Help! (By playing a game. ;-)

Share unrelated electronics stuff, ideas, rants, etc!
havok1919
Posts: 474
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:44 pm
Location: Vancouver, WA
Contact:

Help! (By playing a game. ;-)

Post by havok1919 »

Hey All,

As some of you know, one of my other hats is as one of the owners of a 'classic' arcade here in Portland, OR-- http://www.groundkontrol.com

Anyway, we're one of three finalists in Stride Gum's "Save the Arcades 2" promotion. Up for grabs is a $25K grand prize to the winner (which would go a long ways towards our 2nd floor remodel project) :-) ...and currently we're getting our ass kicked. (Last place! What the hell?!?)

Soooo... If you'd like to help us out, just go to http://savethearcades.stridegum.com and play "Cowbots 2010". (It's sort of a campy tribute to Robotron.) When your game ends, 'donate' your points to Ground Kontrol. (You have to register with an email address, but I never received any emails or anything from then for last years contest...)

FWIW, the game gets really tough around "Herd 27". I think my best was ~136,900.

Play once, play often, whatever you so desire-- everything helps. Thanks in advance!

-Clay
User avatar
D3thAdd3r
Posts: 3221
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:00 am
Location: Minneapolis, United States

Re: Help! (By playing a game. ;-)

Post by D3thAdd3r »

So far my best is 123,100 after I found out you can shoot :lol: Hey guys do make sure you give it a try if you can, Clay has been a big part of Uzebox community since the beginning. If I ever find myself in Oregon I'll definitely check out Ground Kontrol, I'm a huge fan of arcades but sadly they were all but dead around here by the time I got to that age. Anways, who can beat my score? :ugeek:


Newest Top Score
139,800 (got robbed from beating the last herd)
havok1919
Posts: 474
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:44 pm
Location: Vancouver, WA
Contact:

Re: Help! (By playing a game. ;-)

Post by havok1919 »

Geez... I was going to post and brag up my 139,700! The game definitely takes a "you're done playing now" turn about there. I've made it *to* Herd 30, but never past. (Herd 30 is a screen full of those brown/grey guys.)

Thanks for the help! :-)

-Clay
hpglow
Posts: 269
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 6:06 am

Re: Help! (By playing a game. ;-)

Post by hpglow »

Damn that is cool, I was the regional manager for a company here in CO that owned 5 arcades and 3 arcade/pool halls for 8 years. I still look back at all the good times I had sitting on bar stools playing Street Fighter with groups of people. I pretty much watched the industry go down the crapper. Near the end people only wanted to play ticket games, gun games, and dancing games. Now and then racing games, but for the most part anything with a joystick stopped bringing in money. It was sad like watching someone run over your favorite dog.

In a long turn of events that is actually how I found the Uzebox. I was doing research trying to figure out what it would take to get people back into arcades. There is a social element that can never be replicated over the internet. My desire is to develop an open source PC based board kind of like the Taito Type X2 but much cheaper and with the same security that would help protect the developers IP.
hpglow
Posts: 269
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 6:06 am

Re: Help! (By playing a game. ;-)

Post by hpglow »

95K is my best so far.

105K
havok1919
Posts: 474
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:44 pm
Location: Vancouver, WA
Contact:

Re: Help! (By playing a game. ;-)

Post by havok1919 »

Thanks for playing for us! ;-)

Yeah, the arcade scene is interesting. Portland, OR seems to have a good gaming culture. Our "classics" approach keeps us from having to buy or lease whatever the latest deluxe driver is for $30K+ as soon as it comes out... We own all our machines and do our own maintenance. Portland is big for Pinball too (arguably probably the 'hot spot' in the US for it now)-- our Portland Pinbrawl tournament last weekend maxed out at 128 people on the pre-registration-- didn't even get a chance to take sign-ups at the door.

If you're in to or curious about pinball-- this is an interesting read: http://wweek.com/editorial/3623/13911/ it has the obligatory appearance from Jeri Ellsworth in it as well. (Jeri designed the Commodore 64 "DTV" that sold on HSN a few years back.)

It would be tough to make an independent arcade work in smaller cities I think. You need tons of people out doing stuff on the town for your foot-traffic and that translates to needing a big metro population. The downside to that of course is that you're looking at BIG rent numbers to get in the busy parts of town and have enough space to have a lot of games. We're lucky being in the pacific northwest that we have cheap hydroelectric power-- but even then we have four-digit monthly power bills. Being back east where power is 2-2.5x more expensive would really sting!

There's four of us that own/run Ground Kontrol and we all have our own "real jobs", so we can afford to get by on thinner margins than the bigger franchise/"family amusement center" type places have to. If we leased games or had to pay for someone else to maintain, etc... probably better off opening a coffee stand. ;-)

-Clay
hpglow
Posts: 269
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 6:06 am

Re: Help! (By playing a game. ;-)

Post by hpglow »

I remember putting down something like $11K for Hydrothunder when it came out we bought 8 of them and had them paired up at 4 locations. Almost $100K for a game there is no wonder why arcades were going under left and right. I don't remember what we paid for DDR when it cam out but that game made it back quick, the kicker was the fact that it was run on a Sony PS1. So here we are paying many grand for a giant cabinet with a PS1 in it. We only had one tecnician that could keep pinball games going well and near the end they made me lay him off, about a week later they put the boss' son in charge and that is when I put my two weeks in.

You guys definatly have the right idea running it as a side venture, now only if I could find a couple people in my city to open a spot. The nice thing about you guys owning that place is that I know if I walked in all the games would work. I hate going into places and half the games are broken, or you sit down at a fighting game and the control is slopy and no one cares.
User avatar
paul
Posts: 457
Joined: Sat May 02, 2009 8:41 am
Location: Brisbane, Australia

Re: Help! (By playing a game. ;-)

Post by paul »

It's like Zombienator... but with cows!

I only got 72k, but I've bookmarked it for guilt-free procrastination.
User avatar
paul
Posts: 457
Joined: Sat May 02, 2009 8:41 am
Location: Brisbane, Australia

Re: Help! (By playing a game. ;-)

Post by paul »

103k for the lead :mrgreen:

I dunno how the hell you guys are pushing 140k. Let's keep that total going!
havok1919
Posts: 474
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:44 pm
Location: Vancouver, WA
Contact:

Re: Help! (By playing a game. ;-)

Post by havok1919 »

Heeheehee... Took me long enough. ;-)

157,600!

Thanks for the help everyone, we've gone from 3rd to up to 1st! It must be really, really close though-- we've traded places with Arcade Infinity a few times today alone. Going to be interesting to see how this shapes up in the long run. (The contest doesn't end until June 15th!)

-Clay
Post Reply