Charleston Gamerooms Celebrates 5 years

CHARLESTON — If you're looking for a vintage Mrs. Pac-Man or Galaga arcade game cabinet, there's only one place to go in the Lowcountry - West Ashley's .

Owner David Ford opened the store on Old Towne Road five years ago Sunday, and he's been supplying home gamerooms and bars and restaurants across the Charleston area with the classic 8-bit game cabinets, juke boxes and pinball machines ever since.

"I bought one game and it went on from there," Ford said. "One turned into two, and two turned into four, and four turned into eight, and eight turned into 16. Now I've got 48 machines at home."

Ford fondly recalls spending hours at a time in the arcades that used to call Charleston home. In fact he has a sign from Aladin's Castle that used to be located in the Citadel Mall at home in his gameroom. He also has a vintage Putt-Putt sign.

Ford buys the classic game cabinets and pinball machines whenever he finds them, and in addition to reselling the games he can also repair and refurbish them in his store where there are more than two dozen machines on the floor at any time.

But he has machines all over Charleston. Chances are if you've fed quarters into a game at your local bar, Ford either owns it and splits the take with the bar owner, or he sold the machine outright to the bar.

The classic games start at about $300 and the prices go up from there to more than $1,000 depending on the rarity of the machine and its popularity. Pinball machines start at around $800, and some cost as much as $12,000, Ford said.

Chances are if you are looking for something specific Ford can find it for you, though it mat take a while.

"I have about 100 people that want stuff I don't have, so I carry my list with me at all times," he said. "It can take a while to find some things, like if you want a Tron machine it can take a few months if you don't want to go on eBay and spend a whole lot more."

Pinball machines are Ford's best sellers overall, but certain classic games also bring in a lot of business.

"I go through six or seven Donkey Kongs a year," he said. "It's hard to fine them in good shape though."

Ford said a lot of customers want conversions of classic games where the cabinet is vintage but all the guts have been removed and replaced with more modern counterparts that allow as many as 60 separate games to be played on the same machine.

Each game is still contained on individual circuit boards, but improvements in technology and smaller components mean more circuit boards can now fit in the same space as the originals from the 1980s.

"An old Pac-Man circuit board used to be 1 foot by 2 feet, now they're the size of 8-tracks," Ford said.

Now after five years in business Ford is hoping to get a pinball league started in the area. Next month he'll be supplying the pinball machines for the area's first day-long pinball tournament called Pinception on Saturday, Feb. 18 at The Recovery Room downtown starting at 2 p.m.