Captain Capitalism: The Arcade

A big part of Powerhouse Animation's business in the early days was making Flash based Arcade machines. The games were in an arcade machine, and were generally side scrollers with end bosses, and lost of animated "cinematics." We made on for Kevin Smith as a wrap party gift for, then couple, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. We have made about six of these "arcade kiosks." It was based on an idea that former Powerhouse programmer, Jason Yandell and I had. We were driving around Austin and found an old Galaga box that had been gutted and was for sale We decided to fit it with a PC and make some Flash applications and games to play on it. We programmed a Flash based MAME menu, and did some minor C++ operating system stuff to make it work.

Long story short, we have had the prototype at the Powerhouse offices, and it has about 3,000 classic arcade games on it, and it is a great way for guys at the office to take a break.

Finally, 5 years later, I have one in my living room...and I am pretty excited. The wife and I have been playing a lot of Klax lately.


Special thanks go to Becky Bollom and the fine folks at Photo Magic for working with me on printing the side art.

And yes, the Captain Capitalism arcade machine is between two Italian Communist Party posters, I "borrowed" them from the side of a building in Rome when Mandy and I were there about two years ago. Figured in a communist world they would be part mine anyway. Friggin commies.

The above is a photo of the menu screen that comes on when you fire the machine up. I have about 150 games in the menu from Asteroids to Zaxxon, Dig Dug to Q-bert...but the games that get played the most are Tetris, Klax, Marvel Superheroes, and Street Fighter Alpha.

I will eventually put some Captain Capitalism games in there, but for now I am concentrating on the next cartoon.

The sharp-eyed among you might notice that I ganked the pose on the girl on the lower right from a Shane Glines drawing of Poison Ivy. Sorry about that, but since the piece is only in my living room, I thought it might be ok.

Well, I'm going to try to make it to the bananas in Ms. Pac-man...