Three warps to Uranus! For some reason I always chuckled at that...



THE
SOPHOMORIC
AARDVARK

It's gone.... it's gone, Flack.

exidy picked it up over lunch yesterday. I miss it terribly.

Someday if I get to the point where I am ramping UP the number of games instead of down, I may just see Gyruss again.

That's one thing I always resented, doing work on games to sell them. Doing work on one to make it more fun to play was one thing. Putting labor into a machine just so someone else could enjoy it always made me mad.

I took the monitor out last night.

I have that empty Zoo Keeper cab at the house, and exidy is the guy 1) buying the Gyruss and 2) the guy who sold me that cab. I am going to basically tell him, "Look, I fucked up. You can have the empty ZK cab as well." If he agrees to that, I am going to put the new monitor in my current Zoo Keeper, which leaves me with one spare 19" monitor with some ZK burn on it.

However.... though my ZK cab will be a converted Qix, it'll have a new monitor and it will have the decals applied. I think it will look pretty nice!

Did you sell it without a monitor, or did you swap an older one in?

Goodbye, my dear friend.

To finance the Funhouse and cut down on the number of games around here, I have the Gyruss sold to a pal I've bought a number of games from.

It had a modern monitor in it, but I had to take it out because a new 19" monitor is like gold these days (they stopped making arcade CRTs).

I'll never forget what we had together, Gyruss, and I wish I could have kept you.

(Pinback ends up having the second-best high score of any of us. The guy who added the high score save set a high score in order to test it that I never ever came close to beating.)

Oh. I will try to take photos. That, as well.

You know what, Gyruss never acts up. The only thing even remotely "wrong" with it is that the back door has a rough texture. Since a small sliver of it can be seen if you are watching TV on my couch and then turn your neck 175 degrees, I will sand down and paint the back of the Gyruss cabinet this weekend.

This weekend, that is what I shall do.

Someone figured out how to get Gyruss and Time Pilot working with a spinner in MAME. I'll inline the video here:

[youtube][/youtube]

Pretty cool. The thread that has this demonstration has people talking about MAME, and I have to snicker at the stuff like, "I am compiling it with hiscore support" and such. The pieces of shit running MAME these days finally got what they wanted: they are so amazingly incompetent at running the project, that people are recompiling the thing to add score saving. I am not a violent man, but I would never, ever get tired of punching the fucking losers in charge of MAME these days.
[/youtube]

It's on difficulty level "6," for what it's worth. 6/10, if I remember right.

I will fucking kill you all.

Occupying the 5th slot (done so in his first game on the thing!) is One of the Bruces! And it's times like this that I am glad the high score mod is installed:



I think that Adam and Jason Scott are the two people who have high scores on my machines that do not live there.

I got the game back from the very nice guy who did in fact fix it. I broke several traces.

I.. I would pay someone to work on a board in the future, for me. Unless it was easy, like Spy Hunter. (One thing to solder on, with literally two globs of solder.)

The guy, Rob Carroll, is awesome and he did not charge me anything for it. What a mensch! He played it for a little bit and put a high score of 186,000 on the game. The highest I've ever gone is around 74,000. It is currently the only game at my place that has a high score by someone other than me.

Here is the current high score status:

Crystal Castles: Will never be broken by anyone likely to be in my house.

Ms. Pac-Man: Was broken by Jason Scott in about a half hour. I did break his high score a few days later and meant to post about it in this whole, "Here's what it's like when the Get Lamp Guy comes and interviews you" article I was planning on writing for either here or Trotting Krips, but I did not get that done. Which is too bad, because Pinner had many hilarious comments on what I told him, which need to get out. Anyway, my Ms. Pac score can be broken by anyone good at the game at any time.

Pac-Man: I don't have a very high score here. It could be obliterated by the right person.

Pac-Man Plus: What happens is, Dayna sets a new high score and I break it within ten minutes of her doing so. But not by a lot. I think she has wised up to this and therefore decided not to play it any longer.

Pengo: I have only made it to the third board, but this was enough to fend off my friend Fodge who was by a few weekends ago.

Super Pac-Man: I don't remember if the 96-in-1 saves the high score for this.

Space Invaders: Doesn't save the high score.

Xenophobe: Doesn't save the high score.

Spy Hunter: I had 76,000 and then moved the game and the battery I put in came out. Whoops! I'm only back to around 50,000. A score which a guy with no legs could easily pass.

Tempest: I think I'm around 150,000 and it took me, literally, an hour of playing to get that far. I also had my left arm completely lock up. I think this is pretty safe for the time being.

Gyruss: I'm horrible, but I think I can break 186,000.

So there you go. Come visit and set a high score.

Update!

There is a guy in Massachusetts who is going to see if he can salvage the board for me. I actually had a nightmare for the first time in my life on Sunday, when I went to bed with the game not working. I killed it! And it was all MY FAULT!

Late to the party, but wicks and the solder sucker are both easy to use.

Bruce

remember the time I dropped my four track recorder and cracked a very important piece of circuit board and had to make about fifty teensy jump wires in order to make it go? Anything is possible.

THE
LOTS OF EXTRA WORK
AARDVARK

you can try just loading it up with fresh hot melty solder and sucking that shit right back up again.

flux helps.

Update! After spending about four hours yesterday, I got all the holes clear except for 3. So 21/24. Gyruss of course does not work because the new NVRAM isn't in. I am going to get a "soldering wick" for the last three holes.

I discovered that going to sleep with a non-working game is horribly depressing. I had actual nightmares last night: whee! I am really worried that I scratched a trace in doing this.

You're a mensch. I am actually doing the website here in exchange for the game. So it's just my time that is being purchased. I hope everyone thinks the client is getting his money's worth.

This is what a lot of the e-mails Ben and I exchange are like. I desperately try to coax some sanity out of him and he allows to be coaxed only when he is convinced that I am not bonkers. We all know the day I lose my mind is coming. I doubt I will go, for instance, because I got shot in the head in the army or something. No, I'll scurry down the long slip-n-slide of dementia, not quite noticeable at first, but then overwhelmingly so. Well, so far, phew, anyway.

No, if it's free, then it is excellent. You should collect all of the free games you can for your arcade.