Pete Davies: The ‘Invadar’ Arcade Collection | Hacker News Reader

Pete Davies: The ‘Invadar’ Arcade Collection

arcadeblogger.com

117 pointsGuiA18 comments

It's hard to keep collections of large objects going. I have too many Teletype machines. An entire telephone museum was auctioned off lately. The Museum of Communications in Seattle is only open Sunday from 10 am to 3:00 pm. And just try to find a home for a Linotype.

There just isn't enough demand from the public to require monuments be built to house this stuff. Sad as that may seem I'm hoping virtual reality helps future generations appreciate the stuff of bygone eras.

It will be difficult to appreciate the full sensory range of stuff from bygone eras without touch/pressure and smell to accompany the VR reconstructions. I hope researchers and VR companies can perfect these as fast follow-on feature enhancements to VR environments.

Mind you, you don't usually get to touch or smell museum pieces, either. Glass cases and all.

Good luck recreating the tactile feel of a model 33 Teletype's keys, or the smell of a Linotype's pot of molten lead.

Well maybe not enough demand for physical monuments, but we can build a virtual one right now without the need for VR on my site:

http://www.theymadethat.com/things/iua/teletype-model-28

So what this offers over other mediums is a more standardized, visual context:

- It shows different variants / versions of the Teletype Model 28

- It also shows Teletype models that precede it as well as models that succeed it

- It can also show all of the parts of a Teletype Model 28 (assuming we have the data)

- It can also show all of the people involved with the Model 28 (sadly I can't find this... yet)

Let me know if there's anything that we're missing in terms of capturing history.

In NH usa there is an Arcade called "fun spot" which got non-profit status to preserve arcade machines. Its not polished but it has games and all are playable. The non-profit status helps. It seems a bit of a struggle to keep some of these running parts being harder to find.

http://www.classicarcademuseum.org/gamelist.htm

I learned about Funspot from King of Kong. Great to see them still making it. Hopefully the parts situation gets resolved.

Enjoyed the post and nice to see the guys collection being preserved and honoured in that way.

Personally though, the best bit was the picture of the "No Man's Land" cabinet, which is a game I've been struggling to find since playing it on holiday back in the early eighties. Never saw it again and couldn't recall the name of it to look it up on MAME.

The plaques are a really nice touch. Very respectful.

I agree. I sort of wished that the plaques had had a QR code or a link to the write-up too; it made me think that it would be cool to have a service for that kind of thing, where an object passed through several owners could be traced back to each (willing participant) owner, who would have a little write-up of their history and the object.

"If XXXX could speak."

When you die, other people get your stuff. So, I think you should use that stuff ... now.

:-)

Very good point. I think my grandma did a good job of giving things away before she died. I showed interest in some music books I found on her shelves and she gave them to me right away (I wasn't asking for them). At least giving things away before you die you can see others use and enjoy them. Especially when you think you're not going to get the chance to use it again.

My friend had a really cool grandma, she used to slip him pocket money accompanied by sayings like "Shrouds have no pockets". That used to upset his parents, adding to the coolness.

But sometimes, that do not realize what your stuff is. When I pass, will someone recognize that my VU/Warhol Banana poster is actually autographed by Lou Reed? Will they identify the Scotty Moore and Johnny Ramone autographs? The uniqueness of some of my guitars and my vinyl collection?

Some things have value only to myself, others if they know what the item really is. The best is to simply value memories and not possessions. But at least those guitars get played and the vinyl is appreciated right now.

This is a good website to try the "Reader View" button in Firefox.

Here is stylesheet that can be tossed into Stylish to fix that terrible layout.

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain("arcadeblogger.com") { .has-post-thumbnail.is-singular:not(.home):not(.single-format-image):not(.page-template-eventbrite-index) .entry-header, .is-singular .entry-media { border: unset; left: unset; position: relative; width: 100%; } .is-singular:not(.home) .site-inner { width: 100%; } #bit.loggedout-follow-normal { display: none; } }

This is the first time a HN link made me cry. In the bittersweet way.

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