Derive
I would wager that eighty percent of my time online is spent aimlessly wandering. However, I drew a blank when I was tasked with freely surfing the web for a half hour. So, in an attempt to forget the assignment, I went to the source of all my procrastination, Reddit. Personally, there is no greater time suck than binging a string of seemingly connected youtube videos, and after a brief stint on r/videos I stumbled upon an unlikely source.
Within the last week, a youtube channel named Summoning Salt uploaded a half an hour long documentary chronicling the world record progression of a single level/race in Mario Kart 64. I haven’t played that game, or owned that console, in over a decade, but I was unexplainably riveted. So much so that I watched two more of Summoning Salt’s miniature documentaries before even realizing how much time had passed, but it was too late to turn back as I was hooked.
It became clear that these early internet speed runs were chronicled by two distinct communities, Twin Galaxies and Speed Demon Archives. I was familiar with the concept of speed running; hell, I’ve watched several speedrunners stream on Twitch, but I had never heard of either of these websites. Upon my arrival at TwinGalaxies.com, I tried to access their archived forums, but like most old forums Twin Galaxies required a registered account. Uphased, I fired up 10minutemail.com like any seasoned cyberflaneur in order to gain access while avoiding any future spam, and just like that I was inside. Immediately it was obvious that Twin Galaxies was a shell of its former self. With each scroll of the mouse I descended calendar years worth of decades old posts. Eventually a thread about pinball machines caught my eye. One response, from user BenZano, described a Simpsons pinball machine that I distinctly remembered from my childhood summers at the local bowling alley.
On a lark, I decided to see if that particular machine happened to be located in Columbia, it did not. However, that search led me to a website called the pinballmap.com. Apparently, a company that refurbishes old pinball machines has chronicled and condensed every sale they ever made by location on a national map. This database allows users to search by specific models and find the nearest known location. After giving it a shot myself I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Simpsons machine that I remember playing is available for play in Sedalia, Missouri at a location called Leisure Park. Pinball Map even had the link to Leisure Parks website which happened to contain a photo gallery. It was there that I found one small yahoo hosted photo in which all of their pinballs machines lined the background.
To be honest, it is damn near impossible to make out what machines are actually in the photo, but I thought it was neat where my Derive ultimately took me. Unsurprisingly, this little rabbit hole lasted a little over 3 hours, but now I have an excuse to make a stop in Sedalia the next time I have some quarters.
