A Gorf conversion for the ages

Humdinger

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Bought this cab a few weeks ago for $50 without having a clue what it was originally. It was solid black with the exception of the Midway coin door, which was inexplicably blue. It sported a Neo-Geo marquee and a hastily-constructed Neo-Geo control panel with 2 sticks and 8 buttons. A typed label on the back said "Neo-Geo Fatal Fury", but with the Midway coin door and coin box, along with a serial number in the 14,000's stamped into the wood on the back in classic Midway fashion, I knew it hadn't always been a Neo-Geo. The cab is fairly narrow and has a monitor "bubble" on the upper back door, so I thought it may have been a Midway cabaret; but it seemed to be a little too large. I studied its construction and eventually came to the realization that the only thing it could have been was a Gorf -- but the upper front sides were totally wrong -- and the monitor was horizontally oriented.

I pulled up a picture of a Gorf and saw that they had a backlit lower front marqee, an upper rear backlit "marquee", and the usual top marquee. Someone had spray-painted the bottom and back pieces black, so I tried to Citrus Strip the paint off the plastic. That worked like a CHAMP on the upper back piece, EXCEPT for the fact that some bastard had painted BOTH sides of the plexi! Got the paint off the front and it looked beautiful, like new. But naturally when I tried stripping the paint off the screen-printed back of that piece, even though I was VERY careful not to leave the stripper on too long, it started eating away the screen print. DAMMIT!! If they had not painted the back, it would have been in PERFECT condition. Oh well.

Tried stripping the paint off the plastic lower marqee, and even though it removed the paint, it softened what appeared to be a protective sealer layer to the point that when I scraped it lightly with a razor blade, it looked awful. This machine must have been in near-perfect condition cosmetically when it was so horrifically converted.

IMHO, Gorf is kinda like Tron: really sweet cabinet but not so great a game. Still I felt sorry for this machine and gave some serious thought to putting it back to the way it was. But something kept bothering me about the sides. Something just didn't seem right. Then I figured it out:

Someone had actually gone to the trouble to modify the front side profiles to change the overall look of the cabinet. As far as invasive mods go, they did a good job I guess, but the logic behind such a drastic measure still eludes me. The real kicker? They routed the new shape into the sides WITHOUT removing the T-molding first, so the router beveled off the edge of the molding on the top and bottom radii, and then they DIDN'T CUT the new slots for the newly-shaped areas! Instead they painted the newly-routed areas black to match the existing molding! Why?? The new shape looks kinda cool, and the area removed was black on the inside anyway (no art there), but did someone hate Gorf so much that they were this determined to make the cabinet look like something else entirely? They even turned the vertical WG4600 horizontal with custom brackets and a shelf. I have never seen any operator go to these lengths to convert a machine. The final blow was when they painted everything black and created multiple runs and bubbles all over the cab.

So now we have a dilemma: what to do with this thing? The heavy purist in me says put it back as a Gorf, at least in outward appearance. The Gorf cab is fairly sexy, and all the plexi and a used control panel would slip right in. But the hitch is that by the time I hunted down and spent all the $ for the parts to make it look right again, I will have spent more than what a complete working machine would cost. And as previously mentioned, Gorf is NOT my favorite game. Or even 10th favorite. But I have to do something.

The other alternative of course is to multigame it, but I might forever see the deceased Gorf lurking below the sheep's clothing and wonder how I could have ever stooped to the same level the marauding converter did with his nefarious black spray paint all those years ago. The sides will never be right because I don't intend to spend the time and effort re-profiling them, so in that way it will never look like a true Gorf. But from another viewpoint, the new sides don't look too bad. I could slot the new areas and wrap new T-molding all the way around for a different take on the old classic. I've never owned a cabinet that left me at such a creative standstill. What to do? <tsk tsk> What to do? Thoughts, anyone?
 

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it'll never be a Gorf anytime soon, because half of it's missing. Put a 412 in 1 board in it (it has Gorf on it) and sell it. That way it's kind of got it's original game, but it's obviously been converted so no harm making it a multigame.

BTW, today this looks like a junk, but the day may come that people would be happy for any piece of an original Gorf... so throwing it away isn't an option imho.
 
All will be amazed when they see what's in store for this thing. The purist in me wants to perform miracles. It shall be restored.
 
Yes. Naturally the wood on this machine is 23/32" and not real 3/4". :( And all the biscuits and glue in the world won't provide enough strength to keep the sides from possibly breaking off if someone grabs them to move the machine. The only other option is to remove the top portion and make all new upper sides, but if after removing the 12 screws that hold the top to the bottom I discover that it was thoroughly glued too, then that plan will be hastily aborted.
 
Biscuit and glue joint is how boards are glued up, side by side, for a tabletop or something. Done right, the surrounding wood will break before the joint does. Also, I doubt the plywood at Lowes is actual 3/4". Probably not hard, if you can get the shape right.
 
I knew there was a Gorf under there somewhere! I've never had the good fortune of being able to sand a layer of black paint off cleanly, leaving only the original gray underneath in pretty good shape. The entire bottom worked out that way. The top was smeared with Citrusstrip only because it had 3 layers of paint on it, but the other side sanded quickly so I kinda wish I hadn't done that. Oh well. Moving right along...
 

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People that do things like what has been done to that cabinet are why the baby Jesus allows rabbits and kittens to end up under running lawn mowers.

FFS, people!!!

(edit: BTW- I love Gorf.... I think the gameplay is unique, and quite fun. Not to mention addictive. I pumped many a quarter into Gorf when it was available to play back in the early 80s.)
 
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