Raven's house of Gaming

Well, might as well get the blog started. I meant to start one here for a while, but if I am going to blog I want to make it so that any crap I share with you guys is gonna be worth your time. I don't just want to start blogging about how the weather is or how sad I am. No offense to those that do but it's my personal preference that if I'm gonna distract people it's gonna be for something I think it's unique and/or good.

Today, since I was in town I have decided to take you to a small place where I spent countless hours of my youth on, but I'm getting ahead of myself. first of all some backstory, I spend my middle school/high school years living in a small town in New Jersey that goes by the name of Dunellen, and Dunellen is the quintessential small town of the USA (it is literally 1 square mile) and it was know back in the day as "The Railroad Town" simply because it grew into the town it is now thanks to the local train station that still sits right in the middle of town.

But enough about the history of small US towns, I'm taking you to a place I haven't seen in about 8 to 9 years. I moved away that long ago but I always remember that Dunellen is home to a little gem for videogame geeks all over NJ.

It's the home to one of the last remaining arcades in the US: Eight on the Break.



Eight on the Break has been working since the 1973. Yes, you read that right, a videogame arcade that's almost 40 years old!!! It started as a pool hall with some pinball machines and then the arcade machines started going in around 1985, when arcades where becoming the big new shinny thing everyone wanted to to (then the arcade bubble exploded)

When it entered the 90's they started holding tournaments for any and every kind of fighting game imaginable, that moved into tournaments for all the DDR people in the early 00's, and that's a part of it that's still going strong with fighting tournaments still being held there. Champions of the coast, the East Coast Championships and Kings of The Coast are the ones I remember the most.

I spent most of my time playing DDR, and the new machine that was in development In The Groove all the while eating cheap $3 burgers and since the time I've left it hasn't changed, it's like the place is forever enshrined from the passage of time, it's still covered in wallpaper from the 1970's along with crappy shag carpets and with the lights turned down it really looks the part of the old-school arcade where quarters are spent and dreams of videogame greatness are mercilessly crushed.

Pictures taken recently by yours truly

The new stuff

You like Initial D you say? well, now you can pretend you're Takumi Fujiwara.



... This I didn't know it actually existed on the US, a cabinet of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.



This is supposed to be a racing game that takes a picture of you as you're driving and displays it atop your racecar, that way you'll know who's the asshole that just shunted you into the wall. Pay no attention to that bastard in the screen.



The screenshot speaks for itself.



An arcade cabinet of some type of game called Super Street Fighter IV.



This is apparently a music game that uses a touchscreen.



This is another music game that uses the touchscreen, that screen in the picture is for the viewing pleasure of anyone watching you play, with the actual touchscreen controls being where you would regularly find your sticks.

The old stuff

A cookie to anyone who can tell me what these 2 cabinets are.



These 2 need no introduction.



BUST-A-MOVE!!!!!!!!!



A House of the Dead light gun cabinet, I spent so many quarters in that sucker.



This was just getting introduced into the arcade by the time I moved out.



Street Fighter 2 anyone? Or...



Would you prefer some 3rd Strike.



They used to have 3 beatmania cabinets, that got reduced to just 1 now.



People like to leave shit in the cabinets all the time, most of it is for fun but some people leave travel tickets from all over the us, like that guy in the picture leaving his student ID from Hawaii.



The original machine I used to beat the crap out of with my feet. My reaction to finding it was something along the lines of "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!" and "Jesus Christ on a pikestaff, this thing still works?"



I never got to try In The Groove 2, but I did beat the crap out of the pads on the original In The Groove.

And finally, some Pinball:

Also, as I was having a friendly chat with the owner who was wondering why some drunken bastard was taking pictures all over the place, he told me someone made a youtube video of the establishment recently. I asked for the link and here it is:



Aaaaand that's all folks.