Way back in 1999, my friend Lon and I made a “guy” trip to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada to experience the CG Expo for the first time. Here was our Mecca! We were oooing and ahhhing over the marvelous exhibits and treasures we saw and bought there. The classic gamers, exhibitors, and celebrities were all wonderful, so if you haven’t been yet, try and go this year!
While competing in the Twin Galaxies’ Hydro Thunder Tournament, tucked away in a corner of the CG Expo conference room, I met a gentleman named Gary Vincent. He said he worked at a family entertainment center in New Hampshire called Funspot. I had never heard of it before and asked him to tell me more about it. Funspot houses the largest collection of classic arcade games in the world and hosts the annual Funspot-Twin Galaxies International Classic Videogame and Pinball Tournament. I was intrigued and promised I would come out and visit him.
This past October, I kept the promise by dragging my wife to the East Coast for “my” vacation (another story unto itself). We arrived in New Hampshire as the fall colors were fading to brown, but there were still large areas where the trees were aflame with red, yellow, orange and violet. The weather was perfect and I was on vacation! What more could I want? Getting to Funspot and putting my hands on some classic games of course!
When we finally arrived, I fought off the urge to make a mad dash through the front doors and go screaming down the halls to where the games were (as I would have done long ago!). Instead, like a proper adult, I calmly escorted my wife in and walked around the facility, taking in all the sights and sounds. I couldn’t put my finger on anything in particular, but suddenly something took me back over twenty-five years to another
family entertainment center I frequented. I can’t describe how excited I was, seeing rows of oh-so-familiar video games beckoning me to insert coins. – Read the rest of the article here from Classic Gamer Magazine (courtesy of Old School Gamer)!
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