Robot Claw – Page 106 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Can Collection Update

July 31, 2023

I’ve posted about my can ‘collection’ twice before, which you can read here and here. It’s been five years since the last one so here’s an update.

Let’s start with dinosaur cans from the last Jurassic Park film. Once again these were available in various flavours of Dr Pepper and as you can see I only found five (of seven). Interestingly I recently learned that a similar promotion occurred in Australia! I wonder did any of my Ozlandian friends get any cans?

Here we have a selection of game-related cans. The Coke one I got in Japan, and the other two (both energy drinks that I didn’t drink) were bought in the USA. The Sonic can is pretty cool isn’t it?

These four One Piece themed cans – all for various coffee drinks – were all bought in Japan. Licensed cans for this series are common and you could probably fill shelves with them if you were a fan. I’m not, but I can’t resist a licensed can and KLS drinks the coffee 🙂

Some more anime-themed cans, both picked up on recent Japan trips. The Coke was sickly sweet and ended up being poured down a drain!

Even more anime-themed cans, this time for Uma Musume (‘Horse Girls’). The big ones are energy drink and came out of a machine in a Game Center, and the smaller one is coffee I bought in Akihabara.

Three Ultraman themed items. The two cans were bought in an Asian grocer in NYC, and I don’t recall where I got the Ultraman shaped bottle, which I’ve had for almost a decade. In Japan I saw an Ultraman can from many years ago, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was another series with a rich history of licensed cans.

This coffee can featuring Jin from BTS was going to go to Bernard, but I’ve inexplicably kept it. I probably should just throw it away…

Likewise this Black Adam energy drink can, which I believe is the only licensed item in our home featuring Dwayne Johnson. I like this one, since the film was a flop and I haven’t seen any other merchandise.

Lastly we have these six Mountain Dew cans featuring art from various themes. They’re all from 2007/2008, and during this time Dew had several different promotions where aluminum bottles were made featuring designs by various artists. There seems to have been a lot of these (dozens) and some of mine are from the ‘green label’, ‘stars and stripes’ and ‘nascar’ (!) series. According to what I read retail distribution of these was very poor so perhaps it’s surprising I found this many.

As I was taking these photos and writing this post my intention was to recycle most of these cans, but in the end I… didn’t. They went into a box and into the attic, there to remain forever.

Funspot (Part 2)

July 26, 2023

I had a novel idea: play some games at Funspot, do as well as I could, and then compare my scores to the world records. It turns out this was more difficult than I anticipated!

For starters, it’s often difficult to find any high scores for certain games. The obvious source would be Twin Galaxies, but that’s a site with a lot of baggage and it’s hard to judge the accuracy of many of their records. Even worse, it’s hard to even find records on their abysmal webpage!

Secondly, since most arcade games have dip-switches that allow the operator to adjust difficulty, it’s not always as easy as comparing a score to one recorded online since I may have played a different version of the game. I think this is likely for Funspot, which (obviously, and understandably) seems to set their games at the hardest mode.

Thirdly, certain games have ‘tricks’ that seem to disqualify high scores when used. The enforcement of this seems dubious to say the least: Pac-Man for instance has patterns that every master player uses, but the ‘t-block’ in Qix is apparently frowned upon if used in a high scoring run. Suffice to say I didn’t know any of these tricks, and used none!

I played dozens of different games at Funspot, but for fourteen of them I recorded my scores (some of which came from multiple attempts) to compare to the records. For three of these (Gaplus, Galaga ’88 and Marble Madness) I was unable to find reputable high score info, and for the remaining eleven here are my scores plotted as a percentage of the world records:

Overall, I’d say I did fairly well! Sure my 9,545 points in Missile Command wasn’t too close to the world record of almost 104,000,000 but I only played for a few minutes where the record took 72 hours! And my ten minute score of 128,552 on Star Wars wasn’t bad since the world record (300 million) took 54 hours. I’d say everything from Qix (a game which becomes incredibly difficult very quickly) upwards is impressive, and Track & Field is, if I may be so humble, a stupendous achievement!

I’ll be the first to admit I’m a little rusty. I used to be able to effortlessly defeat Black Tiger on one credit, but this time my game (2.1% of the world record) only reached stage two. I only destroyed two Death Stars on Star Wars and I didn’t even use the legendary ‘triple flapper’ method on Track & Field! But I’m happy with my results after only a few attempts and will refer back to this post when next we visit to try and improve on each game 🙂

This post also gives me a new topic to ponder: compared to every other player in the world, I wonder which game I’m the best at?

Funspot (Part 1)

July 25, 2023

We went on a cruise of Lake Winnipesaukee today. The weather was lovely and the breeze as the boat glided along was a nice break from the heat. The shores of this large freshwater lake are full of enormous and very expensive home and all I think when I see them is “How long does it take to clean a home like that?” Of course those that can even afford a house ten times larger than ours can also afford staff to clean it!

Afterwards, and for the second time in two days we went and spent several hours at Funspot. This is – once again – the principle reason we’re here. Last time was during the pandemic and they seemed to have fewer machines but I’m very pleased to see things have turned around and there’s now more than ever!

A new inclusion are several super-rare games such as this ‘Mystic Marathon’ cabinet. Only five were ever made and Funspot has two of them! The other is playable and I can assure you the game is awful 🙂

I played lots of games both days – more on this tomorrow – and as always it was extremely nostalgic and a good even-more-retro follow up to my time spent at Hirose in Akihabara six weeks ago.

Of course they’ve still got a bunch of pinball machines, including several rare and unusual examples. Every time I visit I play Hercules and wonder how it ever got into production.

A new addition is the ‘pinball outpost’ which is a darkened alley with about a dozen tables. The low light lets the lights on the machines pop and makes it easy to marvel at the beautiful back glass art. Check out this table art too:

I played a few pinballs of course, but for me they’re a side-dish to the video games. Even the most thrilling pinball can’t hope to compete with a sit down Star Wars in the original cabinet 🙂

Tomorrow I’ll have more info on some of the games I played and how I did. Stay tuned!