For real....Did anybody go and take pics??

In all the videos/pics he posted, I didn't get to see the party room or any of the console game systems set up. Also wanted to see the decorations, lighting, and ESPECIALLY the collectable memorabilia etc that make it a museum!

Maybe that's still coming?

Makes me wonder if it even happened.

I was honestly curious...guess I expected decorated walls, colorful stuff, signs, framed original pieces with descriptions telling stories about them, etc...not a long narrow stark white room

Woah woah woah! Slow down buddy! Guy's got to actually focus on his machines working, ya know, the things people COME there to do! It's not like he had months of down time to work on the machines.. oh wait..

When you put together a garbage collection of free and dirt cheap games what do you expect?

This is a serious issue for a place like this. You can’t build a functioning game room establishment without having any new or restored equipment. You can’t cobble something like this together on the cheap.

He should sell half of this crap and replace it with stuff that works. The good news is he appears to have his infrastructure finally in place. The bad news is his equipment are all yard sale finds, Craigslist fixer uppers, and other odds and ends. You can’t charge the public for stuff like this. He also needs a repair staff which he obviously can’t or won’t pay for.

I’m worried about this project. He obviously has almost no cash on hand and isn’t going to be able to survive a slow start.

He's going to be there seven days a week untill ten.
He's "extremely experienced".
Those games will be up and running by next weekend!

There’s memorabilia on the walls, you just have to zoom in to see them.

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I think you 'can' charge for stuff like this....just super cheap. NOBODY would pay 25 for day, see this, and ever come back.....

If it cost like 5 bucks to play around with some old stuff for a couple hours, sure.

But it would get old fast, and not be profitable in a retail setting for sure...

Even if all the store hours are covered by others, I honestly believe you are right about repair/maintainance....one young person will never be enough to keep it ALL going....and that becomes apparent real quick when stuff on floor already has monitors out, back doors off, games off/down on opening dayday...

Time to bust out a cut off sleeved sweatshirt and knuckle down on repairs!

LMAO! Thanks for that!!!
Been a long busy afternoon in shop today, that made my day! Lol.

If you are traveling a distance to come here...are you going to spend $25 for a day here, or spend $25 at Pinball gallery in Malvern...with somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 pins, and most are post 1985. When I was a banned from his Facebook page, he corrected me and said his newest pin was a Comet. I said he mainly had EM's...oops. I guess that deserves a ban. If you want EM's, village Arcade in Honeybrook actually has nice stuff.

Good info.

And here I was planning a Griswold vacation around this

Pinball Gallery normally has a few that are either out of order or down. It's no big deal. Hopefully he will get a few back up games that he can rotate into place as others break. The em pins will be the least troublesome. I certainly could not have done this at 21..even with help. It is fun to joke around and maybe he has made some mistakes, but I hope that at least a few of us who can get there within a reasonable drive go out and spend $25.

I am curious to know what you guys feel in that video is "junk." I saw a good cross section of classic arcade games and some decent looking em pins. The arcades I remember did not generally have games that looked new. I recall cigarette burns on control panels, graffiti and chipped cabinets..and nobody really cared as long as it worked properly.

So when you goin?

A lot of us remember the condition of the games he brought to Pinfest.

Actually, the Village Arcade is in St. Peters, Pa, just off rt 23. He has an amazing collection of em pins and em arcade games which are in great shape and work perfectly. Pins are all on 2 plays for a quarter! Where can you find that these days??

Man you guys are mean spirited. I know the dude is a weirdo narcissist but come on. I myself have been guilty of being mean to him due to his begging and stealing from the community. But at the end of the day, he's a kid just trying to start an arcade. We should be encouraging him or just ignoring him not putting him down just to laugh when he fails. Remember what your mother said about if you don't have something nice to say..

Not sure, but I'm open the next couple Saturdays. If you are in the area, some other things to do include the Green Dragon Farmers Market (only open Friday) and Shady Maple Smorgasbord (closed Sunday). Tons of things to do in nearby Lancaster too.

I'm a big fan of the Village Arcade too. The hours are very limited though.

what was it he said about nailing somebody's wife here on Pinside?

Considering he is completely unapologetic about his past actions here, and very recently made another post disparaging Pinside in this thread- i'd say everything coming his way has been rightly earned.

Cool. Be sure to share some pics.

I'm not into paying to sit and play home consoles, but I would like to see a cool setup with bunches of crt tvs going at same time, etc. As well.

Yeah, that was my wife.
She misses him & his hot sweatpants.

Saw pictures on Facebook...wow...the place is...very...WHITE.

And how do you suggest he fix that?

No fix needed, what do you expect in Amish country!

Ohhh....is that the deal with Donkey Kong having no monitor but on game floor first day that way? It's the Amish version??

Paint??

Now hes on Facebook asking how to fix stuck flippers. I can see this place will be running perfectly. No problem.

Simple....read the run on sentence of how to repair pinballs by Otaku.

I hope he sells merchandise.
I’m kind of hoping for a Gameseum T-shirt to rock at shows.
Or maybe some logo sweatpants.

I generally try to stay out of the drama, but hearing that many of the games on the floor were not working, doesn’t surprise me.

Case in point, when he would bring games to the shows (one I vividly remember was actually the JJP open house), he brought a magnotron and I think a domino. They were both BARELY playable, and looked like they were salvaged from the bottom of the ocean. Then 1 hour later, they were both down, hoods up, schematics out, and if I recall correctly, they weren’t really playable the remainder of the event.

EMs are reliable, but you gotta put in the work to get them there. You need to rebuild every stepper, score reel, and triple check every relay is operating properly without sticking. That takes a TON of time. I can only imagine just how horrendous the insides of his barn finds are, and how overwhelming it must be to keep up with the sheer volume of games he has. There’s not enough time in the day to maintain/repair all of that AND run a business. I suspect he wipes them down, and gets them running with as little effort as possible—leading to breakdowns in the future.

Anyway, I still do wish him the best in his endeavors. I’ll have to check it out sometime.

+1 on the comment that totally gone thru EMs are quite reliable....they really can take a lot of use for years; And come from an era of true craftsmanship!

The games he buys or are given are often total garbage. The fact that he doesn't know how flippers works makes the fact that he thinks these games are ready for public use even more alarming.

He went after Lloyd from Coin Op Warehouse last year for "stealing" a ratty, mold covered Spinout from him on a Facebook sale, whining about how Lloyd is a jerk off for "flipping games" blah blah blah - you know, for doing what he's been doing for eons to feed himself and pay the bills. Hauling ratty old games out of basements for small profit margins might not be as glamorous as begging for money on the internet but it's honest and difficult work, not the kind of thing a lazy entitled wannabe should be bagging on.

Shouldn't surprise anybody who knows his body of work - Steve LOVES going after hard working, honest people who have been making their living AND contributing to the pinball hobby and community for decades before he ever slipped on his first pair of sweatpants. But his complete misunderstanding about how the world works never ceases to amaze me. Nobody owes you anything, not 5 changes to a shipping address for your order of $25 worth of parts, nor first dibs on a moldy, $150 Gottlieb Spinout that you want to charge the public to play.

You'd really think he'd be more friendly to the vets around here, people who could offer him help on why his flippers aren't working. Nothing Steve does really surprises me any more, but I have to say even I'm shocked that the proprietor of a "museum" for EM pinball machines is asking for advice on how to make his EM flippers work. If you can't handle that I don't see how you are going to be able to maintain any kind of of functioning inventory.

I say this with no joy because we need all the arcades we can get, but I'm giving the Gameseum 6 months.

And it will be "for reasons completely out of their control" and "through no fault of our own". Then there will be a gofundme to purchase a 30' yard shed to store the games in up in Mohnton until a more suitable location is found. But the $260 of $5000 raised will be spend on more junk games instead of the shed.

You didn’t mention sweats once in that post. Impressive

PLease read again.

Shit! I can’t believe I missed that! I was wondering how you not mention it when it’s a staple to all your other posts in this thread

Storage is easy - He will put them back in his Gram’s basement. No gofundme needed .... Well maybe for a sump pump.

Grand Opening Day 2 checklist:

1. ask internet how flippers work
2. buy extra fire extinguishers

Just found the post about the flippers.

Yikes...

Did he forget that chapter in his book?

Can someone screenshot?

It's pretty depressing. Apparently he doesn't know what a flipper bushing is or how to remove one. Reading through the thread it's also apparent that he wants to fix this issue without using any new parts or even taking the assembly completely apart. Lazy and broke is a tough combo for keeping a ton of EM beaters running.

I hope there's someone in Ephrata with some experience who he hasn't pissed off yet that can help him out. I'd do it but I'm 2 hours away. My personal advice is it's probably the bushing, or the flipper itself is binding and needs to be adjusted. Should be an easy issue to fix really. Step 1? Take the flipper apart. A lot of work, I know (could take 15 minutes!!!), but you gotta bite the bullet on this one.

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Let's start a gofundmyass to pay for Levi to go repair machines!!!!

If you guys want to pay my car rental, gas, and tolls and buy me lunch for the day, I'll go out there and help Steven out!

Probably would wind up being best thing for him and the business....and well worth the return on investment to have working equipment at establishment.....

But alas, I don't think the last handout got more than a few hundred of their thousands goal....

Maybe it WOULD be worth them, for real, looking into a local tech to help out....That's just business brass tacks, really...

No... You're just offering to go only to help him get a pair of pants (that don't secure with either elastic or string) !!

Amazon gift sent right to the arcade would be soooo much easier.

Don’t forget the $25 entrance fee.

How much is this I'd chip in.