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Gaming Home Base

Game Room Remodeling Diary, Episode 4

Still concentrating mostly on wiring (and I still need to go pick up and extra power strip), but the Intellivision and Colecovision are now set up in their new homes, complete with backlit marquees:
PDF Game Room Remodeling
Tabletops are topsides with some more marquees (again, backlit). The Four shelves of rectangular objects are the magazines for my Pioneer CD changer.
A look at what’s up and running so far, with and without overhead light:
PDF Game Room Remodeling
All video is now hooked up, and I’m only a few cables away from having some consoles hooked up and ready to rock (I’ll do that on Saturday, in addition to putting the 2600 into the small shelf below the TV seen at right). All of the consoles requiring RF adapters will, as before, run through a VCR with dead tape mechs but a functioning tuner, only this time audio will also run through an ancient Archer stereo reverb unit, giving their audio more presence (and even, if for some reason I’m feeling kinda wacky, lotsa echo; most times I just put a little minimal echo in to give it a stereo effect).
Coming soon: more backlit marquees, more consoles, and an experiment to see if I can keep 10+ consoles hooked up on hot standby without requiring a single wire swap.
My electricity bill just jumped 40% taking these pictures. Probably won’t leave the marquees on all the time.
Here’s a rough floor plan of the room as it stands now, so you know what the heck you’re looking at:
Floor plan of the PDF Game Room
Now, probably of little interest to anyone, a look at the spider web of stuff running into my A/V amp, one two input channels of which are devoted to games of one kind or another:
PDF Game Room Remodeling
I still haven’t figured out how to remote control my amp with the video touch pads.
A look at the now-fully-functional video setup (whose rewiring yielded some tremendous unexpected benefits):
PDF Game Room Remodeling
I’ve tried playing some PSX stuff with that joystick at standing height, and all I gotta say is FREAKIN’ COOL. I wanna get a coin door with the slots and hang it from that shelf just for the feel of it.
And a closer look at the INTV and Colecovision shelves:
PDF Game Room Remodeling
Just you wait, though. I’m not even CLOSE to done here. Though not everybody likes the new look yet. Ever had a big sleepy white cat give you a look that says “Would you stop movin’ everything around, and get Expansion Module #2 out of my damn way?” I sure have.
Game Room Remodeling
More goodness tomorrow. Enjoy!… Read more