New All You Can Arcade service delivers

A new monthly subscription service run by a pair of San Francisco Bay Area brothers aims to ease suffering for those with a serious case of Pac-Man fever.

With their rental service, All You Can Arcade, Seth and Timothy Peterson drop off hulking arcade machines to homes and offices around the state. Among the titles available are '80s classics, including "Ms. Pac Man," ''Donkey Kong" and "Tron." And the machines are always set to "free play," so there's no need for quarters, the company's website states.

The Petersons launched their enterprise last month and say their plan is based on old-school economics. They rent the games out for $75 a month after purchasing the machines on the cheap and refurbishing them to their former glory.

"It's a lot of fun looking for the bargains, scoring them off Craigslist or eBay or through the Internet forums. Anywhere we can find them," said Seth Peterson.

He said he and his brother Timothy have been collecting the vintage cabinet games and fixing them up for years. He said they pay about $150 to $200 for the games and have developed a knack for "getting them real quick, taking them home and then doing what we need to do to get them ready for our customers."

All You Can Arcade operates across California. Customers can find out which games are available in their zip code through the company website. The Petersons hope to expand to the East Coast later this year.

With traffic buzzing by them on a busy downtown San Francisco street recently, the Petersons loaded a 250-pound "Galaga" machine into a seventh-floor office.

Seeing the game being wheeled in on a dolly, employees at the advertising firm 11 Inc. clapped and hooted with excitement, ready to zap pixelated bugs from outer space.

At a time when gamers focus on elaborate home video systems that feature cinematic graphics and realistic experiences, these low-tech games featuring simply designed cartoon characters level the playing field between generations, said Rob Kabus, president of 11 Inc.

"I feel relatively fearless challenging anybody here no matter what age," Kabus said of his company's new toy. "But when I go home, there's no way I can engage my son on Xbox. It's over in about 15 seconds on a good day."

If you remember the heyday of giant arcade halls filled with stand-up coin-op machines, then you’ll also remember that one day they seemingly all disappeared. What was it like to live through that bygone era? The Final Day at Westfield Arcade—a new novel by Andy Hunt—explores what it felt like to have a digital childhood evaporate as its main character tries to jump to adulthood.

Many of the strong memories we have about certain games has to do with what we were doing in our lives when we encountered them. If you first played Pac-Man when your parents divorced, all that ghost-gobbling might mean something a little different. Here’s a synopsis and you can read the opening pages from The Final Day at Westfield Arcade in the preview below:

    It’s the final day of business at Westfield Arcade, the video game arcade where middle-aged Mike Mayberry has worked since he was a teenager. Mike spends his final day at Westfield Arcade taking a nostalgia-fueled journey back through the arcade’s glory years of the 1980s, the era when Pac Man ruled the world and every night at the arcade was an adventure. He reflects on the endless memories and friends he’s made during the decades he’s spent at the arcade, and chronicles the ups and downs in his relationship with an unforgettable girl over those years. As the final day of business at his beloved video game arcade comes to an emotional end, Mike contemplates a major decision for his post-arcade life, a decision that he hopes will once and for all answer the question of whether the girl who got away so many years ago truly did get away for good.

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