Progress in so far in restoring my Propcycle

Watch Video

There still is a bunch of things to do, like a new seat cover and padding, but this game is very playable as it is now.

Why You Shouldn't Buy an LG Refrigerator

I bought an LG refrigerator (model # LRBN22514ST) five years ago, and while the refrigerator (refrigeration) has been very good, the plastics are cheap, brittle and poorly designed. Pretty much every plastic part has broken or has been damaged in the past 5 years. This is from normal use, I am not a savage that destroys my stuff. I have never seen such poorly designed parts! I also bought an LG microwave at the same time. The microwave's plastic parts are brittle and have broken as well. The control panel finally delaminated and became nonfunctional! I replaced with a Whirlpool which is SO much better. The parts that are plastic and broke on the LG are metal on the Whirlpool.

Awesome Music Video for Game Players: Follow Me by Pato Pooh feat. Adam Tensta

If you were playing the NES back in the 80's you will love this video. The production is amazing and very well done!

Just give it a watch!

I bought a Propcycle!

This Saturday I bought a Propcycle Arcade game. It is a awesomely fun game where you pilot a bicycle/plane through a course popping balloons. The best part about this game is that you actually pedal a bike to make the plane fly! There is even a fan that blows on you to simulate the feel of actually flying!

I used to play this in the Jillian's in Albany, but half the time it was missing a pedal. I guess that is what happens when you mix arcade games a alcohol!

I was able to pick this game up for an unbelieveably low price, It actually cost me more to transport it from Waterloo NY to my house. Thanks Jason so much for selling it to me! I will give it a good home!

My Dad making sure all the straps are tight.

The hardest part was getting down the basement stairs and through the 31 inch doorway, but I was able to thanks to my brother Deign and my Dad.

I had to take the whole thing apart to get it down, which isn't a inconveinence since I would have disassembled to clean the it up and check it out. It is only missing a few parts, like a seat cover and some bolts, which I hope my wife will sew me a new cover!

What really suprised me was this this game uses a Mitsubishi 41" CRT Projection TV for its monitor. Most arcade games use a RGB monitor, but in this cause it is just a TV. You can even hook it up and watch TV on it. Here is a picture of it outside of the game cabinet:

So now it sits in pieces, the first thing I want to do is calibrate the projection TV, it is a little out of wack and I am sure it will look much better if I do this first.

• KLOV Entry for Propcycle

Awesome Galaga High Score!

I just had a awesome game of Galaga! My final score was 126,560! And I was on Level 18. That is a far cry from 20 Million of the world record, but it is only 4,330 points from the third highest score according to twin Galaxies! Woo Hoo!! I am going to have to start recording my sessions!

My Galaga, snuggled all nice and tight between my Neo·Geo and my Marvel Vs. Capcom (also runs Street Fighter Alpha)

Levi's and the Dumbest Ad Ever!

Really there isn't much to say about this ad. I am browsing the web and I see this ad with an awesome Captain America tee-shirt:

And when I get to the site the only tee-shirts they offer are these lame ones:

Now who was the idiot photographer that shot that photo? The last thing I would notice in that photo would be a pair of jeans! Even the Jacket is more noticable! So now I am angry because I was hoping to get that sweet Captain America tee, and they want to sell me their crappy jeans! Nice job Levi's now if you excuse me I will be looking for that tee-shirt.

Update:

Thanks Random Person from the comments below who found the shirt! Turns out that the back version is out of stock, but they still have it in Navy!

T-Mobile Sidekicks Useless Worldwide for Four Days Because of Danger/Microsoft

Seriously this is ridiculous that a company takes 4 days and counting to restore data services to a phone that is designed for primarily data!

Below: Note the lack of a 'G' by the signal strength meter and the dates. Yes that is a Galaga theme :-)

What is Microsoft thinking‽‽‽‽‽ This has been a trending topic on Twitter for the past few days. And finally yesterday they made a statement:

T-Mobile and Danger/Microsoft continue to urgently work to restore impacted services to Sidekick, and deliver them to our customers as quickly as possible. Following is a status update for our valued customers:

• Web browsing was restored Saturday afternoon, and the teams have been working through the night since the disruption started to enable additional functions such as IM, social networking applications and email as quickly as possible.

While we anticipate a significant portion of data services to be restored by Monday, some richer data services may lag. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate your patience as we work hard with Danger/Microsoft to resolve this issue. We will continue to keep you updated as we have news to share. Thank you. Message Edited by Will on 10-04-2009 12:42 PM

If it weren't for the ridiculously cheap $1/day unlimited data pre-pay plan (hidden at bottom of page) I would drop t-mobile. But you can't get a plan like that anywhere else. I tried.

Update:

The Consumerist is covering this story, T-mobile's statement is false though, I don't have web browser service yet.

Don't buy Galaga for the T-Mobile Sidekick!

When I got my Sidekick '08 back in June I was surprised that it didn't have Galaga for download. It was ridiculous because they had an excellent Galaga theme. So today when I saw it was released I downloaded it.

Boy was I disappointed:

Graphics

Above: Actual Screenshot

The graphics are the best feature of this conversion, they are pretty much pixel perfect. The color pallet on the other hand is a little off.

Sound

The sound is horrible it sounds nothing like the original arcade game. Also there is no explosion sound! The sidekick can play mp3s, so why didn't they use samples of the original game like you can in MAME?

Gameplay

This is the worst of the three, the game has tons of slowdown, the ship's projectiles move at a rate that is not the same ratio of ship/projectile speed of the original. It makes the game tedious and difficult because in Galaga you can only have 2 shots on the screen at a time. With the slow projectiles it leaves you very vulnerable to alien attack.

Final Thoughts

Overall this game is a disappointment. I am not just saying this as a Galaga fan. If I bought some other game and it was this bad of an arcade conversion I would want my money back. I know that it could have been so much better, The sidekick version of Ms. Pac-Man runs fine, granted it suffers from the same sound issues.

I cannot recommend this game to anyone as it is unplayable. Do not buy. Namco/T-mobile I want my money back!

Happy Birthday Dreamcast!

Ten years ago today was a great day in gaming, as it marked the US release of the Sega Dreamcast. The Dreamcast was easily one of the best game consoles ever, but never got proper recognition. This was mostly due to Sony's propaganda about their PS2's capibilities which were never noticable over the Dreamcast, and in some cases games ran worse on the Playstation. A great example of this is was the noticable jaggies in the PS2's anti-alias. The Dreamcast used 2x full screen anti-alias and looked great right from the begining. It took over a year for PS2 developers to fix the issue on the PS2.

Another great thing about the Dreamcast was that is was the same as the Sega Namoi Arcade Hardware, with just less memory. This allowed all the great arcade games that ran on the Namoi to run the the Dreamcast arcade perfect. A great example of this is Capcom Vs SNK and Guilty Gear.

The Dreamcast holds up awesome even today, where the rest of the consoles from it's generation display poorly on a HD TV. Just hook your Dreamcast up via VGA and it looks awesome!

My Dreamcast connected to my HD TV via the vga cable, looks awesome!

With camera flash:

Without camera flash:

My friend Matt who worked at the Babbages in Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, NY where I bought my Dreamcast posted photos from launch day, I am not in them, but it sure brings back the memories (tear).

Cutting Plexiglass Control Panel Overlay

My Marvel Vs. Capcom I bought has a plexiglass overlay over the control panel graphics. The original had spider cracks around the screws, scratches and cigarette burns.

I couldn't let the control panel couldn't stay like that so I went about replacing the plexi overlay.

The plexi had 2 different sized large holes for the buttons and the joystick. I have I have a 1 and 1/8 inch hole saw that I used to cut button holes for other control panels. The holes for this panel were not that size. I wanted it to match the orignal exactly. The soultion came from using a laminate trimmer router bit. Thanks Maxstang, Takeman, timberterror, ManiN, OldTymeToys for the suggestion! I picked one up at my local True Value.

The way it works you drill a 1/4 inch pilot hole for the bit. The bearing rides on the old plexiglass and duplicates the hole of the original in the new plexi. It leaves a nice smooth edge, much nicer then if I had used a holesaw.

Overall it worked great, you just have to be very careful of the height, I cut a little extra in a couple places, but they are covered by the buttons. My router's height slips so I had to keep adjusting.

Here is the bit:

I drilled holes 1/4 inch the same size of the bit. You can see a hole that was routed in this photo:

It is important that the bearing line up with the original plexi:

Here it is installed, looks so much better than the cig burns and spider crackes!

Hard to really see in the photo, here is an angled shot:

Looks much better than the old one:

The only downside of this method is that the bit was $25. But I am sure I will reuse it in the future.

Just Swtiched to Disqus for Comments

giving Disqus a try to see if their commenting system is the cat's meow that people are saying.

So leave a comment? OK?

Little Caesars Hot N Ready Pizza

On the way back from Utica we stopped at the Little Caesars in Illion NY, I had not been to one in years as they had all closed near me. I walked in and order a $5.99 pizza, the guy turned around opened a special warmer and pulled out a hot pizza all ready! It was good too! What a great idea!

Star Trek: The Next Generation Pinball Machine Destroyed

THIS IS NOT MY CREATION!

What you see above is the Ultimate pinball machine (Star Trek: The Next Generation) gutted and destroyed. You are asking yourself how could this happen? Was there something I could do?

Probally not, but you can get revenge for this poor machine and for Steve Ritchie who put it blood sweat and tears into the best damn pinball machine in my opinion.

So many pinball collectors search high and low for this machine, and to see one so carelessly destroyed makes them sick!

I don't know who did this, but when I do I will give them a piece of my mind!

Galaga Fixed!

My Craig's List was able to raise the money for a new monitor for my Galaga. I got it in the mail today and now it is in and up and running!

All that is left now is to get my Marvel Vs Capcom up and running.

Nice side by side shot with the Neo Geo.

Here is the old and new monitor side by side, note how the new one is much blacker.

Rear view of monitors. I hard already removed the driver board from the old monitor, I might still try and fix it.

Here is the cabinet empty waiting for the new monitor.

My Online Yardsale

In order to raise some money to replace the monitor in my Galaga and fix up the other cabinets I am holding an online yardsale!

Everything is posted on Craig's List and I will be adding more things as time goes by. I hope to sell everything, but we will see how that goes. Who doesn't want a Baldwin Funmachine???

• Retail Clothing Mannequin (female)
• Two Dish Network 311 Receivers plus dish and LNB
• Unicycle - SOLD
• Apple Macintosh Performa 575 (With Apple IIe card!)
• AD&D "DragonLance - Tales of the Lance" boxed set
• 1980s and 1990s Dirt Bike Magazines
• Organ - Baldwin Funmachine
• Mini Refrigerator - SOLD

Time Warner Cable Remote Catches Fire!

My friend Brad recently found the remote to his Scientific Atlantic Explorer 8300 HD DVR cable box smoking on his sofa! When he removed this remote he found that it had gotten so hot that it burned his sofa as well!

He contacted Time-Warner cable several times and has been given the run around. Let's hope that they pay for the damage to his sofa.

Brad's Burnt Sofa!

Adjusting the convergence on my Galaga

I have been fixing up my Galaga Arcade Cabinet that I bought last week. When I first got Galaga it did not get past the "RAM OK" message, but I was able to pull every socketed chip from the board and clean them and get it working.

But then that presented another problem, the red green and blue beams in the monitor did not line up. On a more modern PC tube monitor you can adjust this via on screen menus. But on this 1981 15khz Galaga monitor it is done by adjusting the convergence rings on the yoke of the picture tube.

I discovered this while looking at the manual for the monitor in my Neo Geo MVS Arcade Cabinet I bought. The instructions for adjusting the convergence were quite vague. But I was able to figure out after messing with it for a few hours. I will post more detailed instructions later.

Blond Tailed Squirrel - New Breed of Mutant Squirrel

Since last year a new breed of gray squirrel has appeared around my house, it looks just like a regular Eastern Gray Squirrel but it has a very defined blonde tail! It almost looks as though the tail was dipped in bleach, because of the defined line in the change of gray to blonde. I have seen at least two of these animals at once, so I know it is not just a one time mutant.

I wonder if they are of any interest to anyone but me.

Video of the beast:

I finally got my Arcade Cabinets!

I haven't talked about this, but I was able to do a raid on a warehouse full of old Arcade Games! I was able to get 3 games at a really good price! My friends Patrick and Mike each got a game as well!

Here is what I picked up:

Galaga

This will work after I clean all of the contacts on the roms, currently the game is garbled.

Neo Geo MVS

This is awesome cause it plays multiple games in cartridge form. It currently has Bust A Move, Samurai Shodown III, and Spinmaster in it! It can hold up to 4 games at once.

Marvel Vs. Capcom

This cabinet suffers from a sucide battery. I will need to get the roms phoenixed to get it working again.