Collectors are gobbling up those old arcade games www.springfieldnewssun.com By ANDREW McGINN, News-Sun Staff Writer Ms. Pac-Man can't stop eating. But these days, the 22-year-old should perhaps pay a bit more attention to her body mass index like the rest of us. First off, those power pellets she loves are loaded with carbs. And that's bad if you're a little round ball without legs. Lara Croft she ain't. While we're at it, Q'bert probably should inquire about a gastric bypass. Now, now, Mr. Bert, we're only trying to help. There's no reason to cuss about it. As Brian Wilson once pondered about himself, maybe the early video game icons just weren't made for these times. Bob Finch looks beyond that. In his Troy Road home, his yellow lady friend can eat all the power pellets she wants. She might have high cholesterol, but he wants a high score. The 34-year-old is one of a handful of area folks who are collecting the coin-operated video games they grew up on. It was 20 years ago that arcade mania still was raging in Springfield and abroad like Donkey Kong on top of the concrete factory. The people who wrote video games into pop culture lore might be older, but they're a lot richer. And they want their games. Why would any sane person want to lug a beastly machine, often laced with cigarette burns, into a home in the first place? They always were heavy toys, and now they're often pricey and sometimes can be hard to find. But remember playing “Frogger” at the local Pizza Hut? The warm nostalgia fuzzies get warmer just by thinking about each majestic leap to a floating one-dimensional log. “It brings back memories,” Finch declared from his kitchen where a “Centipede” machine sits nearby, its famous trackball screaming for some brave soul to give it a roll and save the galaxy from blitzkrieg bugs. “Kids today just don't understand. I've shown my son's friends ‘Asteroids’ and they're like, ‘Why would you play something like this?’ “They'll be, ‘Aw, to heck with that. Let's go play Xbox.’ They don't get the black and white triangles.” Insert coin Finch and a zillion Americans like him were hooked on video games in arcades as kids in the early ’80s, even though the graphics looked like, well, something a cat would likely “Dig Dug” to cover. Colorless triangles? Too rad. But years later, as men with strong backs and steady jobs, their dreams are coming true. Yes, it's mostly a guy thing. As 31-year-old James Marous exclaimed, “It's like Rick Schroder on ‘Silver Spoons.’ We have games in our own house. “Most people don't think it's crazy. They think it's cool.” Marous, a biomedical engineer who lives near South Vienna, owns 80 machines — 40 work. No joke. He recently was contacted by VH1 through his Web site about being on a new show about people who collect things. The man's house — “Everybody tells me I bought an arcade with a house on top,” he said — is like an Aladdin's Castle. The one big difference, of course, being that you won't get smacked across the teeth if you budge your quarter ahead of somebody else's on the “Galaga” marquee. But the question is, can Marous name every arcade game he has? Drum roll please. Hold on to your pong. “‘Galaga,’ ‘Asteroids,’ ‘Joust,’ ‘Defender,’ ‘Robotron,’ ‘Frogger,’ ‘Tempest,’ ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Berzerk,’ ‘Crazy Climber,’ ‘Donkey Kong.’ I can keep going,” he boasted last week. “They were the ones we loved to put a lot of quarters in.” In 1982, the pinnacle of video arcade mania, those quarters added up to $5 billion, Time magazine reported back then. That was twice the intake of every casino in Nevada. Game over In 1980, Finch convinced his dad to put some of those newly popular video games in the family store on Kenton Street. “It was your typical grocery store. My dad was kind of skeptical at first,” he said, adding that ‘Asteroids’ was the first at Finch's Party Store. “Man, once those hit, it really boomed. And once the revenue came in, he was loving it.” But with the success of the home console, paying to play now is unthinkable. Past the initial $200, it's free to play Xbox. And apparently it's so unthinkable the longtime arcade at the Upper Valley Mall closed its doors this year. A mall spokeswoman couldn't believe the arcade, once a part of the Aladdin's Castle chain, lasted as long as it did. Game over indeed. These days, with a bit of luck, you still can find a few coin-op games at eateries and bars. The BW-3 on North Fountain Avenue has a sweet “Ms. Pac-Man”/“Galaga” two-in-one machine. The bar got the Ms. Pac machine because “people were asking for it,” manager Scott Brandt explained. And it makes money, he said. Off the older patrons, he added. Add token to continue By this point in our story, you're flashing back to the days when you ruled the “Tron” machine at the skating rink. And you want to know where to get your paws on one. Right? Because video arcades are nearly kaput, the U.S. collectors’ market is thriving. So are the prices. One word: eBay. “The days of scrounging around are over,” Marous said as he surveyed his garage, a “Tapper” game covered in plastic. He bought his first game in 1994, before the online auction house proved anybody can make a profit with anything. Prices for coin-op video games and parts that once were auctioned in person for dirt cheap, or were frequently just given away, would take away the appetite of even Pac-Man — even for the machines that don't work. Marous once bought a working “Asteroids” at a garage sale for $75. “They just wanted it out of their house,” he said. That would never happen now. People know about eBay, he said. On eBay this week, a “Galaga” machine was going for, get this, $1,025 — shipping not included. Add $200 for that. If you do land a coin-op video game, here's a free tip from Marous: “Invest in a good dolly.” The things weigh a ton. Marous recently had to haul nearly all of his working games out of the basement when a water pipe broke. He came home to six inches of water. It took one day, three guys and two 25-foot moving trucks to evacuate his games. And, really, it wouldn't hurt to brush up on electronics, either. “Pac-Man,” for example, is powered by 75 chips on its internal green board. Let's rephrase that: 75, 23-year-old chips. Want to know how far technology has come? The “Ms. Pac-Man”/“Galaga” machine at BW-3 is a re-release. Both games now are stored in one chip, Marous said. “Most of the people who buy games don't know how to fix them,” he explained. “You can't call anybody in town to come fix your ‘Pac-Man.’ They won't touch the old stuff. I started buying games for $50. But those didn't work. “Turns out, hey, I'm an engineer. I can fix them.” Whether you can fix them or not, though, buyer always beware. Take it from Finch and his prized “Ms. Pac-Man” cocktail game, the version in which players sit across from each other. “The guy said it was beautiful. He said it had been in his house for 16 years,” Finch recalled. “All the artwork under the glass was ripped up. And the joysticks didn't work. I'd rather have it nice enough to take right in the house. “But this had potential.”