I can still remember that first time I saw the thing, in a Show Biz Pizza Place location. I saw the graphics, then looked down and saw the coin door.
Fifty-cents!?! Oh man!
About the time Space Ace came out, I was able to score a machine because the Pioneer 7820 LaserDisc player had gone stupid. I learned how to align them by hand, and replace laser tubes. It was a lot of fun back then. Word got around.. and within a couple years I had 6 of them, and had fixed many others. I put them on location with the laserdisc players suspended on air cushions and would bolt two or three cabinets together if I had two or more games at one location. That way they were much harder to kick and rock back and forth. Mine tended to last a lot longer that way.
Space Ace and Thayer's Quest made me quite a bit during my high school years. It was really cool, I could write my own reports for Work Experience credit, since I had game route during the last two years of high school. With a flat bed pickup, it wasn't uncommon for me to have game machines on the back, and sometimes at Lunch, if I had pinball machines I'd run an extension cord from a near by building and let people play since they were at the right height when they were on the back of the truck, with the legs removed.
Lots of fun..
But it is much more fun .. on the laserdisc based system. The computer ports just don't do it for me.
