A quick recap: in October of 2008, I visited an incredible privately-owned arcade here in Oklahoma for the first time. In August of 2009, the arcade burned to the ground. The owners had no insurance, and the building and all of its contents were a total loss. There are a lot of people — most people, in fact — who would walk away from this hobby after watching years of work and tens of thousands of dollars literally go up in flames.

But not these guys.

Nope. Instead, these guys have spent the past six months rebuilding. While a new, physical location has yet to be erected, the guys have kept themselves busy buying and repairing games.

It’s hard to tell just how many games the guys have bought over the past six months. I counted close to 150 machines in the warehouse, ranging in shape from “nearly restored” to “gutted carcasses.” To make the actual totals more difficult to nail down, not all the games the guys own are here. Some are scattered around town, in friends’ businesses or their own homes.

I spent a few hours on Saturday with Troy (one of the arcade’s co-owners) as he worked his way around the warehouse. The goal right now is to simply get everything working. Like with car restorations, it’s not uncommon to see “parts machines” aligned in a row. Four Spy Hunters sit next to one another. None of them work at the moment, and Troy says he’ll be lucky to get one working machine out of the four. Further down the row there are two Ms. Pac-Man cabs, two TRON machines, and multiple picked over Nintendo cabinets.

Up against the back wall are a couple dozen machines that regularly appear on collectors’ lists of “Holy Grails.” Next to a working Stunt Cycle sits an original red Donkey Kong cabinet. Only the first 1,200 Donkey Kong machines were red; the next 75,000 or so came in that more familiar shade of Nintendo blue. Most collectors will never own an original red Donkey Kong. This one sits, covered in dust, waiting for its turn to be made over.

A few machines down from the Donkey Kong is a two-player Fire Truck machine. Next to that rests a sit-down Sinistar machine, a cabinet I’ve never even seen in person before. The front of the cabinet opens up like a real car hood, which Troy shows me as he points out the components he had to replace to make the machine live. There are quite a few.

At this point the tour ended and the playing began. With three or four extension cords connected end to end we made our way around the warehouse, trying various machines; a round of Toobin’ here, a few laps of Championship Sprint there. Troy remembers where he bought each machine, and how much he payed for them. As we play the games he tells me what repairs he’s already performed and what still needs to be done. Troy handles most of the electronic work. Co-owning twins Terry and Darry own printing and sign shops that double as personal arcade cabinet restoration hubs by night.

Keep in mind that these games are all being acquired for a personally-owned collection, not a public arcade. The scope is both impressive and overwhelming, and I can’t wait to see the end result.

Click here to see all the pictures I took at the warehouse.