Interview with Peter Hirschberg:

HSA: When did you first start playing arcade and pinball games?

PH: I have an early memory of seeing a Pong machine in a hotel where my parents and I were staying. I had never seen anything like it before. Nobody had. My dad and I played a couple games on it, and I think I pretty much freaked out. Arcade machines have fascinated me since that day. I didn't do much playing "back in the day". Money was always tight and I was usually too shy to play in such a public setting. More than anything else, I enjoyed walking through the arcades and seeing all the new machines that were there since my last visit - taking in all the sights and sounds. Pinball didn't come till much later. Pretty much when I started collecting video games is when I really started to appreciate pinball.

HSA: How did you start collecting games?

PH: I think it was inevitable with me. As a kid I remember having a bunch of little electronic handheld games and I would line them all up on a bench in our basement. That was my arcade. Sometime around 1986 or so my mom took the family to a friends house for a party he was having. In his basement, which was pretty large and open, was a line of about 10 pinball machines and a couple of video games - you can picture my reaction here - in his kitchen he had a tabletop Asteroids machine, which had a price tag on it. I was SO going to buy this machine from him. It had never occurred to me that you could just buy a video game and put it in your house. I asked him about the machine, and he mentioned that he had another one in his garage that didn't work. He said he'd sell me the non-working machine for half the price. At the time I was working for a local computer shop repairing Atari home computers, so no problem on the non-working part. I restored that machine and got it all working pretty quickly. He had some other machines in his garage that didn't work, and I think I started buying and trading them from him as fast as I could repair them.

HSA: From visiting your web site, I see that the Time Out Tunnel was your favorite game room growing up. Do you have any memories about gaming in the classic era that especially stand out?

PH: I remember it was always dark. I remember people would be playing games while they were smoking, which seems so weird now. I remember it almost always smelled like new carpet. I remember when a new game came out there would be several copies of the same machine lined up. I remember games taking quarters, not tokens. I remember looking UP to see the screen on Pong, which is now about chest height to me. I remember it was understood that every mall would have at least one arcade in it, and almost every public place would have arcade games.

HSA: A lot of collectors, including me, have built a game room in their home to house their collection of games. What was your impetus to create your Luna City Arcade game room?

PH: We had pretty much run out of room for, among other things, new games in our old house. So when we went looking for a larger house it was one of our considerations. The house we settled on had an unfinished basement, which we decided before even buying the house would be perfect to finish into a larger gameroom than we had at the time. I figured since the house was still being built, I could "do it right" - i.e.. design the room as a gameroom from the start. Thus the room was built with additional wiring and lighting just for the purposes of being a gameroom.

HSA: No matter how many amazing games come out, I can never get enough of good old Pac-Man. What is your favorite arcade game of all time? Pinball game?

PH: I've always had a hard time picking a favorite, but certainly among my favorites would be Tail Gunner, Asteroids, Space Wars, Tron, and Lunar Lander. Those are the machines that I'm the most sentimental about. My favorite pinball machines would be Black Hole and Centaur. 

HSA: I love Retro Arcade Radio, your radio station that celebrates the 1970s and 1980 gaming scene. What can you tell me about the station and how you got it started?

PH: I'm glad to hear you like it! It actually had kind of a strange beginning. I had my MP3 collection on shuffle play while I was playing games in the gameroom one day, and all of a sudden an old Atari computer commercial that I had downloaded from somewhere on the web came over the speakers. It had been added to the playlist without me realizing it. Hearing that commercial from the glory days of arcades accompanying my vintage gameplay, it was definitely an epiphany of sorts for me.

HSA: I'm a big fan of the LEDhead project, which simulates the handheld LED games from the 1970s. What gave you the idea to create this project?

PH: I loved all those handheld games back in the day, but my favorite was always the Battlestar Galactica game, Space Alert, by Mattel. That was one of the first of my long-lost childhood toys that I replaced when eBay first started. As a computer programmer at the time, every time I played the game I would start writing little gameplay routines in my head. I couldn't help myself. I wrote a Windows simulator for the game in a couple of days, and other Mattel handheld games followed. I eventually decided to just roll them into a single program so that I could share the common code between them easier.

HSA: I noticed on your website, www.peterhirschberg.com that you are building a new game room. What things will be different about it that are not a part of the Luna City Arcade?

PH: Mostly just bigger. We have completely outgrown the current gameroom. Not just outgrown it in space, but we have run out of circuits to pull electricity from, and the AC is completely unable to keep up with when all the machines are on. So the new gameroom will have the room, the electrical system, and the AC system, that should be able to accommodate some 100 games without any problem. After that I guess we have to move again.

HSA: What are some of the other things that people can find on your site?

PH: Even more "child of the eighties" geekiness. I find that people finding my site will frequently email me and be amazed at how much we generally have in common. I guess a lot of their interests and my interests all sort of overlap in some way.

HSA: What sort of things are you into besides vids and pins?

PH: I'm a computer programmer and electronics guy by trade and enjoy both of those things as a hobby as well. I've started branching out into computer graphics the last few years. I still have most of the toys from my youth, all meticulously replaced via eBay. I like Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica (the original series only), and Speed Racer. I love lava lamps. I fly radio controlled helicopters - I flew real ones for a bit. I even flew a film camera attached to a model around the buildings in Manhattan for a National Geographic special on pigeons. I love any sort of kitsch from the late '70s to early '80s.

HSA: What's something about you that people don't ordinarily know?

PH: I think most people assume by looking at my hobbies that I must not be married. I am very lucky to have an extremely enthusiastic and supportive wife who gets just as excited about my hobbies as I get. I would not be here without her behind me every step of the way.

HSA: The arcade world is buzzing with interest about the release of "Chasing Ghosts", a new movie about the nationally televised 1982 Video Game World Championships. How did you become involved in the project and what were your contributions?

PH: Wanting to try and get a job in the computer animation field, I had started work on a short animation of a classic arcade full of video games to serve as my showreel. So I had some stuff already created when I met the film makers. They were pretty much blown away by the stuff they had seen on my website and wanted to collaborate with me on the film that they were making.

They pitched the movie to me and I accepted. I figured I'd kick myself forever if I passed on the chance. I ended up creating photorealistic animations of some of the game cabinets that were featured in the film, some trippy animations that put a 3 dimensional spin on some of the classics like Frogger and Berzerk, an animated title sequence, and designed their logos and graphics and such. I also created some swag items for the Sundance Festival where the film was premiering.

HSA: What's in store for you in the future?

PH: Hopefully lots more computer animation! And I'm going to be very relieved to have the new gameroom completed and be able to have room for all of my machines.

Special thanks to Peter for taking the time to visit with the High Scores Arcade. To learn more about Peter, the Luna City Arcade, Retro Arcade Radio and more, visit Peter's web site at www.peterhirschberg.com.