Visit to Funspot Laconia (picture heavy)

[ckong]

Today was a great day, I finally had a chance to visit the Arcade Museum at Mekka, I mean Funspot in Laconia. My wife and I are making a little tour through a few states of the USA, and by pure luck we came very nearby Laconia.  

Of course I had to grap this golden opportunity, so on this beautiful day (weather wise) I dropped my beloved wife with a good book at Weirs Beach and I headed for the centre of Classic Arcade history.







I had a coupon (a real American thing, a coupon), which gave me 70 free tokens after purchasing tokens for $ 20. And that is a lot of tokens:







I first wanted to explore the area, before I would play the classic games. And there is a lot to see. Funspot has 3 floors. The basement only has modern games and the cafetaria. I won´t bother you to show photo´s of the modern games, but in the cafetaria there are some nice wall signs and photo´s telling the history of funspot:



















By now I started to feel hungry, so I went for a chilli dog and fries. I never had one before, so I didn´t know what to expect.

Is this eatable?  





Yep, it is, and it tastes not that bad  




This bag is a nice souvenir, so I got another few of them, fresh ones.



The founder and owner of funspot, Bob Lawton, has a love for old amusement games and kiddy rides, and on the first floor there are some nice examples of them.























And great thing is that all thiss stuff is still playable.

Furthermore there are more modern games to be played, mainly ticket games (no fun at all), a bowling alley and this beauty



This sitdown game is in great condition and I had a lot of fun with it.

But hey, what I really came for, can be found on the second floor.



No, not the indoor golf center, the 225 classic games of course ....

[ckong]

Before showing you the classic games, randomly, I first want to let you know what great people are behind Funspot and the classic arcade section.

André already told me that Gary is a great guy and that I should defintely meet him, so last week I e-mailed Gary that I would visit Funspot and I said that I would very much like to meet him (oeps, now you guys know that the visit was no cheer luck       ) and he replied saying that he would be glad to meet me, I just had to ask for him while being there.

So I did, I asked a Funspot employee if Gary was in and if he would have the time to see me. The guy was not sure, Gary would probably be to busy for the upcoming annual tournament (end of this week), but he would do his best. So I went back to play some games ....  and after a few minutes not only Gary came towards me, but also a few of his team members (Mike and a very nice lady). This was great, we had a very nice chat together, Gary was really interested in what I had to say and he even asked if it was OK to make a picture with him for their Facebook page!!!    Sure, I said, so the lady took some photo´s and in return   she also made a photo with my camera of Gary and me.



We talked another few minutes, but I knew that they were very busy. So we all shook hands and said goodbye, and I went on playing the games.

About half an hour later though, I was taking a brake downstairs near the bowling alley, Gary came again towards me, this time with the founder and owner Bob Lawton and a nephew of Bob. Gary had told Bob about the visitor from Europe, and Bob wanted to meet me and say hi!!    How cool is that?

Of course I did say thanks to him, as I already had done to Gary, for creating this great place and how much I love it. Bob is a really nice guy, as all of them at Funspot and we had some good laughs (I ´blamed´ him for not founding a Funspot in Europe    ) It´s amazing that Bob founded Funspot 60 years ago and is still working there for four days a week. Fortunately his nephew is now also operating the business.

After a while we went our own way again. Have fun, they told me, and I sure will. Great guys.

This all was really amazing, and today has been a great day. I got a chance to play a lot of games that I never had seen or played before, some of them are very good, like Space Zap and Road Blasters (both great games), some are a little bit less interesting, like Road Runner or Hard Drivin´ (I will not mention the Laserdisc games here). Almost all games were in great working order, but I think that I didn´t play half of them, and I didn´t ´waste´ time playing games like Pac-Man, DK, Galaxian, etc. because I can play then whenever I want. Playing video games is hard work!   .

The game that got the most coins? That has to be Tempest, with Space Zapper and Juno First in second and third place. But when I´m back from holiday, I just have to reconsider some games that I have, because I really need Tempest.  

I left Funspot at 5.30 PM, after a loooooong time of playing a lot of games, but I will be back tuesday evening, for a second and final round.

Enough with the words, here are ´some´ photo´s. I made the last  few especially for André. He has a Video Pinball, which needs just a bit TLC, but hé, once you´re finished, it will be looking great. I played the game a couple of times today, and it is amazing how well this ´pinball game´ playes. Extraordinary techniques have been used. Would be nice to learn a bit more about it.  

[ckong]

Photo´s. Enjoy.

[Gerry]

That's a great collection of arcade machines - thanks for your pictures. Owning an Atari Lynx, it's especially nice to see all those Atari arcade machines, which were converted for the Lynx.

Keep on having fun in the US.

[chubsta]

Absolutely fantastic pics, bet you had a great time!

I would love to go there myself one day but as i can't fly it looks very doubtful, i could spend all day on the Buck Rogers machine 

[Etienne MacGyver]

Great pics Erik !

What a cool place that is uh!

as seen in the picture, that little boat's restauration was on history channel's "American Restauration"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7ytgRyoiZ0

[level42]

Hah, great report Erik ! Glad you got to meet Gary _and_ Bob ! (He wasn't around when I was there IIRC). Gary is a very nice guy, not one word of bragging about his work or the place, but full of passion for it and the machines. He actually asked which games I had and what condition they were in etc.
When I asked him how in heaven's name they managed to keep them all running he said that it was indeed a gigantic job, taking long days and that they had about the same number in cabs in storage still to be restored as there were on the floor (!!!!!!).

Looks like they rearranged a number of games for the tournament. I don't remember seeing Omega Race, at least not at that spot, and I don't think I ever saw SW cockpit there (maybe it was there but not working at that time). Space Zap was indeed a "discovery' for me too. It's brilliant in it's simplicity and makes you want to "give it one more go" every time. Did you look if my hi score is still on the Gravitar.

Yes....the Video Pinball deserves more love ! I guess I'm just a little but "scared" about it because of the stat it is in and the woodwork required....

[gyruss]

Nice report, i also like the non arcade pictures.

[Belike]

Thanks for the instant report and for the loads of pics, I enjoyed every second of reading.
Did you see any sign of Zaccs there? (I guess not)

[level42]

I don't remember on seeing a single one of them...

Yeah it's great Erik made pics of the cafeteria area ...I was blinded by all the cabs I did watch a lot of those items though, very cool !

[ckong]

No, I didn´t see any Zacc´s, but I will check it tonight again.

As I said, almost every game was working, I only noticed 4 or 5 non-working games, one of them was the SW cockpit    But fortunately there was an upright one. And I have the same feeling with Space Zap, you just have to put coins in the game over and over again.    At first the game is pretty difficult, at least for me, because the way you have to a-synchronize your left and right hand. But once you get the hang of it .....  just wonderful. I sure will play it tonight again.

About the tournament, Gary told me that there will be a seperated section of the floor where the tournament will take place. There will be 20 games to play on and these games were already taken away from the floor to be prepaired for the tournament. Gary keeps the gamelist a secret until the event starts, so people attending it can´t practice upfront. It´s a fair decision I guess.

I played Omega Race a few times, it´s a nice game, but the way the game is presented ´on screen´ is nicer.

[Superully]

thx for the fabulous report und the gazillion pictures, erik! I especially love the picture of you right before entering arcade heaven!!!

regarding space zap: i had the change of buying one almost two years ago, but it was in pretty rough shape, the wiring had been hacked, the original boardsets were not present AND the monitor had been necked, so i decided against it. still thinking about it from time to time as the game really is a lot of fun!!!

[DarthNuno]

Great report, thanks for all these pictures 

[Muerto]

Great great report Erik!, with superb pictures!!!!
I just noticed something... Heaven forbid!!!! - but if there was going to be a fire, water would be poring out of the sprinklers and totally ruin all these great machines.... wouldent it be better if they had a Halon or a CO2???

[level42]

I feel pretty safe to answer this one because it's my job:

Firemen do not care for ancient videogames. They care for people's lives. And that's what the goal is of any fire protection system. First people, then animals and waaaaay later environmental things.

Fire regulations differ from country to country, but usually it is what is demanded in those regulations what is installed in a building. Sprinkler systems are very expensive and regular companies rather don't have them. They require bi-weekly maintenance and checks which is also very costly. In Holland it depends on how big a building is if you need to install one or not.


If you would like to save the games and kill all the visitors and personall in Funspot when there's a serious fire, your idea is great. CO2 is poisenes and Halon "takes away the air" and although not poisenes by itself, it will kill you if you stay in the room.
Halon is by the way forbidden to be produced or used in the EU (of course not in the US.....) because it is one of the causes of the hole in the ozone layer.

But you DO have a point. And we could help them
We sell high pressure water fog systems. Imagine a system like Sprinkler, but instead of spraying loads of water like a shower onto everything (and indeed damaging everything inside) it releases a mist or fog. It uses normal water but the nozzle holes are so tiny and the pressure so high (way over 100 bar) that a fog will be created that much more effectively stops a fire. The biggest advantage however is that this fog is NOT harmful to electronic machines in the area where it is released. As a matter of fact we sell lots of these systems in huge datacenters where keeping the machines as much undamaged as possible is crucial.

Here's a nice video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_NsBZ7oXok&feature=youtube_gdata_player