Would anybody be interested in a tool to locate arcades?

I like the idea.

Here in OH, I can hardly find any shmups in arcades (I've seen a Strikers 1945 II at a bowling alley's arcade, but little else). It'd be nice to see if there's some location with good stuff that I am missing out on.

YES! Brilliant idea. I plan to take a road trip in the summer and knowing where all arcades were and what they contained would really help out.

Pa

If I my car didn't suck at long-distance travel (it's old and I can't afford a better one), I'd volunteer to comb the entire state of Maine for this. Instead, I'll donate information on whatever arcade I come across around here. I always carry a little notebook around with me (like the dork that I am). Just don't expect a lot of updates from me, 'cause I don't get out much.

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Originally posted by cka
I'm sure I can find more than enough people willing to help out... After all, this project is for them. With this, hopefully arcades will start getting more business and therefore start to become more popular once again. That's the intent, anyway...

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And then, after you save the arcades, you can move on to whales, tension in the Middle East, reunification of Korea, and the Mars Landing!

No, Im just kidding.

Write it in Perl, PHP, or ASP (last resort) and MySQL and then set up an Avantgo page. Thats absolutely the easiest way to do it good until you wanna sit down and code a Palm version. Doing it on WAP is a VERY VERY bad idea. WAP really doesn't have much of a future.

This is actually really easy to do but its also a very good idea.

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Originally posted by PostyJr
i'm interested

but i'm curious. how do you plan to get the locations of every arcade in the nation? or would it just be like asking people like us?

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Yeah, both user input and scouring the internet for addresses... ;)

And diffusionx: I finished "coding" it already. Took about 2 hours with my trusted friend php. It's all about info gathering now...

Man would that be a helpful tool. I'd love to be able to see where the good games are and plan some trips around these places. A question though, how big of an area do you plan to cover with the database, and how often would it be updated? Ok that's two questions, but...

I'd love to help. Let me know how I can.

I can cover most of Maryland.

As it stands right now, I have the means to cover just about anywhere in canada/usa. As long as the zip/postal code is under ten characters, phone number is 7 digits and the areacode is =< 3, I can probably put it on the database. I'm not sure how this info works in other parts of the world, like south america/asia/africa/australia/europe, but I know for sure I can cover north america.

Keep in mind I said I had the means, not the drive... :p So, unless the demand for intercontinental arcades is really high, I'll probably just stick with NA.

GO CKA GO!! :D

let us know when you get it started..

Alright ladies and gentlemen, The first revision should be up sometime this weekend. There's gonna be a form to submit data, a page to show detailed information about arcades, and hopefully a nice and easy-to-use search engine.

Driving/area maps (!) are gonna be provided via Yahoo! Maps as well, incase you're bad at finding street addresses. :p