Polishing balls.

My latest project cabinet is a Missile Command upright, and my plan is to get it looking and working as close to new as I can. Step one: strip it down and get that big black ball rolling smoothly again.

The upright version of Missile Command was one of the few games (along with the first Atari sports releases) to use a massive four and a half inch Atari Trak-Ball. As these things take up a fair chunk of control panel real estate, most cabinets were designed with a smaller 2.25 or 3 inch trackball. Personally, I like the big ones.

PRO TIP: A 4.5 inch trackball is exactly the same size as a candlepin bowling ball, with similar construction. Feel free to swap out your beat up Trak-Ball for a candlepin ball with a skull embedded in it and save yourself a couple hours of polishing time.

PRO TIP: I didn’t even know candlepin bowling existed until last week.

Full story, after the jump »

2009 Arcade Restoration Agenda.

I, Robot - Ground up restoration. Un-Choplifter this thing and bring it back to its former glory. So far I’ve found non-working pcbs, the pcb cage, and a hall effect stick. Still need a harness, marquee and bezel art, and ideally a new control panel.

Interstellar Laser Fantasy - Cabinet is in fairly nice shape, should only require some touch up work here and there once the control panel is rebuilt. No player or disc, so the current plan is to make it into a dedicated Daphne machine (anyone need Interstellar boards?).

Xevious - Cabinet is in solid shape, and with the spare cp, this one might end up being one I play with and turn into a MAME or multi-game. Also, I’m toying with the idea of mounting the upper artwork (directly below the marquee) to plexi with a soft backlight.

Missile Command - Ground-up restoration. Gonna be a lot of work, but at least the cabinet itself is in solid shape.

Omega Race - Ground-up restoration. Front art is all in great shape, side art needs replacing (awaiting thisoldgame.com repros), back of the cabinet looks like it was dragged down a gravel road, will need a bit of bondo work. Hoping the boards are good, still needs a G05 chassis and a few other bits.

The wife is right, I do not need any more machines right now. I’ve got enough cabinet projects to last me a full year, so unless someone wants to donate an upright Discs of Tron, I doubt I’ll be picking up anything new. It’s still fun to scan craigslist in the morning with coffee, though.

So, with the recent spate of arcade project posts, have I managed to convince any of you out there to take up this life leeching incredibly fulfilling hobby? Got a 2009 restoration (or collection) agenda?

Craft Day for the arcade cabinet owner.

1) Buy a handful of acrylic photo keychains. I went with the Lifestyles Photo Keytags that Walgreens sells, two for three bucks.

2) Download flyers for your cabinet. The Arcade Flyer Archive is a perfect resource, and you’ll want to find two good pages, for both the front and back sides of the keychain.

3) Clean up and resize the artwork. Some of the scans can be pretty rough, so if you’ve got the knowhow, now is the part where you’ll want to do any color correction and blemish removal from the flyer artwork, otherwise don’t worry about it, they’ll turn out fine enough. Once everything looks good, size ‘em down. If you’re using the Walgreens keytags, you’ll want the print size to be 2×2.875 inches.

4) Create a printing template. If you have Photoshop, feel free to use the one I made, formatted roughly to size and for 4×6 glossy photo paper.

5) Print your artwork. Let your printouts dry for a bit, then trim as needed. Place the front and back flyer images in the keytag, snap in the acrylic cover, loop in your cabinet keys and you’re good to go!

Neo-Geo MVS-2-13 restoration

The lack of free space in the garage aside, I’m really enjoying the whole arcade restoration thing. This hobby strikes so many of the right nerves for me: the strong nostalgia kick, the tinkering, the collectibility, and the research and skill acquisition required to go from start to completion.

If you were a gamer in the 80s and if you’ve got the room, I recommend taking on your own project — thanks to the current state of our economy, cabinets are selling for cheap, and with a bit of exploration and patience you could easily wind up with your own personal gaming holy grail sitting in your workspace. There are plenty of small shops out there selling parts and reproduction artwork, and many active online communities to help with the hunt for specific pieces and technical questions.

Anyway, on to the latest.

A Neo-Geo MVS-2-13 – more commonly known as a Neo Mini or Cabaret – was one of my personal picks from the warehouse raid a few weeks back, and my first project from the lot.

Full story, after the jump »

Arcade Trailer Raid, Day 2.

It begins.

Here’s where the bulk of the games were located. The facility is one of those places on the edge of town where they rent out shipping containers and trailers; the containers were stacked everywhere, with trailers lined up behind them. Looked like a level out of Rainbow Six or something. Every now and then, F-15s and F-16s from Nellis would scream right over us, close enough to read the numbers.

I wasn’t forward-thinking enough to bring sunscreen, but thankfully the worst of the summer heat had already passed; the temperature was a comparably balmy mid-90 degrees or so.

Okay, pictures!

Thank God for the forklift.

Ray takes a ride while the seller drives. Loose gravel added excitement to the day, as every now and then the forklift would spin out or get stuck, scaring the hell out of whoever was stabilizing the load.

There was a nice selection of laser disc games, all in decent shape. M.A.C.H. 3, an upright and cockpit Interstellar Laser Fantasy, and an Astron Belt cockpit. Additionally, we pulled out an upright and cockpit Firefox, both of which the seller unfortunately kept.

Two Star Trek cockpits. One went to Pete, one back home with Ray. Behind em to the left is the Firefox cockpit.

Here’s the upright Interstellar, and the only cabinet I personally claimed from the day.

Mappys! Adam Isgreen is now the proud owner of the one on the right.

Two Turket Shoots. What a strange collection of games in this trailer.

Ray poses with the loot.

And finally…

That’s not a farmer’s tan, that’s dirt.

Okay you can stop checking out my feet now. Here’s the final tally:

Games I’m keeping
I, Robot (Choplifter converted)
Interstellar Laser Fantasy
Xevious
Neo Geo MVS-2-13 cabaret & a 6slot mobo

Games I’m cleaning up to sell
Zombie Raid
Paperboy
Super Monaco GP
Nintendo VS Dualsystem upright (Super Mario & Dr. Mario)

Arcade Trailer Raid, Day 1.

This year I decided to focus most of my game-playing time on classics, great games of previous generations that for one reason or another I’d missed.

Last weekend I took that to its extreme.

There are two things every arcade game nerd should do: attend an auction, and participate in a warehouse raid, the finding of an old stash of arcade cabinets, usually belonging to a former operator, and the retrieval adventure that follows. Visiting an auction is something one can plan, but warehouse raids requires luck, timing, and persistence. Fortunately, I stumbled across someone who had all three, and I got to ride along.

It begins.

The cabinets were split up between two places, which made for a bit of a logistics puzzle. The smaller lot was a group of about a 10-15 cabinets in storage units, so we took care of those during the evening and night of the first day.

Out of this group, Ray (the one who got this whole thing rolling) took home a Star Wars cockpit, Q-bert, Ms Pac-Man, Mappy, Track n Field cocktail, Make Trax, the Pole Position cockpit, and a handful of others. There was also a Road Riot 2-player cockpit that a former coworker came by to pick up the next day.

I took home a Xevious, the Neo MVS-2-13, and a Choplifter-in-an-I, Robot (missing the hall effect stick and boards, unfortunately). A Zombie Raid, Paperboy, Nintendo VS (Super Mario and Dr Mario), and Super Monaco GP are also in my garage waiting to be cleaned up and sold.

After a bit of cleaning and rebuilding the guns, this Zombie Raid turned out to be in beautiful shape. A few cosmetic blemishes, but the guns work great and the monitor is bright and clear:

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it, but I am a very tall person.

Day two tomorrow.

Liberty Belle in Las Vegas

The Liberty Belle B-17 bomber is at the North Las Vegas Airport this weekend:

There’s no need for a time machine this weekend - just make your way to the North Las Vegas Airport and you’ll set yourself back about 60 years.

The B-17 Bomber, named “Liberty Bell,” is visiting Las Vegas for the weekend and giving valley residents a unique opportunity to physically touch and see an airplane once used for combat during World War II.

There were originally 12,000 of these airplanes, but now only 14 remain.

Tour flights will be held this weekend - however, they will cost you $438 for a 30-minute flight.

The flights are pricey, so the crew does allow spectators to walk inside the grounded airplane before the first and after the last flight of the day for free of charge.

Saw her sitting on the runway this morning as we drove out towards Nellis to load up the arcade cabinets. Beautiful airplane, hopefully I’ll have time to go by before they fly out.

Restoring Tron - Fin.

I’m done. Done done done.

Okay, there are still a few things I plan to do, like add lights to the coin door inserts and replace the coin mechs for token use, but Tron is basically complete.

And for comparison purposes, here’s the cabinet back in the beginning of August:

Time to clean up the garage, enjoy the last couple weeks of vacation, and figure out what my next project cab is gonna be (I dunno if I have the constitution to dig into Cyberball just yet).

Restoring Tron - Capping the Monitor

Replacing the capacitors on the Wells 4900 was fairly easy, and actually kinda fun. It was my first experience soldering on a board, but I managed to complete the capping without issue, thanks in no small part to a couple instructional videos on Youtube. Thank you, Internet, I really do love you.

These boards can take some abuse. Check out this creative bit of repair by a previous owner:

I covered that exposed bit of wire near the top with electrical tape and let it be. Everything works fine for now, but I’m waiting for it to explode violently or something. Some day I’ll replace it just for the peace of mind.

Restoring Tron - Lights!

It’s lives! Everything is in but the monitor, and the game plays blind. Much to my relief, nothing caught fire or exploded when I powered the machine up.