Dungeon News 
Dino Duet 11-26-14
(creator of "The Dungeon" game room and "Dungeon Master"
for the years 1995-2006)
Dungeon Master's last message:
(12-12-14)
It has been over seven years
since my last update on this page, and now is time for the LAST "Dungeon
Master's message"! That being said, I hope you understand why it
will be a very long one. After almost 20 years since I first created
The
Dungeon game room, the time has come for its ultimate destruction this
year (2014). In addition to this message, I have also made a "History
of The Dungeon game room cell", if you would like to read all about
how it came to be, what it was, and how it ended. It is a good read
with lots of pictures, so if you haven't read it yet, GO
READ IT NOW!!! It will take some time to write the whole history,
so keep checking back there for updates and revisions.
Since that was a VERY long writing
in itself, I have decided to make it separate from this final message.
For those of you who can remember, the first Dungeon Master's messages
spoke of the eventual "assimilation" of The Dungeon game room, back
in 1995 when the war with my only competitor: Delta Music
first began. That war lasted a long three years (1995-1998) before
Delta Music was ultimately defeated by my company Dungeon Games
(which I owned and operated by myself from 1995-2006), despite the fact
that I was greatly outnumbered (approximately three machines to one for
most of the war) and outgunned (financially, facing a multi-million dollar
company). It was because of my hard work, the birth of the internet,
and great loyal customers like Danny Thibodeaux (Coach), Eric Candies (Candyman),
Sean Candies (Imperial Dark Lord), Ryan Bourgeois (Macgyver), and many
others, that allowed me to win this war and ultimately fully assimilate
The Dungeon game room with all Dungeon Games!
Alas, the big international
arcade game makers like Midway and Namco eventually sold
out to the home stations in the early 2000s and left game room operator's
like me out in the cold with no new games to keep the great business of
arcade ownership alive. All of this will be explained in more detail
in the "History of The Dungeon game
room cell". That, and my disability of literally breaking my
back to make the business great in the first place, led me to sell the
business and go into early retirement. This eventually led to the
ultimate destruction of The Dungeon game room (they physically broke down
some of the walls) by the hands of the new owners of Creole Lanes
(the bowling alley where The Dungeon game room was located). Without
new games to keep the business alive, now it has died with only our history
and memories left to honor what was in the graveyard of what is now the
Arcades
of today.
Because of this, some of the
machines that were once in The Dungeon game room are now up for sale (some
are listed in "Dungeon
Games' Cell"). Most of these machines, like the fighting
games Killer Instinct 1 and 2, still have all the original high scores
made by great "Dungeon Warriors" like Eric
Candies (Candyman) and Sean Candies (IDL) and are available for purchase.
These machines include the historic Mortal Kombat 4 (MK4) machine which
made The Dungeon world famous, via the internet, for having found more
secrets and fatalities for that game than any other single arcade game
room in 1998! Unfortunately, the makers of that game are now up to
"Mortal Kombat X" this year (2014), but have never made another arcade
release since MK4 in 1998. In any case, if you are interested in
purchasing any of these machines, you can contact me at humandinosaurs@bonemanrecords.com
for more information. Several of these machines have already sold,
not to mention the ones I am keeping for myself (do not ask for any of
the pinball machines, they are ALL mine and are NOT for sale, hehe), so
if you are interested in owning a piece of history, contact me now before
they are all gone!!!!!
  
"Zack Jones" (left), "Dungeon Master" (middle),
"Coach" and "Joshubiche" (right)
Dungeon Master's messages from the past (2000-2007):
(4-3-07)
Let it be known that there is now a new Dungeon
Master! Zack Jones is officially the new Dungeon Master, as I am
now officially retired from The Dungeon. I will keep this page up
for historical reference and may update with more information as it comes
available. I am also pleased to announce that "The Dungeon videos"
section has been officially started! Scroll down to the bottom of
this page to view the Divx version of special Dungeon past events and more
(when I have time or get some requests, I will post them).....
(8-28-06)
"On this day, the 10 year anniversary of The
Dungeon War Gods
Tournament, I want to take this opportunity to thank all those who
have help make The Dungeon such a cool place to hang out over the years.
At the same time I would like to express my most sincere condemnation to
Midway and Namco for the utter betrayal of the arcades and game rooms across
the nation to the home system market. I condemn these big companies
as traitors to the coin-op arcades and game rooms, without which the first
home system would have never been created. From the Atari 2600 to
the Playstations, the arcades were always the first to have the newest
games. There was a time when arcades had a new game for years before
it was released for the home system. In recent years we have seen
the time of a new game going from the arcade to the home system reduced
to only a few months. Now we are seeing the arcades being cut out
all together by both Midway and Namco.
First I address Midway
who at one time made available some of the best games for the arcade, including
the Mortal Kombat series and Cruis'n series, who has completely stop making
arcade games and now only makes games for home systems. Midway has
sold out to the home system market even though some of their arcade games
from almost 10 years ago continue to remain popular and still get consistent
play. Midway's betrayal of the arcades in particular has hurt me
both professionally as well as personally. After discovering more
secrets and codes, for games like the arcade version of Mortal Kombat 4
revision 3, then any other single game room in the country we now find
ourselves with nothing worthy of our talent in the arcade market.
With the release of Mortal Kombat 5 and subsequent titles exclusively to
the home consoles, I must say I am profoundly disappointed in Midway.
Some of you can remember the historic times like the first night we played
MK4 revision 3 and we witnessed Coach
find the first two new fatalities in only a few hours of play!
In those days great Dungeon Warriors like Candyman and IDL would come to
The Dungeon and spend the whole day making record times and fighting it
out on the newest fighting games in the famous Dungeon Tournaments, which
were know all over the country and the world via the internet. Now
we see only the occasional Namco release, which brings me to my next subject.
Last, but certainly
not least, I must address the treachery of Namco which is now apparently
guilty of the same betrayal of the arcades to the home systems. Before
Midway announced it would no long be producing arcade games, Midway started
cutting the time between a game's arcade release to the home system release
shorter and shorter. For someone who runs an arcade, like myself,
this became a bigger and bigger problem. An arcade operator's profit
is cut almost in half when most new games, like a fighting game, get released
on the home systems. In the case of Namco, the most significant example
of this was the release of Tekken 5. I first heard about Tekken 5
in early November 2004 and was skeptical about it when I heard the home
version of the game was already in the works. Nevertheless, I called
my distributor to place an order. For the first time in the history
of the series, Namco refused to release this title in kit form and only
offered it as a full machine purchase with a whopping price tag of almost
$8,000.00 which is twice the amount of the cost to purchase an average
new machine. I was told that a kit version may or may not become
available 1-2 months after the game's release. If that wasn't bad
enough, the home version release was only 2 and a half months after the
arcade release which meant that anyone who purchased the machine only had
2 months of revenue to try and pay off the tremendous price tag and make
a profit. I can tell you from experience that most machines take
five times that long to show a profit and that is if it is a standard price
of 3-4 thousand dollars. At almost eight grand, I knew it was not
a wise investment so needless to say I refused to buy it. Not to
mention my previous experience with Tekken 4 which did rather poorly compared
to Tekken 3 overall. After Tekken 4 was released on the home system
my Tekken Tag Tournament was making more money than my Tekken 4 so I moved
it to another location. Then more recently I looked into getting
Soul Calibur 3 only to find out that it, like Midway's Mortal Kombat 5,
was only going to be released on the home system. Now that brings
us to my latest investigation, Tekken 6. Here is a quote taken straight
from gamespot.com this morning referring to the latest news
on Tekken 6: We catch another brief glimpse of the next installment
in Namco's hit fighting game series at Sony's press conference, coming
exclusively to the PS3. As you can see, once again the arcades
and game rooms get left out.
In closing I would
like to say I hope some new company steps up and releases new games for
the arcade that are worth playing like the games released in the 80s and
90s. Do not look for it to happen with Midway or Namco. Until
then, I guess you can always look back here on this page and remember all
the good times we had before the big game companies turned their backs
on us.....
(3-27-04)
"Once again, it is with a heavy heart that
I
must announce the loss of another outstanding member of our group: Josh
(Joshubiche) Kidwell. He passed away on 3-19-04 in a traffic accident.
I have added a special Joshubiche's
Cell which will have pictures from the video of last year's tournament......
Eric Candies (Candyman) 1981-2000
It is with a heavy heart that we announce that one of the greatest Dungeon
Warriors of all time passed away on
11-5-00. He was among the very first to officially become a Dungeon
Warrior and he was the undefeated Dungeon Champion for the years 1996-1998.
In honor of his memory, The Dungeon has added a special Candyman's
Cell to this page which contains pictures and memories for all Dungeon
Warriors to share. We thank God for the good times we've had together
and we will cherish the memory of Candyman (Eric Candies) always.....
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