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Tee of the Week #21: Arcade Hero
In my garage sits an upright arcade cabinet, gutted of electronics and stuffed full of old PC hardware and a 68 pound glass monitor mounted vertically. Running on that hardware is MAME software – a Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator – special code designed to do one thing in this universe: emulate the hardware that plays arcade games.
Here, ‘arcade games’ aren’t contemporary fare. These are old school titles that stuck-in-the-80s people *cough* love: Centipede, Donkey Kong, Ms Pacman, Asteroids and Space Invaders.
My first trip to the arcade was with a friend (I think we were 12 at the time) where he showed me his initials on the Pacman high-score board. I remember the place as a dimly lit other-worldly portal: noisy, filled with the blat of electronic music, long haired tough guys in 80s concert tees and the obligatory haze of too much cigarette smoke in too small a space.
It was perfect!
I remember first playing shoot’em ups there (affectionately known as shmups now) with such titles as Defender and Xevious. Even to this day, I’ll choose space shooters over any other available genre – and am especially impressed with more advanced shooters such as Capcom’s Mars Matrix (for the Sega Saturn).
Anyways, it took mere moments for Guitar Hero to suggest the video game equivalent of Arcade Hero. What took months of trial and error was pinning down the look and feel of what this might be on tee.
Well, this is one version I’m sharing!
Thanks for looking! This tee is not yet available as I’m making availability a low priority these days. No wait, I’m still lazy. Motivate me to make them available by leaving a comment.
If you like what you see, help me in my mission to one day buy a big RV — send me your happy thoughts (it really helps!) Stop by next Saturday morning!
May 30th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Hey,
Need another CRT? We have a crapload at work that we’re unloading.
This rocks man.