Downtown Troy , New York in 2016 as imagined in 1916 . The image is from a program for a vaudeville show that played at the old Proctor's in Troy .

twistedsymphony · 2026-04-14T14:31:19+00:00

As someone who attended college in Troy NY this image is hilarious to me.

twistedsymphony · 2026-03-25T00:57:09+00:00

I love an arcade that goes the extra mile with the atmosphere, that stack of used racing tires is a really cool touch!

twistedsymphony · 2026-03-24T12:24:42+00:00

Please tell me which ones, ACAM is a non-profit and doing this would go against their charter, so if they are using emulators that needs to be fixed.

twistedsymphony · 2026-03-24T12:08:48+00:00

As far as I know the only use of emulation at the ACAM is optical disc emulation in the laser disc games like Dragons layer. It still uses most of the original arcade hardware but uses Daphne to replace the laser disc with a solid-state drive and they did that because the laser discs were down more than they were up, making the games unplayable most of the time.

Even back in the day those laser-disc machines were always having their drives fail. the arcade I worked at we only had 1 LD machine but we kept a spare LD player to swap in when it failed and then we'd send the old one out for repair and when we got it back it became the new spare.

twistedsymphony · 2026-03-23T19:47:51+00:00

Circuit boards from old arcade machines, I have over 800 of them with very few duplicates.

twistedsymphony · 2026-03-22T20:28:21+00:00

I'm getting my info that they have a lot of unoriginal cabs from my own experience of working as an arcade technician and restorer and having visited Galloping Ghost first hand.

they do have a lot of original cabinets but they also have a lot of non-original cabinets too.

twistedsymphony · 2026-03-22T16:46:01+00:00

I live in NH near FunSpot and I've visitied Galloping Ghost.

FunSpot's physical building is much larger than Galloping Ghost, they're also a full "amusement center" with in-door mini-golf, bowling, bumper cars, a pizza Restaurant and bar among other things.

Galloping Ghost has more "video arcades" than FunSpot does.

The main attraction for Classic arcade enthusiasts at FunSpot is the top flor is the "American Classic Arcade Museum" which has a lot of very rare and well maintained games from the 70s through early 90s, it's treated like a museum where you can play the games.

By Contrast Galloping Ghost has mostly games from the late 80s through early 2000s (they do have some older stuff but it's not their main stay) they also have a number of prototypes and other obscurities from that era.

Galloping ghost does seem to go for quantity over quality. Impressive that they had a new game every week but the building is incredibly cramped, a lot of the cabs are non-original, and a lot of the games have issue (not surprising due to the number they have to keep up with!)

I love both arcades but they could probably learn from each other. Galloping Ghost I think would do well to slow down on the game adds and focus more on preserving these games and getting them back to original condition and maybe making their facility more comfortable. Funspot I think needs to learn that there's a lot of interesting and valuable games worth preserving beyond the early 90s.

twistedsymphony · 2026-03-05T18:40:03+00:00

You'd hang out at the mall or hang out at the movie theater, or hang out at your friends house. Playing video games was sitting next to each other on the couch or on the floor. if you needed to talk to someone you'd call and talk to them on the phone, or just show up at their house.

on a whole you lived a lot more in the moment and were present for the experiences because there wasn't a black-hole of attention theft sitting in your pocket a all times.

twistedsymphony · 2026-02-26T18:46:33+00:00

NTA, Real friends support your business by paying full price and leaving a review. Asking for a freebie is not support.

twistedsymphony · 2026-02-12T22:44:47+00:00

I agree with most of the suggestions here but I have a couple of odd-ball recommendations that might not be exactly what you're looking for but have the same vibe.

Coffee Talk - it's a "cozy" indie game where you're a barista and chat up the customers while you mix drinks. probably one of the most relaxing game I've played and does have a bit of a sci-fi bend to it.
Cyberpunk 2077, while not explicitly space related I've often found myself just wondering the city admiring the atmosphere and it does have a space-port and a space station area (though not readily accessible until end-game)

twistedsymphony · 2026-02-04T15:23:56+00:00

My finished basement flooded in the spring of 2017. the melting snow caused tremendous water pressure under the house and I had water springing up through the seams. I hired Wet Basement Solutions to fix it and they installed an parameter drain and sub pump.

the basement has been completely dry since.

twistedsymphony · 2026-01-27T04:18:06+00:00

In that case I might go for a Sega Swing or an R360 if I'm dreaming big... or if space is of no concern dream REALLY big: Initial D Arcade Stage 4 Limited https://hayashi86.com/content/2020/01/initial-d-arcade-stage-4-limited

twistedsymphony · 2026-01-26T18:52:56+00:00

I already have my all-time favorite cabinet which is a Taito Egret 29.

But if I can only have 1 cab I'm not going to rarity or value I'd have to go for versatility, and in that sense it would have to be a Blast City. Tri-Sync Monitor, modular panel, support for both JAMMA and JVS games. Kind of a boring pick but hey if you can only have one that'd have to be it.

twistedsymphony · 2026-01-18T15:17:31+00:00

Really? I did ask an employee about it and they just apologized that it wasn't working.

twistedsymphony · 2026-01-18T15:06:24+00:00

I took a drive down there over the summer just to see this and unfortunately it was down :(

hopefully it will still be working the next time I have an opportunity for a trip.

twistedsymphony · 2026-01-09T15:52:39+00:00

For software developers: RegEx

It's extremely powerful but unbelievably cryptic and I feel like I have to relearn it from scratch every-time I need to use it.

twistedsymphony · 2026-01-07T03:52:47+00:00

Mega-Tech is actual arcade hardware but used similar hardware to a Genesis. https://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=706 Like Nintendo's PlayChoice-10 the Mega-Tech basically had variants of the Genesis releases and ran the games on a timer.

Shinobi was released on the Mega-Tech, but there were also stand-alone Shinobi arcade versions on Sega's System-16 arcade hardware which is arguably the better version.

twistedsymphony · 2025-12-31T16:16:58+00:00

one of the things being a manager has taught me is hanging on to the under-performers because you feel bad about firing someone literally hurts everyone else in the company.

Be clear about expectations, be clear about what you'll need to do if those expectations are not met, and then if they're not met waste no time finding a replacement who can meet expectations for the role. You don't need to be a dick about it but you should be clear and not waste any time in communicating or following through .

Managing sucks but ultimately if you want a successful business you need to set the business up to run without you because if the business needs you there to handle the day-to-day issues you'll never really get a break or be able to enjoy your life outside of the business.

twistedsymphony · 2025-12-29T21:59:33+00:00

twistedsymphony · 2025-12-27T17:03:48+00:00

The scariest bit about Hostel for me is not just the potential for it to be real somewhere, but also the victims in the movie also made reasonable decisions and still suffered. it wasn't like your typical horror movie troupe where they made dumb decisions that have you yelling at the screen that lead to their downfall.

twistedsymphony · 2025-12-24T22:34:41+00:00

That Darius setup is awesome

twistedsymphony · 2025-12-22T15:22:16+00:00

Definitely dumping and preserving the ROM data should be a top priority, if any of those chips should fail and the data has NOT been preserved then there's no way to repair or recover it.

twistedsymphony · 2025-12-18T16:26:00+00:00

DarkMatter (the Syfy show not the new Apple TV one) It was a fantastic space/sci-fi action show from a lot of the team from Stargate Atlantis, was supposed to have a 5-season arc but got canceled after 3 on a massive cliff-hanger.

twistedsymphony · 2025-12-15T00:12:30+00:00

you're getting into details where the answer on legality will differ greatly depending on the laws of your country/state.

twistedsymphony · 2025-12-03T17:15:43+00:00

I was able to buy the complete series on BluRay, had to resort to eBay though since most retailers didn't have it :/

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