I just got back from a week-long vacation in New England and a key part of the trip for me was a visit to the American Classic Arcade Museum - part of the Funspot Arcade in Laconia, New Hampshire. I tried to record a walk-through video of the place but I was fighting a dying camera battery and an overwhelming sense of awe and excitement that kept interfering with the efficiency of the recording. So that video needs to be cleaned up a bit first if I am going to post it.
But I did want to do go ahead and do a quick post about one particular game that I have been trying to play for a while now and finally got a chance to at the Museum - Death Race. I did a post about Death Race back in August and now that I've actually played it I must say the game was much more fun than I initially expected it to be. Simple but fun - just like a good arcade game is supposed to be. And I only played it in 1-player mode - I'm sure playing 2 player would be even better.
You have 90 seconds to run down as many gremlins as possible and my high score of 18 wasn't quite enough to qualify for "Expert Driver" status but I'm happy with my "Gremlin Hunter" title. I only played it 3-4 times, but if there weren't SO MANY other games there drawing my attention away I would have happily played it several more.
It was pretty dark in there so the video quality is not top notch - but if you care to check it out here ya go.
You lucky person. I've only played it on emulation :(
ReplyDeleteLooks like fun! That machine looks brand new on your video. Do they do a lot of restoration?
ReplyDelete@ Gnome: The Super Sprint-style free-spinning wheels, gas pedal, and reverse gear shift make all the difference. I'd been looking for the game for a while and thought at first I had struck out again because the coin slot had an "out of order" sticker over it, but I peeled it off and started pushing buttons and wa-lah it worked! Glad I tried it!
ReplyDelete@ Fallguy40: It WAS fun. I figured I had built up the game in my mind from a historical perspective and it might be a let-down gamplay-wise, but it was definitely a fun little game. The only thing I wasn't so crazy about was that, like a lot of the arcade games of the late 70's, it was timed so you couldn't continue playing no matter how well you did. It would have been nice if they alloted more time if you hit a certain number of gremlins. It was definitely in excellent condition. With the huge collection of games they had I would assume they do some good restoration/maintenance jobs, but I didn't ask anyone about it.