Arcade games changed my life.

I was a photographer just out of the airforce back in 1985.
When I came home, I needed a job. There was no internet, we got our job leads from the newspapers.

2 jobs came up that interested me: A darkroom photographer and an asst. manager at the Mall arcade.
I applied for both. I had experience as a photographer, I had no experience at all in arcade games.

I got interviews for both jobs, the arcade job selected another guy over me since I had no experience however, the darkroom job hired me.

1 week into my new darkroom job and I get a call from the arcade. The other guy quit 3 days in, they wanted me.

I had a choice to make..... stay with a job I knew or jump into something I loved.

It took me 3.723 seconds to quit the darkroom job and take the arcade job.

I met my wife there.

I learned about fixing the games and in 1987 I started buying them and putting them on route.
By 1995 I had over 100 pieces, I had pins, videos, jukeboxes and claw machines. I worked on them all and I converted many an old game into something new. I kick myself in the ass for this today....I can't tell you how many Jousts I converted to Double Dragon or Rastan but it was more than 15 cabs. But this was a route, it was all about quarters...to hell with saving a classic game, we didn't even consider this.

At auction you could find a working joust for 50 bucks! They were conversion bait as were many other titles.
I bought and sold games at auction pretty much all of the last part of the 80's and entire early 90's. In that time I also unboxed NIB... 2 Champagne Fires! An F-14 tomcat, A Whirlwind, A Fishtales, A Taxi, 2 TMNT 4 player uprights, 2 Dedicated Double Dragons (this game was so huge for me) and countless other NIB things...not to mention all the used games I bought as sold over those years. I miss it.

Then the bottom started falling out, I held on as long as I could, until about 2001 when I sold my last machine.

I'm back into it now...but not for the quarters.

This time it's for me!