
SCOTT SCHREIBER
SUBARUBRAT
Much like your other hosts on this show I came up during the classic golden age
of arcades and gaming. The difference between me and them is that I wasn't any
good at it.
I might get a few minutes of play from a quarter in Defender or clear the
screen on PacMan before losing all three lives. And a few decades later I
am not much better at most of them. So why did I spend so much time in arcades
and why have an affinity for classic gaming? Because gameplay (which I really
do enjoy despite ineptitude) is only one aspect of classic gaming. When I
think of classic games I think of wood, metal, artwork, circuit boards, CRTs
and all of it working in harmony to present a theme that the game software
is but one integral part of. When you picture a game of that era in your
head, do you see a cabinet or a screenshot?
I followed a path through consoles, early home PCs doing
my time with the C64 and contemporary systems. I did Pong, Atari, Colecovision,
Intellivision, the NES and then the Genesis among others. After the Genesis I
took a long break from consoles for the simple reason that nothing appealed to
me. That changed when the Wii and the DS came along and Nintendo managed to recapture
the magic of the NES.
There was the phone system too. I think we all tried the
trick from Wargames of sticking the paperclip into the received and touching
the phone, it didn't work for me either. A feature of the BBS systems back then
was an area called text files, which was just that, text files. One day I started
reading about all these different boxes, redbox, bluebox etc. As it turned out
you could get a payphone coined up by generating tones that mimicked those the
phone sent when coins were dropped. So I built my first redbox to do just that.
It was fun to try out on the payphone in front of the school, but then I made
my first bluebox and silverbox. These would mimic the tone used to identify long
distance trunk lines and the operator dial tones. Suddenly I had a freedom and
was no longer stuck in that small town. I could walk up to any phone and tickle
the keys and end up anywhere I pleased. That helped lead to understanding cable
TV systems and how to play with them. That all lead to a lifelong technical background
that has made me a much better engineer and technician and gave me the gift to
keep this era of history in good working order so that future generations can
see what all the excitement was about.
Another passion of mine that I enjoy covering on the show
is pinball. I didn't get pinball at first. I liked the mechanical aspect of it
and wanted more than anything to get under that playfield glass, but I didn't
get the game. I was even a bit angry to find a pin in an arcade because it took
up space that two video games could be in and I saw it the same way as a ticket
machine, just a waste of space. I had been collecting arcade games for some time
when I played a few pins at auction and suddenly I got it. Pinball made total
sense to me and I started looking closer at the artwork, how sometimes the game
can tell you a whole story at a glance. Take Xenon for example, the playfield
gives you a world and a story line not that different from the Matrix, its all
there if you look. I bought my first pin and was hooked and in short order I
became fascinated with the history, the people and the companies that brought
them abouT.
The majority of my classic gaming today centers around
my home collection of about 50 various coin-op games and have restored about
twice as many including pinball, video games, EM games, slot machines, pachinko,
and some unique games that defy categories. I have finally refinished the lower
floor of my home in an arcade theme complete with black walls and ceiling, blacklight
carpet, disco ball, and all manner of signs and graphics. Rather than have a
home arcade, I finally have an arcade home. That sort of experience is not that
different from running an arcade back in the day. There is regular maintenance,
parts to be ordered and screens and playfields to be polished. When I am not
wrapped up in any of this I spend the majority of my time building and flying
experimental aircraft or thanking my wife profusely for allowing me such total
immersion in my hobbies.
Retro Gaming RoundUp contains adult humour
Copyright © Retro Gaming RoundUp. All rights reserved.