Welcome to the third and final part in the exciting trilogy. Make sure you’ve read the first and second parts before continuing!

Part Three: The Making of a Monster

The story so far:

The arcade machine had been bought, transported to Cheltenham, and smashed into pieces. The next step?

The whole thing was first spray painted black. No more pink for me.

And then:

Reconstruction and repair. (more…)

Welcome back to the second part of the tale ‘The Great Build’; or ‘How Fen Spent His Child Bonds’. If you haven’t read the first part, go there first!

Part Two: Manchester – Keeping Clear

So I had just purchased a genuine arcade machine, for a mere £50. However, it was in Manchester – and we are not. We needed transport!

Fortunately Steve at the time worked at Volkswagen…we grabbed a van, and went off on a road trip in the case of White Van Men. We didn’t have to go near the centre of Manchester, but regardless, we were heavily armed, and we were still on edge.

We met a man who was bigger than all 3 of us put together, then we went to check out the machine. It was MASSIVE. And BRIGHT PINK.

So we put in it the van, and were gone in minutes. Thus ended our Manchester adventure.

We got it back to Cheltenham; unloaded; and Ross joined us to marvel in wonder. (more…)

In a previous video post, you may have noticed that we were playing Aero Fighters 2 – an arcade game. At the UCHG we have a little policy of always trying to play our classic games on original hardware – and this is the story (or epic trilogy) of how we stuck to our rules with this game too.

Part One: The Peril of Ideas and eBay

Back in May 2008, I had just bought a Sega Saturn, mainly because I just love those old rubbish games. And believe me, most games for the Saturn are utterly terrible.

One that is not, however, is Die Hard Arcade. This is not to be confused with ‘Die Hard Trilogy’ on the Playstation/PC/Saturn, which is shit. This game, if you believe me that is, is amazing – a full 3D beat-em-up, like Streets of Rage but even more super awesome. Plus I remember playing it when I was a kid, so there was sentimental value in there.

The others were slightly dubious of my claims, and with good reason – my other claims that ‘this game is amazing’ has led to some dreadful errors on my part, including but not limited to:

Battletoads in ‘Battlemaniacs’, Batman Forever, Ghostbusters, Waverace 64…

And there’s probably more.

In fact, probably the worst games we have in the collection could be blamed on me. I take full responsibility. But never mind!

So, they were all rather suspicious, but left me to my own devices.

While looking on eBay, I came across a few versions of the game, but as it is quite rare they started reaching into the £50 mark, which was a bit excessive. I kept looking though, and while scrolling down I came across:

“Die Hard Arcade” for £50

The difference was that this was the actual ARCADE version – as in, it was in an arcade cabinet. For £50?? I could hardly believe it was so cheap…must be a catch. After some research and questioning though, it looked like the real deal.

During my research I also discovered that ‘MAME’, an arcade emulator I’d used a lot in the past, could actually be built into the arcade cabinet – you just get an old PC, hook it up and boom, you’re done.

A bit more research later, and I had it planned out. I knew what parts to get, and I was about to get a new PC anyway. On a sunny afternoon, while eating a Boots Meal-Deal, I talked it over with Brad to make sure I wasn’t completely mental, and that day I bought it. No other bidders; just me, buying a genuine arcade machine for £50.

Of course it was pick-up only. From Manchester.

How could we get it? Would it work? Was I imagining everything??

Check the blog for the next exciting instalment of The Great Build!

1001 No.36: ‘Left 4 Dead’ (2008)

This is a bit of a break from our usual retro obsession – we actually played something new!

We recently finally got our hands on Left 4 Dead – and my god it’s great. Our first playthrough went on for over 5 hours: we just couldn’t stop shooting zombies in the face! In true UCHG ‘Console Challenge’ style, we filmed the whole thing – and this is our timelapsed vid of the mega monster massacre.

Keep an eye out for the tea-break! And don’t worry, old games will return very shortly…

(For a better viewing experience, make sure you switch to High Quality)

Achievement unlocked!

Well I loved the webcam testing clip so much, I just had to make this gif. Though it does make me look like a mentalist in the background…

Please Right-Click, Save-As, and put it on a bunch of forums 😀

Fen.

Go Steve!