[jonmagic]

My friend Christian Metts and I, 15 and 14 at the time, decided to start a virtual reality arcade in Jackson Crossing mall in Jackson Michigan in 1996.

We wrote a business plan, got $10k in investment from friends and family, rented space in the mall, bought the best PC at the time, two VFX1 3d headsets, licensed Descent for our use case by snail mailing the company with our idea and receiving a contract back from them which we signed and sent with a check, and my dad helped us design, build and weld a custom desk with arms to hold the headsets when they weren’t in use. It was designed as a standing desk so you could just walk up underneath, reach up and put the headset on, and play. I think we had Nintendo style controllers for the hands.

Unfortunately we were terrible salesmen (sales boys?) and then the Quake demo came out and we just played that non stop for 2 months without charging for it because we’d run out of budget for licensing.

Thankfully by August we were able to get construction jobs and managed to pay off our loans a few months ahead of the original plan (I think the terms were 10% over 12 months).

Great game, great learning experience, and a lot of fun. Haven’t failed at a business venture since. Ended up being an entrepreneur for the next 14 years before taking a more standard day job as a software engineer.

[keithasaurus]

Wild to see a Jackson Crossing reference on Hacker News. Haven't been there since around the time you would've had your business, but I don't think I remember an arcade like that. What was it called?

[jonmagic]

VRcade :) Here are two photos I found from us in the concourse of the mall and a photo of some mementos I have hung up in my office now.

- https://share.cleanshot.com/Y2DTKHFN - https://share.cleanshot.com/Ym6sFMLZ - https://share.cleanshot.com/hK7qQrVw

[otachack]

This is an amazing story! Thanks for sharing and hope you have less stress in life.