Just a quick post this time as my Spanish isn't anywhere near good enough to figure-out what they're saying. Perhaps Steve will chime-in.

Anyway, this pyramidal tree displays a mock version of the classic arcade game Pac Man on its four sides. The graphics are slightly animated, so you'll see a ghost bouncing around, but due to the nature of the maze, the game is not actually playable.

Check-out the video of the Pac Man Christmas Tree below.

Now what gaming geek wouldn't want a tree like that?!

Nothing can demonstrate the extreme interest in video games during the "gold years" (1980s) like the spin-off toys, gadgets, and inventions that were created at the time. There were dozens of handheld battery-powered games, stuffed toys, action figures, comic books, and much, much more -- all based on the hot games of the time such as Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Centipede, and others.

Well, one of these spin-off "devices" that I had totally forgotten about was recalled when I viewed a Retro Thing post showing the old scratch-off Pac-Man games.

The games were small cards with patches of the gray waxy scratch-off stuff like you'd find on a lottery ticket. You were supposed to scratch them off, one at a time, to see if you won or lost. I could have sworn that I got them at McDonald's or something similar to that, but the scans of the cards shown in the post show they were in Fleer video game trading cards.

Anyway, I got a bit of joy remembering these old "retro tech" type games that we used in the 80s before everyone had Palm Pilots and before electronics were cheap enough to give-away free in food meals.

I think that any good nerd already knows about the arcade emulator MAME. Well, it's also on most of those nerd's to-do lists to build a MAME cabinet, but where do you put it? Well, you could always build it into a coffee table so that it's always handy and ready to play, but that's a ton of work.

Well, lust no more. This professionally built computer-coffee-table is available in several styles, all of which will let you play MAME and other games, as well as stream music, movies and more to your TV, which is likely in the vicinity. Included in the professional level build is a professional level price. However, for your money, you get a very complete and ready-to-run system:

• Intel® Pentium® D - Dual Core Processor
• 160GB hard disk
• 4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports for plug & play capability
• RJ45 Ethernet 10/100Mb connector
• 802.11g wireless network adaptor
• 512MB DDR2 SDRAM
• 17”/19" LCD TFT
• Integrated DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive
• Internal amplifier and speakers
• Apple Airport Express for wireless music streaming from Apple iTunes
• Compact wireless keyboard with trackball
• Sanwa joysticks
• Happ arcade buttons and illuminated trackball
• Powered by Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• Apple iTunes jukebox
• Apple QuickTime movie player
• Taito Legends retro games package
• MAME™ compatible retro-gaming platform
• Firefox web browser
• NOD32 Antivirus
• MSN messenger for instant chat

That's a pretty complete system. The Arcade Game Table will run you about £3,300 with free delivery and installation. Not bad if you're in the UK. Probably too much if you're elsewhere.

This'll be a quick one.

An artist by the name of Rosemarie Fiore had the great idea to take time-lapse photos of classic arcade games such as Tempest, Gyruss, Qix, and Quantum. The results are pretty interesting and would make for some off-beat wall-hangings or posters in your personal arcade or gameroom.

Check-out her Rosemarie's classic arcade game photos. I just wish there were more.

There is some interesting trivia, videos, wallpapers, and other classic-game-goodies to be found around the site. I must give PBS credit for designing a visually appealing, fast, fun site -- none of the usual "have to wait 3 seconds for a Flash fade-in each time I click" like many sites these days use. Nice job, PBS!

Naturally, since I live in the non-video game cowboy/redneck area of the country (Colorado), there is not much interest in such things, so neither local PBS channel is airing the show (we never got Videotopia either), but perhaps you can be much luckier! If you do happen to catch the show, please leave a comment here on how you liked it, how "deep" it was, and whether it would be worth purchasing.

Tonight, after about a week online, we got our first post (from Mrs. Peel) regarding a Choose Wisely mode problem. I have no idea what is going on with that problem, so I need to call-in you other collectors and get this thing rolling!

Let's get some DIY electronics/hardware-hack things posted too. I know how much everyone in the pinball circles loves enhancing things and working-around poorly-designed gizmos in our machines! I chose a fully-featured forum system which should be easy to use to post technical write-ups/etc., but please let me know if I need to enable something or make a change to make it more useful.

And, as a final reminder, the forums are NOT just for Indiana Jones - please, chat about any game and remember there are arcade-video forums too!