Hello, my name is Jordan H. and I am the owner of Back to the Arade and welcome to my new website and blog.  I plan to use this space to cover all things arcade and pinball related, whether that be a project machine I am working on, new machines being released onto the market, repair techniques, the history of machines, etc.  Any topic remotely related to arcades and pinball could be covered.  Feel free to reach out if there is a particular topic you would like to cover and I will try and accommodate.  

Being this is my first post I thought it would be appropriate to speak a little about my background in this hobby that I have turned into a profession as well as a bit of my backstory.  For nearly as long as I can recall I have had an interest in all things electronic and electrical.  I recall getting into trouble multiple times as a youngster for taking apart my toys, and even the family toaster, because I wanted to know how things work.  I originally hail from the Ozarks region in southwest Missouri from a middle class family.  When I was in third grade (circa 1993) our family got something that would have a dramatic impact on my life…our first personal computer!  If memory serves me correct, I was the only child in my elementary school at the time with a personal computer.  I still remember the make, model, and specs (any true electronics nerd I am sure recalls these details).  It was a Packard Bell Legend 2000, with a whopping 486 SX processor rated at 25 Megahertz, 4 Megabytes of RAM, 120 MB Conner hard drive, CD-ROM and 3.5” floppy drives, and all running Windows 3.1.  Even for the time it was not a workhorse by any means, but it was a computer!  I believe it cost around $2,000 around the time, a lot of money for a middle class family in the Ozarks.  

This is when my love for technology really started to take off!  I tore that computer apart so many times, and performed upgrades as the family budget would allow.  I don’t know how I managed but I never destroyed a single component on that machine, and it was the family computer well into the late 1990’s.  I also discovered amateur radio in my teenage years, and this really helped me learn more about electronics at a component level.

My background would be incomplete without covering my love for video games!  We had an Atari 2600  as our first console growing up, and I received a NES for Christmas in 1989.  Any video game nerd of the 1980’s and 1990’s will have fond memories of the arcades of that era though.  Our local shopping mall had two arcades, Aladdin’s Castle and Just For Fun.  I preferred the Just For Fun as they seemed to get the newer games quicker than the local Aladdin’s Castle.  I did spend more of my time at Aladdin’s Castle though because it was across the way from Walden Books, my father would give me a couple of dollars to spend at Aladdin’s Castle while he spent some time in the book store.  I could really stretch a couple of dollars back then in an arcade, I spent a lot of time watching the older children and adults playing trying to learn a thing or two on different strategies.  This was also the era of the skating rink, that’s where us children like to spend our Friday nights.  I was never much of a skater, but they did have a small collection of arcade and pinball machines that I would play.

I started collecting pinball and arcade machines as a hobby while still in college.  My first machine I ever picked up was Stern’s Meteor, released in 1979, and one of Stern’s most popular titles.  I paid $125 for it at an estate auction, it needed a little TLC but with my hobbyist knowledge of electronics and the wealth of information available online and from manuals I purchased I was able to get it up and running like the day it rolled off the assembly line.

I graduated from College in 2006 and started working a career in the utility sector, working for a variety of utilities in roles involving substation communications, carrier networking, and regulatory compliance.  I had always wanted to start my own business, I had spit-balled several ideas but I could never talk myself into taking “the plunge”.  Arcades machines and pinballs have made a resurgence in the last several years and I had an opportunity to partner with some local businesses here on the Palouse so I made the jump to small business owner.  Everyday brings something different, but as I have told many of my customers I enjoy working on the machines as much, if not more, than actually playing them.  I have a garage full of various games in different states of repair, many of those I hope to feature in various posts.  I hope you will enjoy this adventure as much as I have thus far!