Anybody wanna play some Chexx?
Oct. 4th, 2004 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr1Last week, I was having a burger at Fuddruckers and noticed one of the arcade "crane" games in the arcade area. It was called "Plush Bus". While I'm not one for crane games, I walked up to it and noticed a familiar logo. The manufacturer was Innovative Concepts in Entertainment, a game manufacturer in the Buffalo, NY area. Their original factory was about 2 miles from where I grew up, and drove by it often.
ICE's first product was a table hockey game called Chexx, which was rolled out about 20 years ago. Chexx was a heavy-duty, arcade-quality, coin-operated version of the old slot hockey sets many of us grew up with. Each player could control their 6 "men" on the arena with rods -- pull or push them to go up or down, twist the rid to have them swivel left or right. Unlike the slot hockey sets, this had a clear lucite dome, which prevented the puck from flying out during slapshots. It also had a square scoreboard at the top of the game which lit up to show the period and to play crowd noises and "charge" riffs. (Trivia: Moog Music made the electronics that went into the scoreboards of the early versions of the game.)
I spent many hours -- and quarters -- playing the game while I was in college. There was a Chexx table in nearly every arcade and bar I frequented with my buds and fraternity brothers. (Well, Buffalo *is* a hockey town.) Its popularity rivaled foosball (table soccer). Some of us developed blistering slapshots -- and blisters on our hands -- from the rough play we'd get into on some evenings. Of course, we'd ease the pain by holding on to our beer(s) with the sore hand after the game was over.
The game has gone through several versions. The current iteration is called Super Chexx. It's been years since I've played, and it would be nice to get back in the groove. As owner and chief bartender of the Line of Death Bar & Grill, I should get one for the game room we have here. I wonder how much the original games are going for on Ebay.
ICE's first product was a table hockey game called Chexx, which was rolled out about 20 years ago. Chexx was a heavy-duty, arcade-quality, coin-operated version of the old slot hockey sets many of us grew up with. Each player could control their 6 "men" on the arena with rods -- pull or push them to go up or down, twist the rid to have them swivel left or right. Unlike the slot hockey sets, this had a clear lucite dome, which prevented the puck from flying out during slapshots. It also had a square scoreboard at the top of the game which lit up to show the period and to play crowd noises and "charge" riffs. (Trivia: Moog Music made the electronics that went into the scoreboards of the early versions of the game.)
I spent many hours -- and quarters -- playing the game while I was in college. There was a Chexx table in nearly every arcade and bar I frequented with my buds and fraternity brothers. (Well, Buffalo *is* a hockey town.) Its popularity rivaled foosball (table soccer). Some of us developed blistering slapshots -- and blisters on our hands -- from the rough play we'd get into on some evenings. Of course, we'd ease the pain by holding on to our beer(s) with the sore hand after the game was over.
The game has gone through several versions. The current iteration is called Super Chexx. It's been years since I've played, and it would be nice to get back in the groove. As owner and chief bartender of the Line of Death Bar & Grill, I should get one for the game room we have here. I wonder how much the original games are going for on Ebay.
