Revelation of the day: PS2 USB headsets (such as Logitech's), generally used with games such as Karaoke Revolution, also work fine for Skype. (I assume the reverse is true, for those of you looking to sing duets.)

However, the use of Skype to sing karaoke is highly unrecommended.

An update regarding the hardware discussed in yesterday's post comes in the form of an email from Digital Leisure:

"The Digital Leisure products (Dragon's Lair, Space Ace and Dragon's Lair 2) included with the Dream Arcades cabinet are fully licensed and authorized for use in this cabinet. However, we cannot verify the authorization of any other products sold with the system other than our own. If you are concerned about licenses, GlobalVR, through their newest acquisition Ultracade, sells fully licensed coin-op cabinets similar to Dream Arcades, if you are looking for other options."

Just when I thought this week couldn't get any more historical. I spent the last few days in Georgia – and not because last month's trip to KansasFest and its late-night Denny's run left me hankering for the more Southern option of a Waffle House. Regardless, I find myself cohabitating with a coin-op machine that housed nine classic arcade games: Donkey Kong, Dig-Dug, Space Invaders, and Frogger among them. I'm unsure of the legitimacy of the construct: surely emulation is a gray area, whereas piracy is verboten. I encourage those contemplating such a machine to investigate legal options, or the legality of whatever option you consider. Regardless, such fun as I've had these past few days is worth every penny, even if it's in the hundreds of thousands of them.

And, the icing on the cake: after too long a wait, The Wizard finally hits DVD in two days. Just like the Power Glove, it's so bad!

Nostalgia comes in waves, apparently. It can't be a coincidence that my expedition to Funspot was followed the day after with my first exposure to the Atari Flashback 2 console. The shoddy documentation left me unable to recall how to configure certain games, but some needed no explanation: Combat, Maze Craze. And though I thought the previously unreleased sequels to games like Adventure and Yars Revenge would be new and exciting, it almost seemed sacrilegious to tamper with such a tried-and-true formula. Perhaps it's the rote ritual of games by which we conjure up memories of the past. Mastery does not necessarily denote ease of play, though; I'll never be able to predict the flight of Adventure's damnable bat.

Highlight of the day: watching a six-year-old and an eight-year-old eagerly take turns playing Pitfall. Kids don't need 128-bit, Blu-ray, 12-button, M-rated games today anymore than we did 24 years ago.

Witnessing the enthusiasm such simplicity invoked prompted me to research the coming of the Wii – especially after my evangelism of its technology and the ensuing revolution failed to solicit belief in the afore-mentioned arcade virgin. My sources for this investigation were both Wikipedia and Nintendo's own web site. I found the primary benefactor of this mission to be me: watching the variety of uses of the controller and reading the confidence behind the text invoked days of poring over Nintendo Power, drooling over what was to come. Am I reverting to fanboyism? If that's what it takes to rekindle my interest in gaming, I will happily swear fealty to the company that started it all. (Besides Atari.)

It has been a good – and holy – three days.

This past weekend, I made a pilgrimage to one of my favorite destinations on Earth: Funspot, located near Weirs Beach on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, USA. This place was a popular vacation spot for my family when I was younger, but it didn't hold quite the same appeal then that it does now. Indeed, Funspot got a lot of flack from 1988 to 1999 – but they knew that, in time, sticking to their guns would produce for them a unique attraction.

That attraction is a room filled with more than a hundred arcade games from the Seventies and Eighties. This is the arcade where Billy Mitchell achieved a perfect score in Pac-Man on July 3rd, 1999. He is one of many whose pictures are framed on the Wall of Fame, while nearby are hung original posters advertising new games such as Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. Along the perimeter of the main room are dozens of pinball machines, from Superman of 30 years ago to more recent devices such as The Addams Family and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The games cost what they did back then: a quarter, unadjusted for inflation. I went to Funspot with someone who had never been to an arcade before – in fact, before last month, she had never played any video game whatsoever. We split $10 in tokens and squeezed out more than two hours of entertainment. We then played air hockey and skeeball, exchanging our tickets from the latter for a Chinese finger trap and some Pixie sticks, before heading from the cold, dark hive of electronic activity out again into the glaring sun of midday to take on Funspot's go-kart track.

Throughout the weekend, I neither stepped foot onto Weirs Beach nor spent any moment of the fading hours of summer sunlight in the waters of New Hampshire's largest lake. I am home again now, thinking to myself of all that I've missed – not the natural wonders of New England, but the 20 years of arcades that have witnessed increased expense and decreased popularity. Fortunately, the fall of that empire can be, at least temporarily, reversed as decades past rise once again by this simple trek to Funspot – made possible by the determination and passion of people such as manager Gary Vincent, technician Randy Lawton, and donors like Curt Vendel, who detached themselves from their own precious gaming artifacts so that they could be made available to all generations at this living museum.