Category Archives: crap I buy

Craft Day for the arcade cabinet owner.

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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!

Arcade flyer keychains

Neo-Geo MVS-2-13 restoration

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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.

Neo mini

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Arcade Trailer Raid, Day 2.

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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.

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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.

Arcade warehouse buy.

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This one is mostly for the locals. Want to buy a video game?

I’ll be helping to load up an arcade operator buyout next week. The plan is to sell off as many cabinets as possible locally, and then the buyer will take the rest of the lot home in a rental truck. As a result, I’m sure anyone looking to pick up one of the larger games (yeah you, TX-1) will find themselves with a particularly good deal. We won’t see the machines until next week, so pricing is totally up in the air, but expect hobbyist-friendly numbers.

If you are interested in one or more of the games, let me know, and plan to be free the morning of September 19th.

…

A few of these are already spoken for, but here’s the list, as provided by the current owner:

01. Turkey Shoot
02. Turkey Shoot-minor gun adjustment needed (they used an optic type plastic on this game)
03. Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom
04. Mappy
05. Tempest (needs flyback)
06. Mach 3 Laser Game (have good player-if you are familiar with these, they need calibrated to the individual disc player-this is a nice one)
07. Rampage
08. Top Choice crane-works
09. Pac Land (conv. Game-not dedicated-in Journey cabinet)
010. Paperboy
011. Power Drift Mini Sid Down
012. Star Trek S/D Non working
013. Star Trek S/D Non working
014. Endro Racer ride on-restored nice-worked ok to my memory
015. TX1-did work-unknown now-rare
016. VS Cocktail-Super Mario Bros & Ladies Golf
017. Astron Belt Laser Game Deluxe Sit Down-Nice-No player-ultra rare-I almost certainly will have a player and disc for this game-but not sure.
018. Xevious
019. Hang on u/r
020. Interstellar U/R Very Rare
021. Neo Geo 2 slot 25″ monitor dedicated
022. Track-n-field Cocktail
023. VS Dual Super Mario Bros & Dr. Mario
024. Zombie Raid-minor gun problem
025. Xevious
026. TX1-I would say this is good for parts for the other one-used to work, but was parted out in the coin door area
027. Pole Position II S/D
028. Road Riot 2 player dedicated S/D
029. Pac Land Dedicated
030. Super Monaco GP u/r-minor paddle shifter problem, if I remember correctly
031. Q*Bert-Nice
032. Ms. Pac Man 19″ dedicated
033. Capcom Bowling
034. Kangaroo dedicated-nice
035. Strange Science Pinball-Nice-Works
036. Make Trax-needs small controls board on monitor-was robbed to fix another game