Southtown Arcade is Closed.

Unfortunately it looks like Southtown Arcade in San Francisco has closed, yesterday was their last day open and DoctorC and myself went down to say goodbye. There were a lot of people there playing, but with having to come from far away, we didn't make it in time to enter the final King of Fighters ranbat.
Luckily we can watch the final showdown thanks to Iplaywinner.


Watch live video from IPLAYWINNER on TwitchTV


I'm sure you've all probably seen it by now, but here is the original post announcing the close:

"All good things must come to an end. And, unfortunately, that time has come for Southtown Arcade.

Due to a number of circumstances, Southtown Arcade’s last day of operation at its current location will be Sunday, November 25th, 2012. We’re really sorry for the sudden nature of this announcement, but we were hoping that we would be able to resolve a number of outstanding issues in order to continue normal business operations, and, unfortunately, our optimism did not bear fruit.

Between our lease expiring at the end of the year, increased demands on our time from work and home (we have families and/or full-time jobs outside of STA!), and increased demands on our time to grow the business and maintain day-to-day operations at the Arcade, we’ve decided that the best thing for us to do is cease operation of STA at this time.

Are we going to come back? Never say never; we’d love to continue doing what we’re doing, but, as it stands now, we’re in no position to do so, given the circumstances we find ourselves in. However, we are going to continue our partnership with Iplaywinner and run events in the San Francisco Bay Area; Season 6 of our Ranking Battles will be played out, it just won’t take place at STA, sadly. We’ll have more information on this and future events, like Season 7 of our Ranking Battles, very soon.

We’d also like to take a moment to thank everyone and anyone who has ever supported STA in any way, shape or form, even if it was as little as a Facebook “Like” or just stopping in to take a look around. We also want to thank all of our sponsors and partners who’ve supported us in the past, including, but not limited to, CAPCOM, SEGA, EightArc, Mad Catz, Namco and ArcadeShock. We especially want to thank everyone who showed up, day in and day out (you know who you are!), everyone who ever came by for a Ranbat (you know who you are too!), and everyone who came by just to tell us how much the place sucks (we know you who are!). We’d just start rattling off names, but we’re sure we’d forget someone, and that wouldn’t be fair, so, if you’re thinking to yourself, “You’d shout me out… RIGHT?!”, you are one of those people. Thank you.

Lastly, we wan to tell everyone to support the community. Support events that support the community. Support businesses that support the community. Don’t support scumbag tournament organizers and don’t support businesses who’ve shown themselves to be incapable of conducting themselves professionally. This is the most important thing you can do to keep the community alive and make sure we continue to grow. If we don’t support the real honest supporters of this community, then they all go away, and this will make the community weaker.

Please feel free to send us comments, words of love, proclamations of hate, or whatever you need to get off your chest via Twitter, Facebook or email. We always love to hear from our fans. We will not be granting requests for interviews nor will we be providing comment for news stories, so, please, kindly refrain from sending us media requests.

Thanks again to everyone for your love and support, and we’ll be back sooner than later, one way or another. We’ll always bring the hype, as we always have.

#RIP #RIP BibleThump Kappa

Love,
Southtown"

A great arcade that has done so much for the arcade scene and the fighting game community, as well as hyping KOF and SNK worldwide. We can't thank you enough for everything, good luck in whatever you do next. You will be missed.
GG.

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California Extreme 2012

Last weekend was California Extreme XVI, AKG and myself went to check it out. They had it at the Hyatt Regency again this year, but the layout was slightly different. If you read the post about last years show, all the same sentiments apply here, except we stayed for both days this trip. We made lot's of friends, played tons of games and had a great time! I took more pictures than it would feasible to show, but you can see the whole set on our Flickr page if you're interested.

Gizimnoic did a really nice walkthrough pointing out some of the more unusual games:



We picked up some killer schwag as usual:

Our sweet press badges.

Here are a few pictures from the show:

Some X-Men tables

AC/DC

Spectrum

Eight Ball Deluxe

Gigi

Corral

Foxy Lady cocktail pin

Star Castle cocktail

Star Trip cocktail pin

Electric YoYo

Cleopatra

Rollergames

Comet

Space Shuttle

A Pac-Man pinball game

Space Harrier

Pole Positions

Cosmic Venus (working movie prop)

Royal Guard

Thayer's Quest

Thayer's Quest control panel

Time Traveller

Genie

Jungle King

No one escapes the Black Hole

Joust cocktail

Heavy Metal Meltdown

Mini Pool

Thank you to everyone that helped make this show possible! Long live California Extreme!

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Farsight Studios and The Pinball Arcade

Normally a game like The Pinball Arcade is something that I wouldn't find out about until it's already been out for years, but I got lucky on this one. Farsight Studios made a game in 2009 called Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection. I just recently got a copy of it for the PS3 and was pretty amazed by it, I thought it was a game that would do really well in the DLC department, but I couldn't find any tables to download for it. After looking into it, I discovered The Pinball Arcade.

Farsight Studios has made a new download-only pinball game with four tables to start with (Black Hole, Tales of the Arabian Knights, Ripley's Believe It or Not, and Theatre of Magic.) Farsight is claiming that they will release two new tables every month for the next several years, which is incredible. These pinball games that they make are so well done, that it's hard to describe.They are easily the best video pinball tables I've ever seen.

Check out a making of video:



...and the trailer:



I brought all this up to let you know about it, so that you don't miss out and also to mention that certain tables that they want to make have such high licensing costs that they can't really afford to make them.
Twilight Zone is an example. Farsight Studios has started a Kickstarter campaign to help raise funds for licensing the Twilight Zone table.

If you can afford to, please consider donating a little money to Farsight Studios for this project. I think it's important to chip in to help make things that are awesome.
That's all for now!
Play Pinball!

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King of Fighters '99 Character Portraits

I ripped the character portraits from The King of Fighters '99 for a project I'm working on, but I figured other people might have some use for them too, so here they are. I'm not used to making sheets and it looks pretty messy, but the sprites are all there so....yeah. Enjoy!

The King of Fighters '99 character profile sprites.

If anyone has any tutorials on putting sheets together so they don't look like #$*%!,that would be helpful :P

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Flynn's Arcade Closing and the Death of the Starcade

I finally made it inside Flynn's Arcade when I was down in Disneyland last month. I'll say that the arcade was just ok. It's a good thing I got in there when I did, because I just got word that Disney is closing Flynn's (and ElecTRONica) down on April 15th. It is being replaced by The Mad T Party, a (Tim Burton) Alice in Wonderland attraction.

Flynn's Arcade had a definite 80's vibe to it, in that a lot of the games would eat tokens, buttons/joysticks  didn't work, etc. The TRON Pinball game was turned off with an out of order sign on it, same with the air hockey table. I actually chuckled when things didn't work well, it was almost too authentic. Overall it wasn't bad though. There was a good amount of classics to choose from.

The arcade was waaaay off in the corner of California Adventure. ElecTRONica was pretty cool and although the arcade closed at 10:00, the cast members working there locked the doors and let everyone stay as long as they wanted after. It was good to hear people exclaiming "Whoah I haven't seen this game in soo long!" "Duuude, check it out!!!" etc. Some couple was playing Gauntlet when I left and they were on level 90 or something, pretty dedicated I'd say.
Here some pics of Flynn's Arcade's final days.

Flynn's Arcade

Good lighting.

 

Lots of people were playing.

Mr. Do and Donkey Kong Jr.

They had some great neon on the walls!

Space Paranoids is MUCH easier on the computer!

Space Paranoids side art.

Asteroids and Solar Fox.

Home of TRON

Meanwhile, over in Disneyland.....

The Starcade used to be one of the best arcades in California, two stories and in Tomorrowland, it was on a completely different level than Flynn's arcade, you kinda had to be there to understand how awesome it was. It's had a steady decline over the years due to poor management. It was pretty terrible the last time I was there, but it was still at least trying to be an arcade. The writing is on the wall for the Starcade.

If this sign is still there a year from now it will be a miracle.

Inside the Starcade.

That's right.....it's a gift shop now. :'(
They still have a handful of games, pushed way into the back. The Mini Neo-Geo is still there and there was a kid playing Spinmaster as usual, but this arcade is doomed.

What's left of the Starcade.

The Pirates of the Caribbean Pinball game was shoved over into a corner, with tape over the dollar bill acceptor and both coin slots. I removed the tape and the pin worked perfectly. I must say, it's one of the funnest modern pins I've ever played and it was in beautiful condition :)

Pirates of the Caribbean Pinball.

I took some pictures of the Grizzly Game Arcade at the Grand Californian Hotel this time also:

Grizzly Game Arcade

Arcade 102

That was a long post, but it's probably the last time you'll have to hear about arcades in Disneyland on this site. If you go down there, play some games while you still can.

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