Like many kids growing up in the early 1980s, young Kevin Mortenson spent a lot of time in arcades and popular teen establishments playing video arcade games.
Unlike many of those fellow kids, he now has a commercial garage full of the games in various working conditions. The child, who in 1982 would go to the arcade after classes at Estevan Junior High, has now grown to collect these machines in a love that started with the youthful pastime.
“After school we’d head off to the arcade, either Zimmerman’s Arcade in Wicklow (Centre), the bowling alley or Buffalo Bill’s in the (Estevan) Shoppers Mall,” Mortenson said. “Shortly after that, I got into the Atari 2600 consoles, and everybody was getting into those consoles like the Colecovision and Intellivision and I always enjoyed playing these consoles.”
About 20 years after that, in 2001, the adult Mortenson discovered eBay, the online auction site with just about everything in the world for sale.
“I thought I’d look to see if any of the old arcade games are available,” he said. “I found a Centipede in Saskatoon. That was the first game I bought, an Atari Centipede. The following year I bought a Wizard of Wor in Fargo (N.D.). That was my favourite game growing up. I still have it here.”
Mortenson would get one game here and there in the coming years, but he bought one in a bulk buy that was about 50 games in Des Moines, Iowa, not all of which were working.
After running out of room at home for the games, Mortenson has temporarily repurposed an old tire repair shop as a home for them as he pares down the numbers and starts selling some of them.
“I figured I’d start storing them here until I knew what I would do with them,” he said. “The first couple of years of collecting I had about 60 machines and at one point I had over 200 machines in this building. A lot of the cabinets weren’t good but there’s always a problem finding monitors now. Everything is flat screen and you want those old tube monitors.”
The cabinets were bought for the monitors to repair some of the old machines, he said. The farthest he’s had a game shipped is from Los Angeles, and he’s gone to Illinois or Missouri to get them. He shipped a game to Italy last spring.
“They’ve come from all over North America,” he said. “Lots I’ve gotten in Regina and Saskatoon. It’s a pain in the butt driving all over and getting stuff shipped.”
He had a lot of interest in the games raised recently with the Footloose musical at Estevan Comprehensive School. Some of the games were used as props.
But the technology in the games is pushing 40 years old in a lot of the games he has and the wiring is starting to get brittle.
“You’re getting cold solder joints and chips are failing,” he said. “When I took them to Footloose, I think I took about 16 machines and four of them went down… Just the trip from here across town. They’re a lot of upkeep.”
Even with the many video arcade games he’s bought for strictly the cabinets and the ones he’s been selling, he still has about 40 working games as of right now.
“People have asked me if I’m going to open an arcade and I tell them ‘no’,” he laughed. “I’d love to but I don’t know how well it would be supported or how receptive people would be to it. They’d come once and say ‘Well, that was cool,’ but never come back. I think it’d be fun to do but it wouldn’t last… I still may do it.”
The economics of the games would likely mean he’d have to charge more than the quarters that would feed these games back in the 1980s.
“A lot of places, like a family entertainment centre, you’d have to change all the coin boxes to a credit card-type thing,” he said. “I guess credits are anywhere from 50 cents up to a dollar. The price of the games is quite a bit more now.”
The boards and wiring were often only good for one game, so when that game lost popularity, it would be gutted with a new board inside and a new sticker on the cabinet.
“A lot of people, and myself I guess, are trying to convert them with what used to be a PacMan and finding the original wiring online,” Mortenson said. “People are reproducing them. The artwork has been reproduced. It’s part of the game.”
He’s still seeking a good-sized list of games he wants but he likes the smaller ones like the Galaga one he has.
“They’re about half the size of a full (size game),” he said. “They take up less space so I can put them in the basement. That’s more what I’m collecting now. But as for one specific game, I can’t even think. There’s so many I could say.
“I’ll always make room.”
