Playing the classic video games

A couple of weeks ago, I acquired a Bandai-Namco Pac-Man's Pixel Bash machine. It has about 30 Namco games, some of them more classic than others, but all officially licensed and packaged in a real plywood cabinet. It isn't a bootlegged knock-off. This one is the "chill" model, because it has a little beverage fridge in the front of it, which is pretty cool. I first saw this at IAAPA a few years ago and I've wanted one ever since. As it was time to celebrate some recent victories, I felt like it was time to spend some saved pennies and plus up the home office.

I remember discovering quite early in my time with Diana that she used to dump quarters into Galaga machines as a kid, much in the way that I did with Ms. Pac-Man. Namco has been making a full-sized arcade machine (and cocktail model) with those two games for years, and this machine has that and all of the Pac-Man variants (except for the rare Baby Pac-Man, which was a hybrid video game and pinball machine that Bally made). I like Dig Dug and Rally-X as well, but this was mostly for the big two.

So far, it has seen a lot of use. Of course Diana and I have the high scores on our respective favorites, but I'm surprised to see Simon really enjoying these as well. This is a kid practically born with touch screens in his hands, who doesn't appreciate that there was a time when you could only play video games either by crude home game system or in these stand-up cabinets that required quarters. But he's really into it, and that makes me really happy.

I'm going to do a video review of the machine, I think, so watch for that.