RAAAAID!
I'm doing this from memory whilst it's fresh. First of all a *huge* thank you to
Alpha1 for arranging not one but TWO Op raids on the SAME day! This was my first time on a raid and wow, what a way to kick off what is hopefully the start of many.
I've been absolutely bursting to tell someone about this. Anyone. I've been so excited. I actually don't think I slept much at all last night.
It was a 3 hour drive for me so upon arrival at the designated point it would have been rude not to have a nice big Raidfast! (tm)
As you can see from Muddy's photos, the first place was
huge; there was way too much to take in on one tour, so we ended up doing several.
The Op was very accommodating; despite the fact this was a week day and business was happening all around us. We were first shown two workshops, with machines in various states of being repaired and soak tested; the multiple test bench setups were impressive here. At this point I think we were unclear as to whether we were actually allowed to take photos so I don't believe we have any of these areas unfortunately.
We were then given the choice of whether we wanted to look at the cabs next or the spare parts store...
Cabs please!!!
The first thing that hit me, apart from '
How did they get that Out Run 2 Dlx up there?!'; was that there was an incredible 3 floors to wander through. Floors one and two consisted of stock that was either ready to go out or that had been brought in to the Op, with one or more faults to be repaired. I can say that I have never seen so many Mario Kart twins in one place! I counted multiples of Out Run 2 twin, Sega Rally 1 and 2 twin, Ghost Squad, Aliens, Rambo, Club Kart, Daytona 2 twin, Touring Cars, Initial D2, Ford Racing, F355 Dlx (!), Strike Fighter and perhaps most impressively of all, several versions of After Burner Climax; including 2 of the super Dlx type that move in all directions and have a huge jet fixed to the rear of the seat. Awesome. There was also a large mix of fruities for those interested but we weren't there for those
Floor 3 was largely reserved for what the Op called 'scrappers'; a term you and I might associate with cabs that are beyond repair; maybe have been stripped or left outside or a combination of all of the above. In reality what we are talking about is an Aladdin's cave of cabs; all with perhaps some damage, a board missing or a dead monitor........and that's it! They haven't been stripped to any degree; certainly not beyond saving and the missing parts / dead chassis are fairly easy to sort. We spent a lot of time here and again there were multiples of Sega Rally 1 & 2 twins, Daytona 1 & 2 twins and a lot of Namco cabs and bizarrely, House of the Dead 4. Alpha1 scored a really nice ID twin from here
I wish I'd taken my tools up and spent more time here. We're going back I hope.
Next up was the spares room!
Nothing can quite prepare you for 6 aisles of arcade machine spares stacked high to the ceiling! There were parts on shelves, on the floor, in the aisles, on trolleys and everything was stacked on top of everything else. There were marquees, toppers, steering wheels, a full Naomi front bezel, seats, NoS art, Model 2 and 3 stacks, naomi 1 & 2 mobos, Chihiro mobos, Tri-Force, GD-ROMs, entire monitor assemblies (28"), chassis, Net-DIMMs, coin mechs, Sega driver side panels and boxes and boxes of cables. Also neon signs
If there is one thing I learned from this particular part of the afternoon it was 'take gloves', don't wear your best gear and ask for step ladders
There was a muddled order to things here which made ferreting around / treasure hunting even cooler; you just didn't know what one of the guys was going to pull out next.
In between revisiting each of the above areas and a very welcome cup of coffee from the Op, we were taken to 'The Graveyard'; now this really *is* where arcade cabs go to die. There was nothing salvageable here; it was just a place you had to experience. Sadly there was a full Sega Lost World cab here and one or two others that I am sure Alpha1 will elaborate on.
Overall I had a
great time and it was nice to finally put a face to Chuckie Egg and Alpha1 and shake the hand of the man who makes all this possible. Oh...I also did a deal on this:
Jodo2014-07-30 23:51:08