Zachary Quinto Stands Up To ‘Save The Arcades’

Celebrities, including many Trek celebrities, have got involved with many causes over the years, including getting behind saving endangered species. They even made a whole Trek movie about saving the whales! So it is with a grand tradition that the new Spock today stood up to save something that is truly in danger…video arcades

 

Zachary Quinto tries to "Save the Arcades"
This morningStar Trek’s new Spock Zachary Quinto joined with Stride and their “Save the Arcades” campaign, appearing at the Video West Arcade in Glendale, CA.


Quinto fights for a different endangered species

Quinto was there to help Stride raise awareness for the cause and to "keep the dream alive for gamers everywhere." Quinto posed for fans and also played a few games while at the arcade.


Quinto plays some Marvel vs. Capcom

Being that Zach was involved, there was a big crowd of his fans, especially Heroes fans, waiting for him outside the event. Quinto even posed with some fans.


Zach posed with fans, in this case Tina Ortega (my daughter)


Saving the arcades is…logical

Fore more on the “Save the Arcades” campaign, visit www.savethearcades.com, where you can play an arcade-style video game, with their points scored benefitting the featured arcade of their choice. At the end of the campaign, the arcade that has earned the most points, as determined by participating consumers, will be declared the winner and receive $25,000 courtesy of STRIDE gum.

More Zach: Sylar vid + new announcement coming soon   
For more Zach news NBC recently released a special Heroes video called ‘Sylar Deconstructed’, check it out.

Also, yesterday Zach sent out a tweet saying:.

new project coming very soon. hopefully next week.

[This may be an announcement related to Zach returning to the theater, something Zach talked about last weekend in Las Vegas.]

All photos by Albert L. Ortega . Al’s Photos are available at prphotos.com.

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The picture titled “Saving the arcades is…logical” is a great one!

That was a SICK VID! And I LOVED IT!

I’d like to see him play the old Sega Star Trek arcade game!

GO QUINTO!!!!

I love video arcades! They are the greatest! I find them better than the most sophisticated Wii. There’s nothing better than playing a good ol’ game of Pacman (my personal favourite) or Joust… If it’s there! By the way… that closeup portrait of him is really good. He’s so photogenic. ♥

I plunked a lot of money into PacMan, Asteroids, Space Invaders and pinball machines back in the day.

I miss the old-school stuff.

Is that the storyline for the next movie? Go back in time, save the arcades?

;)

6 yes it is!

but only need to save two….Pong and Ms. PacMan

That was a funny video. I’m glad Heroes is finally coming back.

I could so pwn him in Tron. Probably Dig Dug, too. ;-)

Save the arcades! I spent many, many hours in my teenage years in the arcades.

Here’s another vote for seeing him play the old Star Trek arcade game.. love it, miss it, want it!! :)

I miss arcades. I spent oodles of money at those places back in the 80s.

Yah–there was also a tos trek pinball game that was the best-even had the characters beaming out and disappearing from the glass if you mansged to trigger it-Zach would luv playing that–also the tron arcade game was great! I still remember myself and my two bros and sis discovering pac man for the first time in a little upstairs arcade at a beach hotel-was that ever fun! Save the arcades!

Let’s save the museums and libraries, too.

Anthony, this is the second day my posts don’t get through. Technical problems?

Again i wish i was there……………………T_T
I love the ‘Saving the arcades is….logical’ photo.

‘but only need to save two….Pong and Ms. PacMan’

Hey! Whaddabout Frogger and Tempest? Centipede? Donkey Kong?

Yeah, I was a mall rat in the 80’s. LOL Pretty cool that Zach is championing a (for better or worse) genuine piece of American culture.

Two words. Battle. Zone.

I sure plunked down my fair share of quarters in old favortes like Tron and Tetris. Love pinball too. It was always a great place to hang out with your friends. Hats off to Mr.Quinto for taking up the cause, I’d hate to see them go the way of the dodo.

Ill take him on in Defender and Astroids and Discs of Tron and Star Trek and the Old Star Wars Games. He will get to know Fear. Oh and ill Eat him alive on Pacman.Kool.

Hey. Joust was a great one and of corse who could forget Space Invaders. Battlezone!!!!!!. Ill blast all of you. Oh. What about the Hocky game with the U.S Vs the Soviets.

#18

Word (2). I reach, my brother. That game was like video crack when I was a kid.

I like arcades alright, but why are they worth saving? I couldn’t find it in the article, other than Spock says “Saving the arcades is…logical” =)

And now Zach Quinto is even cooler.
Oh the hours of my adolescent life wiled away playing Tempest, and Dig Dug, and Missile Command, and Xevious, and Battlezone, and Galaga, and Zaxxon, and Omega Race, and Tron, and QIX…
I’ve gotta get one of those t-shirts!

I ran a Sega City/GameWorks Studio in Denver for a number of years, and what a great job it was. It really is too bad that arcades are fading away. Maybe Quinto can use his Sylar powers to make people go to them more often!

When Arcades had better graphics then any console, sure a few quarters were worth it.

Now that console & PC games are miles and lightyears ahead, respectively, arcades can just go extinct for all I care.

Marvel vs Capcom 2

Zach’s got great taste.

Re#26 “Now that console & PC games are miles and lightyears ahead, respectively, arcades can just go extinct for all I care.”

Yes, but at least back then you actually had to leave the house, maybe ride a bike or walk to get to an arcade if you were a kid. Then you would have to stand while you played most games. Maybe if games were still only in arcades the U.S. might have a few less grossly obese children ( and/ or adults).

Often you also might go there with actual friends to play, rather than just doing the online community thing.

Just a thought.

There are a few adult arcades still out there that combine dining with bars, midnight bowling and video games, but they’re few and far between.

Then there are those big Brunswick Zones out there…

Nintendo should open up a chain of WII group Party Places where people can get together and play group party games like people would go to arcades to play games…

Hey, Dave & Buster’s rules, but I still like a place where all you need to get in is a pocket full of quarters. :-)

It all started with that Pong machine at the Roosevelt Field Mall….

Millipede was my game. We’d peel up the floormats in our cars just to scrape together one…. last…. 25 cents. I remember being SO annoyed if there was something even the tiniest bit off about the tracball. Was like a pebble in one’s shoe.

A daytrip into “The City” meant at least two hours in the arcade in Penn Station. Front center was usually some odd novelty; the no-bumper-all-magnetic machine, the machine with the bowling-ball sized pinball… the holy grail of pinball at the time, Bally’s KISS machine. Ah, what memories…

A very, VERY happy day in my and my friends’ lives was when we discovered MAME. Got to play all the games I was too chicken to try in public when I was a kid (or too… something – Burger Time! Too cute! Would NEVER play that in public.)

I use to love Video games back in the 80’s but that was back in the 8 bit days of home games and 16 bit days of the Arcades. Games have vastly evolved and improved into 32bit and 64bit games with 48 bit color and 128 bit graphic engines. They are now almost to the state of realisim, what will games become as they become holodecks. And the idea became popular with Star Trek’s TNG Holodeck and the first person shooter game DOOM.

If you saw Frakes’s That’s Impossible episode The Real Terminators even some of Harlin Ellison’s stories may come true.

I started playing Video games in 1976 with Pong in the summer of 1976 at the local Pizza Hut. By that fall less than a football fields distance away this Pinball Machine/Video Game Arcade opened up. After spending what seemed like my life savings there for X-mas in 1977 Santa gave me an Atari 2600. I was in heaven and the Video Games stopped eating my Quarters. They must have all most starved because Atari was now eating them quarters that became dollars buying game cartridges.

I wish to thank Zachary Quinto for honoring what many American kids grew up with. The video game has help many a boy become men in the last 40 years, the other factor has much to deal with the letters ‘R’ and ‘X…XXX’

I commend Zachary for his support of arcades. I too love arcades, but sadly, they likely will mostly all go away, outside of the Dave and Buster’s kind of “family fun place.” The industry is almost completely gone now.

33 “The video game has help many a boy become men in the last 40 years…”

Yes, the thumbs of America’s youths have never been stronger!”

Snorkel and Eggbert give that a big thumbs-up! ;-)

#14 :: AMEN! My city’s libraries have vanishing hours… How else am I supposed to get a hold of all my Star Trek books and read them one after another for hours on end?

)=

Arcades,like the single-screen movie theater. are a thing of the past!

They can only survive by offering something you CAN’T get a home!

A few years ago, I bought a Playstation 2 so I could play… Pac-Man. Does anyone know if there’s a PS2 compatible arcade-style joystick (preferably wireless) available? I’ve used the MAME sticks and would love something similar for the PS2—the included controllers just don’t do it for me.

I’ve seen kits that let you wire up old Atari joysticks to the PS2 and other game machines wirelessly, and even to your PC via either the keyboard or a game port. So put your searching talents to work on Google.

Also in 77 I recall Asteriods, Defender, and Stargate, they were all vector video projections that came out between Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man then there was Centipede, Frogger, and a few race car games.

Pac Man came on my Atari 2600 but so did Asteroids and Centipede and tenis. I think the first game I bought was Checkers. Had to wait for my Atari 800 computer to get Star Raiders and it’s simulated 3D Space against a Tie fighter and cylon fighter and a base star. but that was the 8bit graphics of 320×160 or 640×400 with 2 or 4 bit color and CPU’s running at 3.52 Megahertz and with four 8bit sound voices on one channel.

Now days things are 1000 times better with 2560×1600 pixels of 36 bit color and 32 surround sound voices on 8 channels of speakers.

And for librarys of Star Trek books, I have around 300 books dealing with TOS, TAS, TNG, DSN, VOY, ENT and Movies all in PDF form I’ve found surfing the Net. And for penney’s not dollars and no trees were killed.

Hey all! Just caught this cool thread…great to see Mr. Quinto taking up a cause near and dear to my heart. :)

I’m actually a collector of these old arcade beasts that many of you mention…I have 26 of them in my garage, all fully working at the moment (which is not easy as they are 20-25 years old now!). And yes, I do have a full sized, upright original Sega Star Trek video game in my collection…also fully working and in great condition.

Also have such classics as Tempest, PacMan, Joust, Robotron, Star Wars, Asteroids, just to name a few…

Also help run a cool show dedicated to these old games…check out our website: http://www.caextreme.org. Be sure to click on the pictures from past shows!

And if you’re so inclined, come to our next show in 2010…imagine over 400 of these classic (and modern) games in one huge room for a weekend of playing until your fingers fall off :) …

Cheers,

Jonathan

#42 Johnathan – you are my buddy. In the near future, the wife and I want to build a log chalet, and one of my design requirements is to have a den/game room populated with several of those old games.

#32 Spockish –

‘The video game she play me.
Face it, on the level, but it take you
every time on a one on one.
Feeling running down your spine
Nothing gonna save your one last dime cause it own you
Through and through

Who made who, who made you?
Who made who, ain’t nobody told you?
Who made who, who made you?
If you made them and they made you
Who picked up the mid-dle, and who made who? – Yeah! ‘

HA!

Quinto- Trek’s new rock n roller! Or should I say ‘trek’s new spock n roller.

Jonathon do you have a tron arcade game with the awesome blue joystik? Yah despite the better graphics i still miss my colecovision-damn that had fun games–and fyi when mtself and my brothers saw the new trek movie in seattle opening day at the imax,know what we did next? Went to gameworks to eat lunch n play classic videogames for old times sake—those were the days

43 – Yea, they are fun to own. But be forewarned, once you buy one, you end up buying many more :) . Also, be prepared to learn a bit about how to fix them…I’ve actually had a ton of fun learning on to repair them and enjoy that aspect of the hobby almost as much as actually playing them!

45 – Tron is one of the ones I actually don’t have…I have quite a few buddies who also collect and have Trons…if I need a fix, I visit one of them. And we always have at least one Tron on hand for the show I mentioned…

Other common (and not so common) ones I own currently:

Wizard of Wor, Space Duel, Millipede, Indiana Jones, Stargate/Defender, Major Havoc, Quantum, Sinistar, Bubbles, Bosconian, Venture, Zookeeper, Food Fight, Gravitar…a few others that are pretty rare so you may not have heard of them.

Also have a couple of pins including a beautiful Star Trek: The Next Generation pin that is an absolute BLAST to play! Gotta be one of the best pins every made, IMHO…

And I take most of these to the show I mentioned each year for everyone to enjoy :) …

Jon

Sorry…couldn’t resist…here is a link to some photos I took from my garage/arcade last Halloween:

http://s140.photobucket.com/albums/r4/jkoolpe/Halloween%202008/

FYI, I open up the garage and turn everything on and let everyone who comes by stay a spell and play the games. The kids (and their parents) have a GREAT time…I usually get upwards of 150-200 people stopping by before the evening is over.

Check out the guy in the Indiana Jones costume playing on my Indiana Jones games :) …

If you’re in the San Francisco area, free feel to stop by this coming Halloween. Just shoot me an email…

Cheers!

I remember when asteroids and space invaders showed up in the bowling alley, I must of been about 16 and we were like wow!! Asteroids was so amazing at the time, to us it seemed like 3D. LOL

I am afraid that Zack’s cause is a lost one, with the invent of the consoles. But there is something different about playing a big stand alone video game machine, besides dropping your quarters in.

i remember playing Satans lair and Dig Dug and the Pacman Pinball machine which was a kool pinball and video machine kinda rolled into one. Spent many a Quarter in the Bowling alley and my fav Arcade was Alladens Castle where there was everything there. From my Fav Star Trek to Star Wars and Discs of Tron. Now we have better graphics on the cell phones and such. But theres somethig about playing games on the big machine.

Johnathan – that is one awesome collection. Ideally, we’d like just three or four classic games and two pinball machines, with enough room left over for my pool table, dartboard cabinet, and a small wet bar. Maybe a love seat or chair-and-a-half facing a small fireplace. One game we REALLY want to get (it’s not ancient, either) is the full sit-down, cockpit version of Hydro Thunder. We are both addicts. I have the PC version, and even that’s addictive.

Viking –

If you don’t care about the game being original and are limited on space, you might think about a multi-unit such as the Global VR Arcade classics:

http://www.globalvr.com/products_gac.html

And no, I’m not with the company or anything like that…but I did have one of these for awhile on loan from a friend and I have to admit it was pretty cool. It was a full-sized upright, but had a computer inside that was loaded with licensed classics ranging from Asteroids to Defender to Mortal Kombat…all in all about 80 games total. It was well constructed, too, with a very sturdy control panel and a 25″ monitor.

I prefer originals myself :), but I just thought I’d though that out there…

Jon