“Works, and looks nice. We’re not gonna put something out on the floor that’s all rusty or somebody’s carved up the side of it. We do go for as good a condition as we can get but still not have to stand there, biting your fingernails the whole time that somebody’s gonna breathe on it.”

Keeping the games in working condition, however, can be a full-time job as, during the Expo, several games did break down. A Flash pinball, for example, had some problem with one of the slingshots (a.k.a. kickers) the night before this interview, and the table had to be lifted. A crowd of people gathered ’round to watch one of the staff open it up, and as we stood there in muted silence, it almost felt like we were standing on holy ground. We peered into the gaping maw of a world few people had ever seen — a world that is becoming increasingly rare. Curious eyes pored over the complex arrangement of the machine’s guts with its large, late ’70s era electronic components, wires and other parts hanging out, completely exposed. I didn’t want to get in the technician’s way, but I just had to see this thing for myself; I couldn’t pull myself away.

The musty smell of the old wood flooded my nostrils. One of the onlookers commented, “That’s a good smell. That brings back so many memories of working on pinball machines with my dad. Everyone of them has its own smell, too. I love that smell.” It made me think that everyone has a story, everyone has a memory connected to these old games. The sights, the sounds and, in this case, the smells can unlock and bring back so much of our past that may have been forgotten for years. As I stood there, watching, I found that I also loved that smell.

Before long, the table was back in commission and ready for the line of players, eager to play another round.

“How hard is it to find new parts?”

“A lot of the stuff — thankfully, due to the collectors market — a lot of people are getting into remanufacturing game pieces aftermarket. We’re noticing that with pinball there’s always a problem with the old Bally MPU boards. The NiCd batteries would eat them up, rot them away until the board wouldn’t work. The aftermarket boards being made now work just great, because now you’re putting in new components.”

“They might even be manufactured to better standards?”

“Yeah, and it’s obviously going to give you a lot more reliability than fixing something that’s 30 years old.”

“I’m just imagining all those old transistors and obscure parts that must be a real bear to try and find.”

“It’s funny that in order to preserve old technology you look to new technology. I remember back in ’87, ’88, we’d have games break down — there’s no Internet! You’d call up your supplier and, if they didn’t have the part, what would you do? You were done. You can’t fix the game; they don’t make the part. Where, now, you get on the Internet. Craigslist, eBay, forums, people buying and selling, “Hey look! I found the piece I need!”

Craigslist and eBay — how good those sites have been to all of us in the interests of classic gaming. But what about the next generation of gamers, I wondered? What do they think of all this? “What’s the age group of people who come in to the museum?” I asked.

“We get a good variety of people — mainly a male demographic. Probably, I would say mid-twenties to fifties.”

“Do you get a lot of kids, around 10 and under?”

“It’s funny. We do get some kids, because usually it’ll be the parents will bring them in and say, ‘Hey, look! These are the games I played when I was your age. Here, let me show you something on the game,’ where it’s usually the kid at home showing dad all the moves on his Xbox.”

“I was just in the classic console room and this guy was asking, ‘How do you get the game out of the Nintendo?’ He said the last time he played an NES was when he was 4 years old.”

Gary clearly identifies with this feeling as he laughs, “Sure!”

“I grew up with an NES, and I still play it almost every day, so of course I know how, but I’m staring at him and wondering, ‘How do you not know?’, right?”

“Yup, yup!”

“So, do you get a lot of this, I guess I want to call it ‘generation gap’ or ‘age shock,’ where you have these kids who look at these things with these buttons and these mechanical parts and it just blows their minds?”

“There is some of that. It is funny because I know what you mean about the old consoles. They do have a great set up in there [in the classic console room]. I’ve walked through there a couple of times. But, yeah, every once in a while you get into that, usually especially with pinball machines. Nobody realizes that there’s a start button, so after you put the coin in and it doesn’t work, they’re like, ‘It’s broken!’ So, you show them where it says 1 credit and then you push the start button and then they’re like, ‘Oh!’ and you’re like, ‘Don’t worry — it happens so often.’”

“The thing I love about pinball, though, is that they go back to the 1800s, almost, so it’s not just when I was a kid or when my dad was my age, it was when my grandfather was a kid. And they haven’t really changed a lot over the years. So, like, where video games have changed radically, pinball kinda stays the same.”

“Pinball is wonderful, we all love pinball. It is just that, pinball is all moving parts. Everything. You’re taking a metal ball and smacking it into everything on the playfield, so not only is there electronic wear and tear, you’ve got physical wear and tear.”

“It changes the game every time you play it, too.”

“Yeah! Yeah, and it’s a constant, non-stop thing.”

“It’s kind of like in the realm of vinyl collecting where you want to listen to this old record but at the same time, every time you play it, you’re kind of destroying it a little more.”

“Yeah, you’re taking and degrading the quality a little more each time. That’s a good analogy! It’s easier to preserve video arcade games because there are less moving parts than in pinball. I mean, I would love… We’ve got probably 40 pins in storage, but at some point you’ve gotta be realistic and say, ‘I don’t have the abilities or means — at this time — to maintain them. We’re not gonna make that effort until we can do it right.’”

As the interview comes to a close, I think about what Vincent said about doing it right, and I think he is doing it right. He’s not putting the games under glass or, as he said earlier, behind a velvet rope. It may mean extra wear and tear on the machines, but the true value of a game is the joy it brings while being played. How much more effective is a museum that exists in the very environment it seeks to preserve? You’re not just telling future generations what it was like, you’re actually putting them there. They can see it, hear it, feel it and smell it. In the same way those senses unlock our old memories, they are also creating new ones. Gary is definitely doing it right.

Except for the parts where he’s tracking down obsolete components and rebuilding machines, managing an entire non-profit organization or driving a 22′ truck full of fragile arcade machines through busy, Boston traffic to set up at an Expo where, potentially, 60,000 gamers are going to be banging on them, Gary Vincent probably has one of the coolest jobs in the world, and I think he knows it. But maybe he likes those aspects of it, too? If the smile says anything, it’s that Gary Vincent really loves old arcade games.

ACAM gladly accepts donations, and Funspot is open year-round. I’m planning on making a trip there myself, some day, but I’d love to hear from people who have been there. What do you think of Funspot? What do you think of ACAM? Let me know in the comments!