Yo! Happy Thanksgiving. It’s 12:03AM my time, so it’s official “Eat as Much as you can Keep Down” day. I hope that you make it through the day without any intestinal unpleasantries.

I have much to be thankful for this year. Here are a few things:

1. My wife has not kicked me out of the house yet, despite the fact that I’ve brought about an average of 2 arcade games a month home since October.

2. I’ve managed to (just barely) pay my mortgage, bills, etc…despite #1. I should be saving for retirement, but I’m not geriatric yet so I still have some time for that.

3. New episodes of 24 and Lost are getting closer to a reality.

Now, enough with the Thanksgiving babble….turkey this…pilgrim that……

behold dear reader…I BRING YOU XEVIOUS!

I picked up this bad boy for a measly $75 smackeroos about 1hr and 45 mins away - thanks to Craigslist. If you are obsessive, you can get some amazing deals there. Most of my games of late have come from Craigslist.

Xevious was made by Atari in ‘82. Here’s some info about this game from KLOV.com, for all you Xevious virgins in the audience:

Xevious takes place on Earth. An invading alien race has set up shop, and it’s up to the player to send ‘em home. The game has a large number of different ground and air-based targets of either belligerent or non-belliegerent nature. In addition to the jumper-based difficulty levels, the game also adapts its difficulty to the player. If the player is successful against a type of attacker, an even deadlier type of attacker shows up to challenge the player.

The game plays fine and the image on the monitor looks very good. Cosmetically, I’d say it’s about average. The sideart is decent but with typical scuffs. The art above the bezel is flawless as is the bezel. The control panel has a bit of a bend in the middle of it that I can probably bend back out. The art on the marquee area is a bit melted.

Click the link below for more pics and stuff…

This game brings quite a few firsts for me with it:

1. First game that I got pulled over on the way home with…I was no more than 2 minutes from my house when I saw the flashing lights of Johnny Law in my rearview mirror. He said I had a light out, but I think he just wanted a closer look at Xevious. He let me go with a warning, which was really good, because it’s hard to blog in jail. What was also very good was that he didn’t spot my expired inspection sticker from Feb. ‘07.
2. First game without a typical glass/plexi marquee
3. First game with security bars still affixed:
   
4. First game that worked fine that had to go in the GARAGE because I am out of room.