Oh yea... and its entirely stupid...
Boom! What do I see next? A german and a rooster? A New Zealander and a sheep? Rob with Eileen? NO!
An coin operated, epilepsy educing, "Boom Shak-a-lak-a" NBA Jam arcade machine!!!
I just about crapped myself. I continued reading and realized not only did he own the machine, he was going to modify it to have MAME running on it.
My Mexican Brother, Yappy.
TAMPA! Where all the best girls hook!
I had dreamed about doing this once when I first saw MAME. I think the train of thought went something like:
Steve: "Hey! Wouldn't it be cool if we could put this emulator into a big friggin machine, with buttons and joysticks and all?!"
Vinny: "What for?"
Steve: "To playing games in our house?! How fucking cool would that be?! "
Vinny: "What do you think that Playstation is for?"
Steve: "Oh..."
Vinny: "Now if we had some hookers..."
Well, it didn't go just like that, but the point was... I forgot about my dream till now. I sent that link to my friend Vinny and for the first time since he lured me away from my dreams with talk of hookers, we shared the same vision.
And unlike that time long ago when we lived in my parents house, hiding from the realities (and the expenses) of the world, we had the disposible income to instantiate our dreams in the fabric of our boring realities.
Jeff greeted us that evening with a full pizza and a 2 litter of Coke. Of course we ignored his feeble attempt to get us to forget about the 300 lb. artifact from the heavens in the guest bedroom.
Pushing friend and sustenance aside, we decended upon that machine like the pair of somewhat cool dorks that we really are (ok... we're very cool dorks, IMHO... but using IMHO doesn't make me very cool, so I guess you're on to my little lie by now).
Seeeee! It was REALLY REALLY FAR!
Jerry: Diety of Idiots
It was there he told me about Michel.
If you're looking at that name and wondering... did he misspell it? Did he mean to type Michelle? Or Michael? Nope, I spelled it right. Apparently, there's a country named France, and in that country there are French people. Every so often two of those French people get together and create other Frenchmen and Frenchwomen.
Like locusts, they spread to other places and enter the civilizations of real people where they try to walk among them without being noticed. Like that chick, Dian Fossey, from "Gorillas in the Mist" who tried to walk among the poor endangered something or other till they accepted her as one of their own.
Its just like that, but imagine a Gorilla sitting in Starbucks and reading the daily. This particular Frenchman, named Michel, tried to pass for a Video Game reseller and repair specialist. He was the one that sold the NBA Jam machine to Jeff.
Well, I'm not going to even try explaining the discussion I had with our barely english speaking friend. Lets just say that I was able to get an address out of him, a bit of a name, and that he indead had the game still up for sale. Oh yea Something about "tomorrow..." and "...is gone..." and "...New Jersey." I quickly called my buddy Sean before the guy packed up his snails and croisants and took off to plague yet another community of peaceful, gun toting Americans.
Due little to our friendly frenchy's broken english directions and more to luck, we found the bar this soon to be moving alien works out of. To be fair, I did get the unit for a great price. Of course, it didn't work, and with increadible technical explainations of why it wasn't working (mostly Michel's pointing and grunting and explaimations of "impossible!"), I purchased the machine I would soon come to know as "Mother Fucker!" as I yelled its name across my garage for the next few days.
Average Everyday Representative of France.
CONTINUE