Hot Like Wasabi
CAGiversary!
No, my digital cam is MIA but next time if I dont have it back I will bring a normal cam.
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- Thread starter CheapyD
- Start date
Well, I figure a lot of you probably have a whole crapload of games and some of which you might like to trade. I was thinking for NYC, we might go to one of those game lounges in the east village.
They have console setups as well as PC networks.
They have console setups as well as PC networks.
CTLesq
CAGiversary!
[quote name='CheapyD']Well, I figure a lot of you probably have a whole crapload of games and some of which you might like to trade. I was thinking for NYC, we might go to one of those game lounges in the east village.
They have console setups as well as PC networks.[/quote]
So long as I have enough notice that works. March 3 appears to be when things are tentatively scheduled for so I am cool with that.
CTL
They have console setups as well as PC networks.[/quote]
So long as I have enough notice that works. March 3 appears to be when things are tentatively scheduled for so I am cool with that.
CTL
CTLesq
CAGiversary!
This was in today's Style Section of the NYT's
Comfy Chairs, Flamethrowers for Rent
By ANNA BAHNEY
1,713 words
18 April 2004
The New York Times
Late Edition - Final
1
English
(c) 2004 New York Times Company
JOSE SANTIAGO had planned to take his 6-year-old son, Michael, to see the latest ''Scooby Doo'' movie on a recent Friday night, but Michael insisted on cooking and cleaning instead. So Mr. Santiago, 28, a construction worker, helped Michael with those tasks, traversing a kitchen floor tiled in black and white. He only occasionally glanced at the alien-annihilating flamethrowers next door.
The screen next door, that is.
At Game Time Nation, a video-game lounge in the East Village of Manhattan, Mr. Santiago and his son were engrossed in ''The Sims'' -- attending to virtual life tasks -- while all around were the roars and whooshes of car chases and interstellar shootouts. Mr. Santiago looked up from the little kitchen on his screen to the 17 other 32-inch flat-screen televisions in a horseshoe around him and Michael, and confessed to a sense of enjoyment.
''It's a lot cheaper than a movie,'' he said. ''We can always see 'Scooby Doo' tomorrow.'' But the next afternoon they were back at the lounge, accompanied by a thrilled cousin of Michael's.
Game Time Nation, which opened on East 12th Street in June, is one of some 450 video game lounges that have popped up across the country in recent years, offering pay-by-the-hour access to a library of games that normally retail for $20 to $50, on systems like the Microsoft Xbox and the Sony PlayStation 2, or on PC's. The lounges, a cross between the high-octane video-game arcades of the 80's and the relaxed Internet cafes of the 90's, mix the thrills of blasting enemies before an audience of friends with the comfort of a couch, a can of Red Bull at hand.
The current generation of graphically seductive game systems, beginning with the PlayStation in 1995 and including the Xbox in 2000, has brought gaming out of deep geekdom. Video games are sauntering further into the mainstream with Xbox and PlayStation lounges. They have sprung up in resorts like Telluride, Colo., and as adjuncts to dance clubs like Play in New York and Avalon in Hollywood, which last week installed a PlayStation 2 in its V.I.P. penthouse. Steven Adelman, an owner of Avalon, said the game area -- with Spanish Moroccan decor and table service -- fits the vibe of the club. ''If it gets away from what is cool,'' he said, ''we wouldn't go there.''
Offering a happy-hour substitute for 20- and even 30-somethings, video lounges might forever uncouple the terms ''hard core'' and ''gamer.'' They make video games accessible to adults who don't know the difference between ''Halo'' and ''Mojo,'' and are afraid to ask.
With sales of video games and consoles now surpassing Hollywood box-office receipts, the lounges ''are as important to the gaming industry as theaters are to the movie industry,'' said Mark Nielsen, the executive director of iGames, a company that provides games to an association of lounges nationwide. New ones are opening at 30 a month, he said.
In addition to young adults, the lounges draw teenagers seeking hangout space and a chance to battle squadrons of their friends at a time. Alexis Wallace, 16, and three friends from nearby Washington Irving High School sank into a sofa at Game Time Nation and sang along to the music video ''Stacy's Mom'' projected on the wall.
''I have the money today, so I got to pick the game,'' Alexis said. She paid $5 for an hour on PlayStation 2 and started with ''Resident Evil: Outbreak,'' but was befuddled by the controls. She swapped it for ''Kingdom Hearts,'' a Disney game.
Alexis' friends flanked her, suggesting strategy. ''It is an after-school hangout,'' one of them, Shawn Holloway, also 16, said. The teenagers live in different neighborhoods, so finding a place to meet that is not under the parental gaze is a primary quest. Before Game Time Nation opened, ''we would go to restaurants,'' Shawn said, ''but they don't let you sit there too long.''
Wendell Wilson, 14, had one word for the lounge: ''Sanctuary.''
Naturally, the lounges are popular for birthday parties for groups of fourth-graders, and sometimes for smaller celebrations. Gillian Safdeye, 15, sat on a sofa at Game Time Nation, her gold strappy sandals decorated with bows dangling above the floor, playing ''Mortal Kombat'' with her brother Daniel for two hours as a gift for his 11th birthday.
Daniel's giddy face was awash in perma-grin. As she struck blows, Gillian said, ''I like video games -- I grew up with three brothers.'' Although the Safdeyes have a PlayStation 2 at home, the Game Time Nation screen is bigger and the selection of games broader. There is also the chance to compete against other players networked together.
Wilson Kriegel, the 28-year-old owner of the lounge, has never had his own console, but he likens his business to a Starbucks (and wouldn't mind expanding to other cities). ''You get it the way you want it, however you want it, when you want it,'' he said.
Yet standing in Game Time Nation, it is impossible not to wonder how long the market can last. That is partly because the space is haunted: it is the former headquarters of the urban delivery service Kozmo.com, which was a casualty of the dot-com bust. The video-lounge concept is an update of the faded wave of video arcades, which offered an earlier generation of coin-operated games that were played standing up. In 1984, there were some 24,000 video arcades, according to Valerie Cognevich, editor of PlayMeter magazine, a trade publication, but the number vacillated for a decade and has been declining since.
Eddie Adlum, who has published the arcade trade magazine RePlay since 1976, said he is not sold on the idea of game lounges. ''It sounds plausible at its root, but I haven't yet seen financial success,'' he said. ''I'm just sitting back watching to see if it proves itself.''
Keith Feinstein, a video game historian and the curator of ''Videotopia,'' a traveling exhibition of more than 100 ''classic'' arcade games, observed: ''The 80's was the last time there was a real arcade culture. It was rebellious. Your parents didn't understand it -- they didn't play video games. Today parents do play video games.''
They are also more wary of the content. To allay concerns, lounges usually require a parental consent form, kept on file, before children can rent a game rated at M (for age 17 and over) or sometimes T (13 and over). Game Time Nation removes all M-rated games from the shelves during children's parties. Another lounge, the Game, in Smithtown, N.Y., on Long Island, lets parents set limits based on violent or sexual content. But both businesses have an exclusion clause for ''Halo,'' an M-rated shooting game that pits humans against a race of aliens, because it is so popular. ''Parents can say, I'll let my child play 'Halo,' but nothing else with an M,'' said Phil Cerami, owner of the Game.
Dr. Marchita Masters, a psychologist who works with juvenile offenders in San Diego County, opened a video game lounge called GameLords in Ocean Beach, Calif., with a business partner last August. Though she acknowledges that making a profit is one motive, she says she hopes to see young people in the lounge before she sees them at work. Neither she nor her partner, Rose Marie Munno, are video game players, but they see GameLords as a safe place for youngsters to hang out.
''Our place gets you out of your living room,'' Dr. Masters said. ''It turns video gaming from a solo activity into a social occasion. You're in a roomful of 30 or 40 people hooting and hollering. I predict it will become a spectator sport.''
Many lounges find that it can be a challenge to meet different generations' expectations of cool. ''I have to appeal to a 10-year-old kid, a 16-year-old wearing a skull-and-crossbone T-shirt, and a 38-year-old soccer mom looking to host a birthday party,'' Mr. Cerami said. ''It's a juggling act.'' His place on Long Island was all fluorescent colors when it opened in 2002, but at the behest of the older teenagers, the couches are now skull-T-shirt black, though the walls remain playroom green.
Players in their 20's and up who are commitment-phobic about owning a console are a coveted market for lounges. Philip Cheung, 40, and three co-workers from an art-installation company in TriBeCa drop by Game Time Nation to play ''Halo'' as if it were their local bar -- one where they can shoot each other.
''It has a kind of ease about it,'' Mr. Cheung said. ''At an arcade, you are constantly pumping the machine -- that's now more like a casino atmosphere. This is more laid-back.''
On a Friday night, Roccia Stella, 21, a D.J., walked through Game Time Nation with two friends as they began a night out. They didn't play, but Mr. Stella said, ''Honestly, I would come here with my friends, just to kill some time and play some games.''
He surveyed the black-and-white-tiled room, dominated by blue flickering light, and announced, ''All they need to do is fix it up.'' Shaking his head, he added, ''I wish I would have thought of this idea years ago -- I would have been a millionaire.''
Photos: GAME TIME -- Some 450 video-game lounges have opened, including one at Avalon, a Hollywood dance club, above, and Game Time Nation, left. (Photo by Jamie Rector for The New York Times); (Photo by Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times)(pg. 7); DUELISTS -- Steven Adelman, above left, and John Orozco at battle in the video-game penthouse at Avalon in Hollywood. Top, Gillian Safdeye, 15, treats her brother Daniel for his 11th birthday at Game Time Nation in New York. (Photo by Jamie Rector for The New York Times); (Photo by Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times)(pg. 1)
Document NYTF000020040418e04i0007m
Comfy Chairs, Flamethrowers for Rent
By ANNA BAHNEY
1,713 words
18 April 2004
The New York Times
Late Edition - Final
1
English
(c) 2004 New York Times Company
JOSE SANTIAGO had planned to take his 6-year-old son, Michael, to see the latest ''Scooby Doo'' movie on a recent Friday night, but Michael insisted on cooking and cleaning instead. So Mr. Santiago, 28, a construction worker, helped Michael with those tasks, traversing a kitchen floor tiled in black and white. He only occasionally glanced at the alien-annihilating flamethrowers next door.
The screen next door, that is.
At Game Time Nation, a video-game lounge in the East Village of Manhattan, Mr. Santiago and his son were engrossed in ''The Sims'' -- attending to virtual life tasks -- while all around were the roars and whooshes of car chases and interstellar shootouts. Mr. Santiago looked up from the little kitchen on his screen to the 17 other 32-inch flat-screen televisions in a horseshoe around him and Michael, and confessed to a sense of enjoyment.
''It's a lot cheaper than a movie,'' he said. ''We can always see 'Scooby Doo' tomorrow.'' But the next afternoon they were back at the lounge, accompanied by a thrilled cousin of Michael's.
Game Time Nation, which opened on East 12th Street in June, is one of some 450 video game lounges that have popped up across the country in recent years, offering pay-by-the-hour access to a library of games that normally retail for $20 to $50, on systems like the Microsoft Xbox and the Sony PlayStation 2, or on PC's. The lounges, a cross between the high-octane video-game arcades of the 80's and the relaxed Internet cafes of the 90's, mix the thrills of blasting enemies before an audience of friends with the comfort of a couch, a can of Red Bull at hand.
The current generation of graphically seductive game systems, beginning with the PlayStation in 1995 and including the Xbox in 2000, has brought gaming out of deep geekdom. Video games are sauntering further into the mainstream with Xbox and PlayStation lounges. They have sprung up in resorts like Telluride, Colo., and as adjuncts to dance clubs like Play in New York and Avalon in Hollywood, which last week installed a PlayStation 2 in its V.I.P. penthouse. Steven Adelman, an owner of Avalon, said the game area -- with Spanish Moroccan decor and table service -- fits the vibe of the club. ''If it gets away from what is cool,'' he said, ''we wouldn't go there.''
Offering a happy-hour substitute for 20- and even 30-somethings, video lounges might forever uncouple the terms ''hard core'' and ''gamer.'' They make video games accessible to adults who don't know the difference between ''Halo'' and ''Mojo,'' and are afraid to ask.
With sales of video games and consoles now surpassing Hollywood box-office receipts, the lounges ''are as important to the gaming industry as theaters are to the movie industry,'' said Mark Nielsen, the executive director of iGames, a company that provides games to an association of lounges nationwide. New ones are opening at 30 a month, he said.
In addition to young adults, the lounges draw teenagers seeking hangout space and a chance to battle squadrons of their friends at a time. Alexis Wallace, 16, and three friends from nearby Washington Irving High School sank into a sofa at Game Time Nation and sang along to the music video ''Stacy's Mom'' projected on the wall.
''I have the money today, so I got to pick the game,'' Alexis said. She paid $5 for an hour on PlayStation 2 and started with ''Resident Evil: Outbreak,'' but was befuddled by the controls. She swapped it for ''Kingdom Hearts,'' a Disney game.
Alexis' friends flanked her, suggesting strategy. ''It is an after-school hangout,'' one of them, Shawn Holloway, also 16, said. The teenagers live in different neighborhoods, so finding a place to meet that is not under the parental gaze is a primary quest. Before Game Time Nation opened, ''we would go to restaurants,'' Shawn said, ''but they don't let you sit there too long.''
Wendell Wilson, 14, had one word for the lounge: ''Sanctuary.''
Naturally, the lounges are popular for birthday parties for groups of fourth-graders, and sometimes for smaller celebrations. Gillian Safdeye, 15, sat on a sofa at Game Time Nation, her gold strappy sandals decorated with bows dangling above the floor, playing ''Mortal Kombat'' with her brother Daniel for two hours as a gift for his 11th birthday.
Daniel's giddy face was awash in perma-grin. As she struck blows, Gillian said, ''I like video games -- I grew up with three brothers.'' Although the Safdeyes have a PlayStation 2 at home, the Game Time Nation screen is bigger and the selection of games broader. There is also the chance to compete against other players networked together.
Wilson Kriegel, the 28-year-old owner of the lounge, has never had his own console, but he likens his business to a Starbucks (and wouldn't mind expanding to other cities). ''You get it the way you want it, however you want it, when you want it,'' he said.
Yet standing in Game Time Nation, it is impossible not to wonder how long the market can last. That is partly because the space is haunted: it is the former headquarters of the urban delivery service Kozmo.com, which was a casualty of the dot-com bust. The video-lounge concept is an update of the faded wave of video arcades, which offered an earlier generation of coin-operated games that were played standing up. In 1984, there were some 24,000 video arcades, according to Valerie Cognevich, editor of PlayMeter magazine, a trade publication, but the number vacillated for a decade and has been declining since.
Eddie Adlum, who has published the arcade trade magazine RePlay since 1976, said he is not sold on the idea of game lounges. ''It sounds plausible at its root, but I haven't yet seen financial success,'' he said. ''I'm just sitting back watching to see if it proves itself.''
Keith Feinstein, a video game historian and the curator of ''Videotopia,'' a traveling exhibition of more than 100 ''classic'' arcade games, observed: ''The 80's was the last time there was a real arcade culture. It was rebellious. Your parents didn't understand it -- they didn't play video games. Today parents do play video games.''
They are also more wary of the content. To allay concerns, lounges usually require a parental consent form, kept on file, before children can rent a game rated at M (for age 17 and over) or sometimes T (13 and over). Game Time Nation removes all M-rated games from the shelves during children's parties. Another lounge, the Game, in Smithtown, N.Y., on Long Island, lets parents set limits based on violent or sexual content. But both businesses have an exclusion clause for ''Halo,'' an M-rated shooting game that pits humans against a race of aliens, because it is so popular. ''Parents can say, I'll let my child play 'Halo,' but nothing else with an M,'' said Phil Cerami, owner of the Game.
Dr. Marchita Masters, a psychologist who works with juvenile offenders in San Diego County, opened a video game lounge called GameLords in Ocean Beach, Calif., with a business partner last August. Though she acknowledges that making a profit is one motive, she says she hopes to see young people in the lounge before she sees them at work. Neither she nor her partner, Rose Marie Munno, are video game players, but they see GameLords as a safe place for youngsters to hang out.
''Our place gets you out of your living room,'' Dr. Masters said. ''It turns video gaming from a solo activity into a social occasion. You're in a roomful of 30 or 40 people hooting and hollering. I predict it will become a spectator sport.''
Many lounges find that it can be a challenge to meet different generations' expectations of cool. ''I have to appeal to a 10-year-old kid, a 16-year-old wearing a skull-and-crossbone T-shirt, and a 38-year-old soccer mom looking to host a birthday party,'' Mr. Cerami said. ''It's a juggling act.'' His place on Long Island was all fluorescent colors when it opened in 2002, but at the behest of the older teenagers, the couches are now skull-T-shirt black, though the walls remain playroom green.
Players in their 20's and up who are commitment-phobic about owning a console are a coveted market for lounges. Philip Cheung, 40, and three co-workers from an art-installation company in TriBeCa drop by Game Time Nation to play ''Halo'' as if it were their local bar -- one where they can shoot each other.
''It has a kind of ease about it,'' Mr. Cheung said. ''At an arcade, you are constantly pumping the machine -- that's now more like a casino atmosphere. This is more laid-back.''
On a Friday night, Roccia Stella, 21, a D.J., walked through Game Time Nation with two friends as they began a night out. They didn't play, but Mr. Stella said, ''Honestly, I would come here with my friends, just to kill some time and play some games.''
He surveyed the black-and-white-tiled room, dominated by blue flickering light, and announced, ''All they need to do is fix it up.'' Shaking his head, he added, ''I wish I would have thought of this idea years ago -- I would have been a millionaire.''
Photos: GAME TIME -- Some 450 video-game lounges have opened, including one at Avalon, a Hollywood dance club, above, and Game Time Nation, left. (Photo by Jamie Rector for The New York Times); (Photo by Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times)(pg. 7); DUELISTS -- Steven Adelman, above left, and John Orozco at battle in the video-game penthouse at Avalon in Hollywood. Top, Gillian Safdeye, 15, treats her brother Daniel for his 11th birthday at Game Time Nation in New York. (Photo by Jamie Rector for The New York Times); (Photo by Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times)(pg. 1)
Document NYTF000020040418e04i0007m
Mr. Anderson
CAGiversary!
- Feedback
- 21 (100%)
Looks like a couple people might go mine.... hope I don't get molested.
hey, remember this?
I just checked their website and theve upgraded it pretty nicely...check it out.
http://cheapassgamer.meetup.com/
I just checked their website and theve upgraded it pretty nicely...check it out.
http://cheapassgamer.meetup.com/
[quote name='CheapyD']hey, remember this?
I just checked their website and theve upgraded it pretty nicely...check it out.
http://cheapassgamer.meetup.com/[/QUOTE]
What kind of scheme you runnin'!?
EDIT: This post won't make sense, as I just learned that they change the picture upon every refresh. This is the one I saw though.
I just checked their website and theve upgraded it pretty nicely...check it out.
http://cheapassgamer.meetup.com/[/QUOTE]
What kind of scheme you runnin'!?
EDIT: This post won't make sense, as I just learned that they change the picture upon every refresh. This is the one I saw though.
craven_fiend
CAGiversary!
- Feedback
- 112 (100%)
I wonder if jaket meets up with people....nah, theres no one else in Maine but him.
You can see his dot!
http://cheapassgamer.meetup.com/about/?country=us
http://cheapassgamer.meetup.com/about/?country=us
craven_fiend
CAGiversary!
- Feedback
- 112 (100%)
[quote name='CheapyD']You can see his dot!
http://cheapassgamer.meetup.com/about/?country=us[/QUOTE]
Wow, so many states without a group, and yet Jake created one for an area that probably doesn't have many CAGs. If only my area had one, although I'd probably have to drive an hour or so if I wanted to be part of it. Good times for the other CAGs I guess.
http://cheapassgamer.meetup.com/about/?country=us[/QUOTE]
Wow, so many states without a group, and yet Jake created one for an area that probably doesn't have many CAGs. If only my area had one, although I'd probably have to drive an hour or so if I wanted to be part of it. Good times for the other CAGs I guess.
craven_fiend
CAGiversary!
- Feedback
- 112 (100%)
[quote name='Jaket']
[/QUOTE]
Some Burnout 3 or Rainbow Six:BA? Might that cheer you up. HAHA
[/QUOTE]Some Burnout 3 or Rainbow Six:BA? Might that cheer you up. HAHA
bread's done