Category Archives: video games

2009 Arcade Restoration Agenda.

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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?

link love 11-05-08

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IGN Retro has been posting up Howard Scott Warshaw’s Once Upon Atari. Go watch episode one, two, and three.

OSV interviews Eminence Symphony Orchestra director Hiroaki Yura, on the new Echoes of War: The Music of Blizzard Entertainment album.

A couple good iPhone development reads: PCalc postmortem, and designing the Favorites UI.

Guy makes a mech costume for his kid, gets a ton of hits, and posts up a build notes video.

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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link love 10-16-08

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Two link loves in a row without a content post? Oh hell! To top it off, I forgot that today was recycling day, and the bins are full! Oh hell!

schild’s interview with Raph Koster is up, covering subscriptions, Metaplace, and fun. I still have problems reading the word ‘metaplace’ correctly.

Start to Finish: Publishing a Commercial iPhone Game.

IndieGames insightfully reviews 2D Boy’s World of Goo. I think I’m gonna get the Wii version.

Lux Touch is a free Risk-like game for the iPhone. Fun to play, definitely worth downloading, but not much in the way of options (that’s all coming in the later pay version). For me, Risk and Apple have always gone together; we played the hell out of Risk Deluxe on the SE back in school.