Significant locations in gaming in the southern US

[Steben]

We're planning our roadtrip for E.T.'s March (see the link in my signature), but we have more time than necessary for the planned stops we have right now.

What I'm interested in are any places we can stop and check out to include in the documentary. Any really cool arcades, gamer clubs, video game companies... anything else that would fit in documentary celebrating video games and gamers.

Here's a list of major cities that we'd have to travel through to go straight from Auburn to El Paso:

Montgomery, AL

Jackson, MS

Monroe, LA

Dallas, TX

El Paso, TX

Anything near those cities would be great to hear about in particular. Of course, feel free to mention any other interesting places in the south... Pretty much all the important video game locations I can think of offhand are in the US are in New York, California, or Washington state.

[Mustin]

Come stop in Fayetteville, Arkansas - home of The OneUps!

Let me know when you come through and we can plan a live show for you.

[suzumebachi]

6 or 7 years ago I would have said to come by Albuquerque (only a few more hours drive from El Paso) but video gaming has died a horrible death here in the last few years. The enormous monthly LANs have gone the way of the dodo, the mayor has squashed the life out of all the major arcades in town, American Laser Games is gone, and with the heightened security post 9-11 you can no longer get into the VR labs at Sandia National Laboratories or the Air Force/NASA VR training centers.

You're taking kind of a weird route there, though. I'm assuming you're going to Dallas for QuakeCon or something. But why El Paso? El Paso is a shithole, man. Why not Austin, San Antonio, or Houston? Surely there's something there.

[Steben]

El Paso is where the Atari warehouse that contained the doomed copies of E.T. the Extraterrestrial was located.

http://www.auburn.edu/~clontsc/etmarch/about/

I just named the cities we'd be traveling through to go straight to El Paso, our destination. This might change as we find more stuff to do along the way.

[suzumebachi]

But the E.T. carts themselves are buried in Alamogordo...

[Steben]

But the E.T. carts themselves are buried in Alamogordo...

We're taking the path the trucks took, from El Paso to Alamogordo. Possibly visit the warehouse itself.