Photos From The November 2012 Southern California Classic Collectors Arcade Party!
by: -RoG-

I've been attending the SC3 (Southern California Classic Collectors) arcade parties since I moved out to California some years ago. It's a gathering of classic gaming enthusiasts who bring in truckloads of arcade cabinets, consoles and other rarities from yesteryear and set it all on free-play for one awesome night. Whether you're looking to test your skills in a frantic four-player game of Warlords or try out some homebrew games on a Vectrex, SC3 always has you covered.

This year, the SC3 arcade party returned to its roots by taking place in a backyard out in Claremont once again. Apparently, just about all of the attendees of SC3 2011 preferred having it behind somebody's house rather than in the art gallery. Granted, this unfortunately meant there would be no live chiptune performances at the party, but there would be pizza and hot cider. Fair trade. We also gave the Abobo's Big Adventure arcade cabinet a break this time since it's currently up in northern Nevada, and just went to enjoy SC3 as always. We were there from 4pm 'til midnight and I did my best to capture photos of all the gaming goodness when I wasn't spending my time trying to secure the high score on the Quantum arcade cabinet. That game is just too addictive and if I were to ever buy that cabinet, my productivity would be permanently nullified. Anyway, without further day, here be the pics in no particular order:

There are always a variety of classic arcade cabinet marquees for sale & trade at SC3.
Here we have Rally-X and the original Ghosts 'n Goblins marquees.

The Sega Genesis Power Base Converter and the Intellivoice Voice Synthesis Module!

There comes a time when we gamers have to admit that some controllers go a bit overboard.
This would be one of those times.

This old copy of "Cauldron" by Broderbund really did its best to prevent you from actually buying the game with
promotional text like "For your protection, licensed psychiatrists are on duty in every city where this game is sold"
and the more straight to the point verbiage, "WARNING: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!"

He may have been a little scuffed up, but this lil' Omnibot was the first big prize to be claimed in the GameGavel raffle.

There's also no shortage of random retro goodies to be had as
evidenced by these Riptide, Knight Rider, and A-Team sticker sets.

One of my best scores of the night was this pair of Skate or Die copies for the Commodore 64.
5 1⁄4-inch floppy disks will forever remain an instant visual doorway to my childhood.

The "Super Hik 42 in 1" multi-cart featuring games such as "Super Mario", "Worrld Soccer," "Contra", and "Alladdin III".

A pair of vintage Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man plush dolls from 1983.

A Kenner "Long Beach Grand Prix" handheld game and a classic Coleco "Donkey Kong" tabletop arcade game.

A vintage Tele-Pong Electronic TV Game still in the box. Oh how far we've come...

The new Hot Wheels Atari cars designed after games like Pong, Centipede, Breakout, and even the Atari 2600 itself.

There's never any shortage of boxed NES games up for grabs. Unfortunately, the guy who was selling them
packed up and left before I had a chance to snag the ones I wanted. No big deal though... I'll get 'em next time.

A Virtual Boy in a custom case from Blockbuster Video with the rental scan tag still on it.
Also, an original sealed copy of Donkey Kong Jr. Math for the Nintendo Entertainment System! NOT a cheap game.

A variety of larger gaming boxes (including the Super Scope, a SNES, a ColecoVision and Roller Controller)
were piled up under the tree as if Santa Claus himself had hand-delivered them...

...er, maybe he did?

FrogNerd is a copy of Frogger hooked up to a NES Power Pad,
so you literally have to bring your frog to safety with your feet. Good times!

Atari games galore.

Always nice to see some old Intellivoice games like Bomb Squad and Space Spartans for the Intellivision. It talks!

The Atari XE System with an AtariMax multi-game cartridge plugged in for all to enjoy.

As always, there are more than enough old consoles hooked up for everybody to try out,
and each one has a multi-game cartridge so you don't have to swap out boatloads o' games.

Attendees always appreciate the vintage commercials, shows,
and even game documentaries that are projected in the yard.

Boxed games for the Magnavox Odyssey² including: K.C.'s Krazy Chase, War of Nerves, Crypto-Logic, Blockout, and more.

You played the Sega arcade game, now play the Milton Bradley board game version of Turbo!

The Sega Genesis X-BAND video game modem. The only truly cool way to send emails.

The box art for Suicide Mission is pretty amazing.

Of course, there are always arcade games to be played as well.
Here we have Galaga, Satan's Hollow, a multi-game cabinet and Donkey Kong off in the distance.

As always, the Garage had plenty of arcade games to enjoy along with a nice light show.

The warm glow of arcade games like Food Fight and TRON is always a welcome sight.

Same goes for Zoo Keeper and Q*bert.

You can also try some more bizarre laser disc game titles such as Badlands (not to be confused with the Atari game
of the same title) and Super Don Quix-ote. In Badlands, I saw a scorpion attack a cowboy by climbing onto his face,
and instead of stinging him, it chopped up his hair and gave him a mohawk. Awesome.

Never played Blaster before, which is a sequel of sorts to Robotron 2084,
so it was a nice treat to finally play this 3D shooter.

Quick, Pac-Man! Chomp a power pellet... er... Dragon's Lair lunch box before the ghosts get you!

Obey the laws of BurgerTime or suffer the crushing consequences.

Don't complain if you got burned. You were warned.

Q*bert, Donkey Kong, Frogger, BurgerTime, Galaxian, Pac-Man, and Ms. Pac-Man.
I always love seeing all these Coleco tabletop arcade games hooked up together.

Don't worry, the Vectrex screen isn't really cracked.

A ColecoVision system showing off its Pac-Man game that was far superior to the Atari 2600 version.

The four-player Warlords cocktail cabinet is always a crowd pleaser. For those of you who've never played it,
imagine Pong, but you're defending castles from flaming fireballs delivered by flying dragons.

While it was never a big hit in the arcades, Quantum will forever be one of my favorite games.
You use a trackball to draw circles around objects of increasing difficulty in order to destroy them.
It's a game you have to play in person, because no emulation of it could possibly do it justice.

Dr. Boogie and I also tried out Eliminator vector graphics arcade for the first time. What makes it a fun
two-player game isn't trying to destroy the Eliminator asteroid base, it's trying to knock your friend into it.
Sure, that's not the goal of the game, but it quickly became the goal when we started playing.
There's also a harder to find four-player version of the game, and I can only imagine how chaotic that must get.

Can't go wrong with a classic game of Crystal Castles.

Random NES games and a few others.

A video rental store promotional sign for the Ferris Bueller's Day Off being released on VHS, laserdisc, and 8mm video.
Also, a copy of "Fortress of Narzod" for the Vectrex system along with a reproduction overlay.

Always good to see somebody enjoying Splatterhouse.

A marquee for the rarely seen Q*bert's Qubes sequel.

Another sight from my childhood - The Pac-Man Album!

And lastly, this was my best score of the 2012 SC3 party:
Two custom TRON arcade cabinet toppers - a Recognizer and a Light Cycle.
Gonna have to find a blacklight to make these two really pop out!

And that pretty much wraps it up for my pics of the November 2012 SC3 party. It was great being in the old backyard once again (even though it was much colder than during previous years), because it always has that personal touch to it. Even if it's your first time attending, SC3 always manages to feel like a big group of friends getting together to do nothing but celebrate every aspect of video gaming over the course of one awesome night. Can't wait for the next SC3 arcade party and I hope you enjoyed all the photos!

Have any questions or comments about this piece?
Email -RoG-