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We are SC3, "Southern California Classic Collectors," your local Classic game collector's group serving the Metropolitan Los Angeles, San Diego and Inland Empire areas. We invite all those who can come to our meetings for play, trade, showing off your precious rares to an appreciative audience, or just to be amongst those who beat you to that Vectrex at one of the local flea markets a few months back. Whether you're looking for your first 2600, or an Intellivision Computer Module, we'd like to see you there!

Next Meeting: April 25th 2009

The next meeting of the Southern California Classic Collectors (SC3) is scheduled for Saturday, April 25th 2009. Once again, the gathering will happen at Steve Hertz's home in Claremont. If you attended the September 15th meeting, we'd love to see you again. If you weren't there, we hope you can make it this time!

The September meeting was a huge success, and we don't plan to mess with a winning formula. So, as always, Steve's incredible coin-op collection will be the main attraction (Dig Dug and Pepper II are the latest additions). All the usual attractions -- vintage consoles, '80s video game TV clips, game trading, pizza and beer -- will be back as well. But that's not all...

Rock Out with Rock Band In prior meetings, the Guitar Heroes Room of Doom has been one of our most popular (not to mention loudest) attractions. The Room of Doom will return, but this time it will be joined by the Rock Band Den of Destruction! Yes, we'll have the full Rock Band setup on an 65" HDTV, with guitars, drums -- and yes, a microphone. You may be good enough at Pac-Man to reach the 9th key, but can you SING ..? It's time to prove it. Of course, you can always sit back and watch if you're not up to a performance. What's a band without an audience?

Prove Your Skill in the SC3 Arcade High-Score Contest We're pleased to announce that this meeting will feature the inaugural SC3 Arcade High-Score Contest! We're excited about this -- it's something we've been wanting to do for a long time. We're still hammering out the official rules, but we know it will work like this: If you want to join the contest, you must pay a small $5 entrance fee. Your fee goes into a cash pot that will become the grand prize. Throughout the evening, you shoot for the highest score on a series of classic coin-ops chosen by the SC3 organizers. If you have the most first-place high scores at the end of the night, you win the pot! We'll post the official rules here as soon as they are ready.

SC3 was on hiatus for a while, but last September we came roaring back! Collectors from all over SoCal gathered in Claremont (near Pomona, in Los Angeles County) to swap games, check out consoles ranging from the Magnavox Odyssey to an XBox modded into a complete media center, and to play the DOZENS of arcade machines set on free play! Our next meeting will take place at the same Claremont location on April 26th 2008, and will feature EVEN MORE vintage arcade cabinets.

What all can you expect at this meeting? Steve's incredible coin-op collection is once again going to be the centerpiece (you can't have a garage full of dozens of top-quality cabinets and expect it not to be). Steve's busily cramming even more machines in there even as we write this, if you can believe it. But we operate on the philosophy that "more is better," at least where games are concerned, so we've also arranged to have a full complement of MAME titles playable projected on a screen. We're also keeping the row of historical home consoles we displayed at the last meeting. Vectrex, Atari 2600, Intellvision -- we'll have 'em, and more.

Bring Your DS!

If you have a Nintendo DS, bring it! We're hoping to assemble as many DSes as we can to engage in some head-to-head wi-fi merriment! So, obviously we could use some wi-fi enabled games as well (Pac-Man VS will definitely be on hand).

Arcade Games At SC3

Steven Hertz lives the dream: a fully-stocked, amazingly high-quality arcade right in his garage. And he's graciously invited SC3 attendees in to play them -- for free! Going into Steve's garage is like stepping back through time, into an '80s arcade, except that the controls actually work and no quarters are required. The games run the gamut from all-time classics like Ms. Pac-Man and Q*Bert to laserdisc games like Dragon's Lair and Cliff Hanger, to obscurer titles like Pepper II and Zzyzzyxx, to games with specialized controls that just don't translate well into emulation, such as Star Wars and Tron. Most of the cabinets are in such good condition that they look like they were manufactured recently -- not over 20 years ago. But don't take our word for it... take a look at our photo slideshow below!

Steve's not the only arcade collector to come to our meets. At the last meeting, our friend Jason brought Kangaroo, Dig Dug, Vanguard and more. How's THAT for selection? Even we don't know all the great titles that might be on hand for our next meeting! Take our word for it: you just aren't going to see this many classic coin-ops, of this level of quality, anywhere else but SC3!

How To Attend

If you are interested in attending the next SC3 meet, add us to your friend roster then you will get an invite with additional information.

Meeting Atmosphere

SC3 has made a point of keeping our meetings relaxed and informal, but the atmosphere will include some beer drinking and there may be some R-rated game content. This is an adult get-together where supervised minors will be accepted. Parents should take this into account and please let us know if you have questions.

Here is a video from Haily Bright of Coin-Op.TV at the 4-25-09 party...

SC3 Arcade Party 2009 from brightidea3 on Vimeo.

Coin-Op TV Live - Chasing SC3

Watch This Episode on www.theStream.tv

Here are some video's from our 9-15-07 party provided by our friends at EndgameRadio!