1980 Space Firebird Pickup!

ChanceKJ

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Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Backstory: So a few weeks back we uploaded our London Road Trip video and one of our subscribers, who also happened to be a member of our local pinball league happened to recognize a game that Alex had in his collection. I guess a couple months back he had been on a pickup for a pinball machine out in "nowhere" Alberta, and noticed the guy also had this cocktail sitting in his barn.

After watching the video he reached out to me and made the introduction. Fast forward a couple weeks later to yesterday, the owner was in town and we made a deal. A very GOOD deal. Probably the cheapest i've ever paid for a game that wasn't free.

I guess he's had it in the family for 25 years. It was at one point living in Manitoba, then they brought it out here to Alberta, but its pretty much been in storage the entire time.

Game boots up and plays, it's missing the star field, and a few sounds. Mainly only gets the shooting sounds, no explosions or enemy ship sounds. Monitor is sharp as hell, but needs to be tuned a bit for shape. As for the cabinet itself, there is a bit of damage on the one side that has a pretty bad repair job done to it but totally fixable. They added some sort of wooden brace to the legs (no idea why?). And the side panel has come off but is intact and quite easily repaired. I am missing one of the four rounded corner mouldings which will have to be sourced, and one of the balltops. Inside the game is near MINT. Theres the odd dead fly, but zero mouse shit, and all the wood inside looks like it was fresh from the factory. Zero dust and grime on the labels or the PCB's. and it looks like they added a switching power supply at one point, but it was done well and the original one is still there and intact. Also included a manual inside thats in amazing shape. Aside from the obvious wear on the control panels, the artwork is pristine, and almost looks fresh from the factory too. It glows crazy under blacklight! Glass needs to be replaced, obviously, and it's missing one of the side locks.

With a little love and the right parts this thing will be as good as new.

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Sega gremlin space firebird

That's pretty cool, looks like mine. I got mine from a garage sale. I am still having trouble with the video board. I can get it to play, but there are only random sprites showing up on the screen. I have not found anyone who works on these pcbs. I have more than one set, but the other ones are dead. If you know anyone that works on them, please let me know. I used to play this game a lot as a kid back in the 80s! Fun game.
 

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Chance you have been kicking ass and taking names these past few months. This is a sweet pickup bro. So minty. Whatever issues it has are easily fixable.
 
That's pretty cool, looks like mine. I got mine from a garage sale. I am still having trouble with the video board. I can get it to play, but there are only random sprites showing up on the screen. I have not found anyone who works on these pcbs. I have more than one set, but the other ones are dead. If you know anyone that works on them, please let me know. I used to play this game a lot as a kid back in the 80s! Fun game.

Onecircuit.com does work on them. They are very similar to most early Nintendo boards.
 
Yeah, I might give Adam a ring if I can't wrap my head around it. We have a couple local guys here too. This is gonna sit for a week or two anyways as I have to setup the new basement and workshop before I can start anything. Plus, I'd like to get the Robotron assembled. :)
 
Great catch, that thing looks MINT ! I just LOVED Space Firebird back in the day, the game does to cheat like hell when it drops those exploding frag bombs. That drove me nuts, total replay value. Seemed like it took ages for me to get a PCB for it too.

Here's where I used to play it BITD :) They had a machine for a few months back in 81. "News & Food" used to be a newsagent at the time.
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.660...4!1sxsukW0NlbjHUqu7V4dcx4Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Still remember how mad that game used to make me.... There used to be a mini-cab company two doors to the right, they had a Frogger at about the same time.
 
I am feeling a little jelly now. I had that thing in the back of my van that whole day we did the pickup... i should have just drove it straight home while Chance waited for me at his house... i'd ignore his calls and texts after that....
 
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