Classic Arcade Tournament Draws Video Game Fans

Enter the third floor of Funspot at Weirs Beach, and you’re greeted by familiar-sounding blips and bleeps. Teenagers used to pour their allowance money into these games in arcades across the country. Now they’ve been gathered together by Gary Vincent, director of the American Classic Arcade Museum.

“It’s basically a time machine, where you can just step back in, and maybe you’re 35 or 40 now, and you step back in the room here and you’re 17 again.”

Gary Vincent, director of the
American Classic Arcade Museum.

In 1981, when Asteroids, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong had just been released, a 19-year-old Gary was spending his summer at Funspot. The owner, Bob Lawton, noticed him hanging around and playing the games.

“We were short of help, and I asked him if he would help out at the prize counter for the last week of summer, so he did, and he’s been here ever since, over 25 years.”

If there’s one thing for sure about Gary Vincent, it’s that he loves video games. He recalls the day in 1983 when the Atari racing game Pole Position arrived.

“And after we closed, a couple of us stayed after work, we turned the power back on, and we must have played for three or four more hours, because that game was just so great. And you look at it, or even if you see kids look at it, it is so primitive. But back then, that was it. That was a state of the art driving game right there.”

Pole Position was the most popular game of 1983. But that was also the year the U.S. video game market crashed, and companies like Funspot started getting rid of many of their games.

“Everybody was focusing on what was new, and as soon as it was two or three years old it was gone. People were getting into the tickets-bidding games, which, you know, you just feed quarters or tokens in as fast as they can, and they feed tickets out at the same rate.”

It’s ironic that Gary now scours the Web, spending hundreds of dollars for the same games they threw out twenty years ago. As a rule, the museum includes only games made before 1987.

“That was the year that games, I noticed anyway, changed from, really, most of ‘em were puzzle-based, space-game based or whatever, to more of what I call the punch, kick, and shoot games. The whole vibe of the arcade seemed to change.”

Gary realized that unless someone stepped in, those older machines would be relegated to the video game dustbin.

“I want to save this history. Everything comes and goes. There’s fads that come and go, pieces of Americana, which I guess you could say arcades were… There needed to be some place, open, so that the public could come in, and play the games that they enjoyed.”

The museum holds about 260 games, and about 40 more are in storage, waiting for Gary to fix them up. Funspot manager Aaron Richardson says Gary has an encyclopedic knowledge of the games’ inner workings.

“I went up to Gary one time with a piece of machine, that I had no clue what it went to. I said, Gary, I found this in Pharaoh’s Fantasy. He knew right away what it was. So he is so familiar with these games, it’s amazing.”

Besides preserving a piece of American history, Gary’s also preserving his own. He’s worked at Funspot since he graduated high school. He met his wife Susan there – she was a co-worker. He opened the museum in 1998, and organized the first tournament that next spring. The tournament is small but growing - in the past, about 35 people signed up every year. And this year, they’re already up to 65 competitors.

“The biggest thrill for me, or sense of satisfaction, is seeing somebody come in to museum, who’s never been here before, go around the corner into that next room, and they just go, wow, this is great. And they don’t have to say anything else. That just makes me feel good, and know that this is all worthwhile.”

The International Classic Videogame and Pinball Tournament continues at the Funspot in Weirs Beach through Sunday. For NHPR News, I’m Avishay Artsy.