Post your OP Raid pix!!

G

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Alpha1 said:
Can't believe no one has mentioned the titties on the wall
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made me chuckle if that's any help
 

strykr

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Mesmeric_G said:
I wonder if there is a fridge collector somewhere looking at this thinking "I don't know what the rest of that rubbish is but is that a 1988 Hotpoint I see there, wonder if the thermostat is still OK".
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probably somewhere!
 

stevearcade

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So what was that exactly. You said a barn? How do you hear about these things? What kind of arrangements (if any
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) do you come to with the owners (if there are any). I'm so blown away that there are places like this in the UK.

It's crazy really, the old hovels full of stuff that our wet dreams are filled with and they're just hidden away in windowless buildings, behind locked steel doors waiting to be discovered. For all I know, I could have driven past buildings with some of my Holy Grail cabs in...

Anyway, spill the beans, how does one go about raiding ops?

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Oh, and loving the time in the video given over to some quality late 1980s smutty calendar girl pics on the wall. Textbook
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.
 

d-type

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guddler said:
Well, so far, I can't find any pics of the first one (Xmas / New Year 2000/1). Just to set things straight, the first one was a deail organised my Matouga (Gerard) and was a public UKVAC bulk deal. About a week before xmas he bailed on it (I really don't remember why, possibly, I never knew). I was new to UKVAC and just couldn't see why it could all be so hard so I stepped in and took it on in order to prevent it falling apart. I stumped up several thousand in cash, hired a van and set off. I needed help (oh, how true was that!!) and as Phil Eaton lived within 10 miles of me at the time he signed up for the trip, as did Andy who wasn't that far away either.

It was a great crack, totally new experience for me (and I think Phil!), and a miracle we got back in one piece. Not to mention how knackered we were after a non stop 13 hour drive there and then a longer one back due to being overloaded. One funny memory we have is of the seller. How nervous he was. These three British strangers turned up at his place, that was about as far North in Holland as you could get before you hit the sea, in the dark talked sh*t for a bit, went for kebabs and then some dodgy motel. In the morning we loaded up the Luton - and I really do mean loaded, (that's what I wish we had a picture of!!).

All the while he seemed to be getting a little more agitated. It wasn't until the last machine was on the van and the door closed that I even remembered to give him the money. Several thousand euros in notes. You could see the relief wash over him. He was a lot bigger than us, but all the same
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. Ho hum. Sadly, we had to leave behind a Pole Position cockpit as we just couldn't fit it in, despite having paid for it!!

Where Matt Garret comes into it all is that when this lot got back to the UK they had to go somewhere so that all of the UKVAC buyers could descend from all over the country at various times and days to collect. Matt very graciously allowed us to store them in his Laser Quest venue that he'd only acquired a short while earlier (I think anyway!). Some collectors turned up that day and met us, but on the whole we dumped the games and ran. Odd thing is, I actually never had any cabs out of that deal. Me, Andy and Phil had about a dozen PCBs that we split between us as a freebie for doing it. There's a video somewhere that Scott Green took of Kips meet where he's going round filming and he asks me if I'd ever do it again. I think I say something like "f*ck no!". Yeah right
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<<CHOP>>

I remember that deal. No pictures sadly, but here's Puck-Man's email snapshot which gives the general idea at the time (further down). It reveals why he pulled out of the deal.

That was a fun trip, I remember the look on the customs officials faces when we rolled up the back door of the Luton van. I remember the lady saying something like "...this is not normal..." or such like.

I remember the nervous Dutch guy caning his Vauxhaul Corsa with 4 of us in it around town and when we left, he drove off in a big expensive looking Merc. He had a big telly with surround sound and gave us 15 minutes of Toy Story in his town-house. His neighbours must have loved him.

I think the reality was that he had to clear out the basement with all the games in it, which is why we were able to pile in as much as we could into the van.

I got a non-working Defender and a spare board set out of that trip, a few years later, Dave Langley popped round with his Williams test rig and got them both going. Then, inevitably, they both packed up over the next couple of weeks. The cab is still there in my old man's garage, together with my Centipede, which was last turned on at the UK Pinball Show in 2008'ish.

Phil

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Gerard van Schip [mailto:gerard@macotaku.freeserve.co.uk]

> Sent: 21 December 2000 17:46

> To: ukvac@egroups.com

> Subject: [ukvac] READ ME, BULK DEAL!!!

>

>

> Christ.

>

> People warned me that I would get nothing else then sh*t trying to

> organize UKVAC members into doing something together and they were

> right! I would like to thank Bazfish AGAIN, for a great party since

> my ordeals in the last 3 days have shown me how hard it is to

> organize something with UKVAC members.

>

> Ok, I need someone to take this over from me now since I will be

> running into a hospital any day now and don't want to have the deal

> fall over coz I'm in the hospital looking at my screaming

> girlfriend

> (baby birth).

>

> As it stands now all machines BUT the Pole position have been sold!

> Several machines have received several bids and I have made some

> changes for people who offered first on IRC but I forgot

> about (sorry

> P-Man). If someone drops out you move one step up to the

> machine. The

> final price for the machine is the price indicated in the red block

> on the webpage http://www.vanschip.com/bulk-deal/

>

> Ok, here is the last list I want to do. Please let someone

> else take

> this over. I got 31 offers on 14 cabs here and 2 people offered to

> help with moving them from Holland to the UK.

>

> Puck Man - Adam Dudley

> Defender 1 - Nick Nethercott - Steve M -

> Defender 2 - Jase - Neil Breeze - Adam Dudley - Danny Pearson

> Defender 3 - P-Man - Neil Breeze - Phillip Eaton - Ian Preece - Ian

> Defender 4 - JunoMan - Jase

> Tron - Danny Pearson - Neil Breeze - Martin Guddler - Jase

> Tempest - Jase - Greg Mott

> Baby Pac Man - Daniel Blackburn

> Tempest cabaret - Danny Pearson - XY-man - Jase

> Outrun - Jon jcrs - MikeDX

> Space Invader 1 - Daniel Blackburn

> Space Invader 2 - Nick Nethercott - Stu UK

> Pole Position cockpit - no one????

> Xevious - Luc Van den Borre
 

guddler

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Haha! That explains that. I remember there being a load of crap flying about, but I had no idea there was a birth involved
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DanP

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Hehehe, there's a blast from the past, when VACing was much simpler and there was no "them and us" crapola. I've still got my Tron from that deal, the Tempest Cabaret was traded to Scotty for an UR :) Happy days indeed.

Dan

P.S if you want a new home for your Centipede Phil let me know :)
 

Alpha1

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stevearcade said:
So what was that exactly. You said a barn? How do you hear about these things? What kind of arrangements (if any
smiley2.gif
) do you come to with the owners (if there are any). I'm so blown away that there are places like this in the UK.

It's crazy really, the old hovels full of stuff that our wet dreams are filled with and they're just hidden away in windowless buildings, behind locked steel doors waiting to be discovered. For all I know, I could have driven past buildings with some of my Holy Grail cabs in...

Anyway, spill the beans, how does one go about raiding ops?

smiley20.gif


Oh, and loving the time in the video given over to some quality late 1980s smutty calendar girl pics on the wall. Textbook
smiley2.gif
.

Steve - you have to do your homework track places down, go to your local arcade and make your own leads. Some of these things can take months. I have one that has taken me 2 years and i'm still not able to get the stuff yet, although i've been there and taken pix.

Alpha12011-11-21 11:16:38
 

Bensonrad

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Is arcade hunting / collecting your job or hobby Oliver? I'd imagine you have to put in a serious amount of ground work and sniffing about to get wind of these sort of things and then move fast when you do catch the scent.
 

Alpha1

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smiley20.gif
Bensonrad said:
Is arcade hunting / collecting your job or hobby Oliver? I'd imagine you have to put in a serious amount of ground work and sniffing about to get wind of these sort of things and then move fast when you do catch the scent.

I have a full time job working in IT. I'm an Exchange Architect building site resilient messaging platforms in the Cloud. I work 50hr weeks. All this is done in my spare time on top of being a parent.

It's just a hobby, caught from the days of all the amazing US warehouse pix I used to see on RGVAC. It's really addictive. The chase is the thrill for me!

Most stuff I find I let other people in on, that's part of the spirit. Speak to any of the old ukvac crew (and some new!). I want to get lots of people to enjoy cheap cabs and creating a nice collecting atmosphere in the community - afterall it's about saving these games. Obviously not every stash ever found is worth anything or has anything decent, and some stuff is too small to share.

But this is what I do, I am a collector foremost but I feel a duty to try and save this stuff rather than let it rot away!

I have a pretty big collection myself and don't tell to sell much, I just want to find really cool stuff and try and save it. Some of these Ops will have had prototype or one off games that they don't realise they have - it's our duty to save this stuff and document it, that's where my passion lies.

Unfortunately this stuff I do appears to have gotten me the Trader tag on another site, which I have taken offence too, but admittedly there is nothing I can do about it, but it's fueled me to post on here more. I feel some of us should be just treated better - we are saving some of the UK's historical arcade game history. Look at P-man - he documents nearly everything he does and will have a basis for a wealth of UK arcade knowledge once (if? hehe) he finally publishes/does something with it.

I wish I had pix of a lead me and Rav went on about 3 years ago, I got a call for some free arcade games, I just had to pick them up. So we made our way down there with a van and this guy was closing his arcade. Anyhow cutting a long story short.. He used to program video games - he made 80% of the bootleg games you find on Galaxian hardware.

- He showed us the reverse enginereed Pong board he made at request for the UK Pong clone manufacturers

- He showed us other reverse engineered boards like Depthcharge

- He GAVE us his prom programmer that he made. This was a Galaxian pcb! I submitted the board to Macro/P-man to preserve and I think Junoman got it working in MAME

- he showed us his unreleased Galaxian hack games including the flyers for them (I have them somewhere need to scan them!)

- he said he was mates with Gary Stern, then showed us the source code for a load of Stern games he had sitting in his filing cabinets

- he had A3 schems for nearly all Konami games - was mental.

Stuff like the above is just awesome for me, we have arranged a time to go back and he has agreed to let us have his master roms and schems in exhange for dumping all his roms and schems to a digital format to hdd.

One of my aims is to have a space where I can share my games and have them setup properly for all to enjoy. That will probably be another 5-10 years though as I now have a family to concentrate on - however doing raids and sharing with the community will still happen

I'm just going to continue doing what I do, and hopefully it will inspire people to do the same. You never know what is in a barn or warehouse near you! And it will be a nice inheritance for my boy once time takes its toll.

Anyhow enough from me, i'm probably sound like a daft sod.

Alpha12011-11-21 14:18:15
 

strykr

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Daft sod arent the words i'd use lol!

I love hearing about all this stuff, its the chase and desire that makes this hobby what it is!
 

stevearcade

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Alpha1 said:
I wish I had pix of a lead me and Rav went on about 3 years ago, I got a call for some free arcade games, I just had to pick them up. So we made our way down there with a van and this guy was closing his arcade. Anyhow cutting a long story short.. He used to program video games - he made 80% of the bootleg games you find on Galaxian hardware.

- He showed us the reverse enginereed Pong board he made at request for the UK Pong clone manufacturers

- He showed us other reverse engineered boards like Depthcharge

- He GAVE us his prom programmer that he made. This was a Galaxian pcb! I submitted the board to Macro/P-man to preserve and I think Junoman got it working in MAME

- he showed us his unreleased Galaxian hack games including the flyers for them (I have them somewhere need to scan them!)

- he said he was mates with Gary Stern, then showed us the source code for a load of Stern games he had sitting in his filing cabinets

- he had A3 schems for nearly all Konami games - was mental.

Stuff like the above is just awesome for me, we have arranged a time to go back and he has agreed to let us have his master roms and schems in exhange for dumping all his roms and schems to a digital format to hdd.

Count me in!
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But seriously dude, a very sound philosophy. Since I've gotten into Arcade collecting your presence both on J+ and here has been a very strong and positive one for me. A breadth of knowledge and a wickedly dry sense of humour. The words "It's a boot" always echo in my head whenever someone proudly shows off their new acquisition on the forums
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. A serious contributor to the community. Keep it up and maybe one day, I'll tag along on a raid
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.

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