Greetings!  My name is Whitney Roberts, and I’m a Louisville, KY-based collector. I’ve been wanting to put up an arcade-themed blog for a long time now, and I’m really pleased that this is now getting off the ground. I’m relatively new to the arcade collecting/restoring scene, but have been an avid fan since my childhood. I’ve got fond memories of going to my local arcade and playing many of the games that I now collect (and still play). For me, it was the “Galaxy of Games” in Frankfort, KY…. great place and it was the quintessential version of what we all remember an arcade to be – bowling-alley long with rows of games on each wall, dark with blacklights, blacklight carpet, 80′s music, token machines that rarely worked, etc. I spent many a birthday at ‘the GoG’ in lieu of parties and presents, because I wanted to see just how many levels I could make it up in Donkey Kong….. Ahh… the memories.

Fast forward to today. I’m sure many like-minded individuals have tried the console-ports of the classics as well as possibly trying MAME. I’m not a big console fan… today’s games are just too “busy” for me, and have traded much of the charm and ‘personality’ of what makes games such as Donkey Kong, Centipede, Defender, Gauntlet, etc. appealing to me for ‘lifelike’ graphics and sounds. As much as I love and respect what the MAME project’s mission is and the work the MAME devs have produced, I find that – for me – there is no substitute for the real cabinet/controls/sounds/etc.

So, began my quest to find the games of my youth and restore them to their former glory and then play the living daylights out of ‘em. So with that, I’ll lay out my vision for what I want the website to be.

The main purpose of this site is four-fold:

1. To record, organize and share all of the information I come across while working in the classic (to me the 1979-1985 era) arcade collection and restoration hobby.  I’ll focus on restoration logs, the ups/downs of restoring my games, the never-ending hunt for new cabinets/projects, reproduction/NOS parts, etc. Gameroom build-out – and all the items related to that subject – are also of interest to me and something I’ll definitely touch on.

2. To share playing experiences, tips, hints, insights, ramblings, product reviews for hobby-related items that I purchase to assist in the restoration of or enhance the games in my collection and anything else arcade-related that doesn’t fit into #1.

3. To record and share insights/learnings/ideas about wordpress, graphics and related computer topics as I come across them and find them of value.  I’m sure there are a lot of fledgling bloggers out there that can benefit from more information being spread about this fantastic platform and supporting community.

4. to provide for a nice and inviting site on the web where like-minded collectors (avid and considering) and other interested parties can discuss the topics, suggest new ones, and participate freely.

I’ll definitely want to grow the site to include other topics as time goes by, but this is a good start, and I’ll be very pleased to see each of the 4 tenets fleshed out to full detail.  Once I can do so, I’ll know I’m well on my way to building a sustainable and interesting site.

I want to give some major props to Jeff Rothe over at www.rotheblog.com – his site is a definite inspiration for what I’m wanting to do here at Brokentoken and a lot of the information he’s posted about WordPress and graphics has either directly or indirectly helped me get up and running.

If you’ve read this far, then I really appreciate it.  Please take a second and drop me a line as I’d love to hear from you!