Joystick Generation
The children of the '80s have grown up, but not out of their love for gaming.

Story by Steven Hido
Photos by Pat Jarrett

Build a personal arcade machine. Play football in a bar. Boogie the night away on a lighted steel platform.

There are no holds barred these days when it comes to playing video games, and there is certainly no age limit.

Gaming has become a hobby, a contest and a weight-loss plan. It has permeated the lives of young adults in America and around the world—and it’s here to stay.

“Riding the Nostalgia Wave”

Building a custom arcade machine seemed impossible to senior advertising major Pat Kellett just last spring. But after some quick online research, he discovered the venture would be quite possible. He spent the summer monopolizing the family garage, sawing, hammering and wiring.

By 4:30 a.m. one August night, Kellett and his extremely skeptical friend Bob Gross were left with a single question: What game would christen the freshly constructed, fully operational arcade machine? They chose Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

“Every child who grew up in the ’80s played a video game at some point in their young life.”

“It was sweet,” says Gross, a junior accounting major. “We had finally achieved what so many could only dream about: building the ultimate arcade machine.”

They dubbed it the Ubermachine.

“Every child who grew up in the ’80s played a video game at some point in their young life,” Gross says. “Building and playing that arcade machine brings back memories of our childhood. It brings back memories of late-night sleepovers with friends crowded around 8-bit Nintendo or the birthday parties at the arcade.”

Pat Kellett's Ubermachine is wedged in his dorm room among other video game systems. {larger}

After conjoining condensed wood, a refurbished computer, a dissembled keyboard, a hard drive, a sub woofer, four flat-panel speakers, two joy sticks, some buttons and a fluorescent light to illuminate the machine’s moniker, Kellett insists, “It’s not as complex as it looks.”

He says it just runs off a computer. All its games are downloaded from the Internet, burned onto a cd and installed in the computer.

Complex or not, the Ubermachine is an impressive-looking apparatus. Kellett’s homespun machine towers over any human who enters his dorm room. The sides are intricately hand-painted with the faces of Japanese Anime characters and Marvel Comics heroes.

Despite its computer hardware, no computer games are played on the Ubermachine.

“Computer games are fine,” Kellett says, “but they seem to be much more involved. I don't have a whole lot of time on my hands. I’d rather just fire up the arcade, play a quick game of Pac-Man and go back to my homework.”

The Ubermachine houses about 1,000 games. That's about every game Nintendo has ever made plus about 300 old-school games such as Pac-Man.

“Some people have their alcohol. I have my arcade machine.”

“I’ve been riding the nostalgia wave,” Kellett says.

As illegal as his project technically is, Kellett says he isn’t concerned.

“I built this arcade machine to regain a wonderful part of my childhood and share it with everyone,” he says. “So it doesn’t concern me that I'm downloading roms illegally because I'm not making any money off of it. It's solely for my enjoyment.”

As resident assistant for the first floor of Centennial Court F, Kellett always has students coming into his room to test his creation. Kellett’s favorite experiment is to see how his supposedly technically advanced floormates fare against simple video games of the 1980s.

“They get so frustrated when they can’t beat Donkey Kong,” Kellett says, smiling.

Gazing at his handiwork with affection, Kellett says, “Some people have their alcohol. I have my arcade machine.”

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