Altered Beast

ccie38296

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Donor 3 years: 2019, 2024-2025
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Several months ago I bought an Altered Beast in a Joust cabinet from a junk hauler. They pulled it out of someone's basement where it had clearly encountered some water. The board and monitor worked, so that was a big plus. It even still had sound, so the suicide battery was OK. It had the original K4900 monitor that looked like it had probably never been touched.

Aside from the front panel being swollen like a sponge, it had been a pretty sloppy conversion back in the day. The side art was installed at different angles on each side and buttons were not in consistent positions for the two players. It had the wrong joysticks and the sticks used did not have long enough shafts for the wooden panel. The start buttons weren't centered on the CP… pretty ugly overall.

I know most here would probably prefer to restore this machine to a Joust and move the AB to a generic cab. I would have been happy to do that — I even posted a "For Trade" thread to see if someone with an empty Dynamo wanted to trade cabs, but no takers. So I'm moving forward with this cab.
 

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First step was trying to deal with that front panel. After pointing a couple fans at it for a few days to be sure everything was dry, I doused it in wood hardener and then clamped the shit out of it for several days. After that, I shaved away the areas that wouldn't compress, applied more wood hardener, reclamped, and repeated.

Once what I had left was firm and holding shape, I smoothed it out and leveled with Bondo. The bottom lip still felt a bit fragile and I was worried that it might crack if accidentally bumped hard or smacked against something, so I added some reinforcement behind it using some 1x3 and 3/4" square stock. It's nice and solid now.

I was tempted to replace that panel entirely but most of it was sound, and the Williams cabs have that routing for the lower coin door, and the inner coin bucket housing is attached to the panel. I didn't really want to have to rebuild all of that. I'm satisfied with how that bit came out.
 

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Next was this control panel. Holy shit, it was Swiss cheese. Clearly it was originally drilled for Joust, then there was a large hole in the dead center for something, and then the 8 additional button holes for AB. You can see in the photos that spacing between the buttons for P1 and P2 aren't the same, and aren't even consistent for each player. I had to plan on redoing the CP completely, my OCD couldn't live with that.

The CPO was a bear to get off. I ended up having to douse it in Citristrip to loosen the adhesive and then use the belt sander to get it all off. The metal plate on top of the CP was beyond repair, so I removed it and sanded down the lip at the edge.

After that, I cut plugs for all the holes from various diameter dowels (since the holes ranges from 1-1/8 to 1-1/4 to 1-1/2"), and used the jigsaw to cut some plugs for the rectangular holes that I assume were for the original Joust sticks. I glued all the plugs in with wood glue and as much blocking from shims, craft sticks, and tiny dowels as possible to take up all the space I could. After sanding that all flat, I filled the gaps with DAP PlasticWood Pro, and sanded down again. The surface feels pretty damn uniform now.

I may do a bit of a skim coat with PlasticWood or Bondo yet, and then a couple coats of a filler/primer after I drill the new holes. But it's in much better shape than it started in.
 

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Some updates! I did final coats on the control panel, then measured and drilled new holes for controls. I cut a new piece of Lexan to go over top of the controls (as the control labels are just decals that are placed on the CPO and the original kit had a plexi sheet to protect those decals). Tonight I drilled the Lexan and made sure everything fit and lined up. I also disassembled, cleaned, and polished the joysticks I bought. I'm ready for the CPO now!
 

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Coin doors!

The lower coin door was pretty beat up, so I took the opportunity to repaint it and experimented with the splatter coat technique to match the original finish. I'm really happy with the results.

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The upper door was in mostly good shape but the paint was worn dull in some spots so that one I just taped off the plastic bits and gave it a very light coat of Rustoleum Black Satin to even it out.

I cleaned the back side and installed some mechs. I then reinstalled the switch bracket.

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Also, the cabinet was curiously missing the "coin pipes" that Williams cabinets have to direct the coins down into the lower coin box. The closest thing I could find was 1-1/2" PVC electrical conduit. I cut some pieces to length (as measured on another Williams cabinet), used a chamfer tool to chamfer the inside edge similar to my reference cabinet, and then had to sand down the outside of the very bottom of each pipe to fit the hole in the cabinet. I suspect Williams put the pieces on a lathe or something back in the day. My way was tedious and not very pretty, but it worked. I cemented them in place with a bead of construction adhesive.


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I reinstalled the doors tonight. Some wiring still needs to be done, but it's looking much better!

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Coin doors!

The lower coin door was pretty beat up, so I took the opportunity to repaint it and experimented with the splatter coat technique to match the original finish. I'm really happy with the results.

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The upper door was in mostly good shape but the paint was worn dull in some spots so that one I just taped off the plastic bits and gave it a very light coat of Rustoleum Black Satin to even it out.

I cleaned the back side and installed some mechs. I then reinstalled the switch bracket.

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Also, the cabinet was curiously missing the "coin pipes" that Williams cabinets have to direct the coins down into the lower coin box. The closest thing I could find was 1-1/2" PVC electrical conduit. I cut some pieces to length (as measured on another Williams cabinet), used a chamfer tool to chamfer the inside edge similar to my reference cabinet, and then had to sand down the outside of the very bottom of each pipe to fit the hole in the cabinet. I suspect Williams put the pieces on a lathe or something back in the day. My way was tedious and not very pretty, but it worked. I cemented them in place with a bead of construction adhesive.


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I reinstalled the doors tonight. Some wiring still needs to be done, but it's looking much better!

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Nice work on the coin tubes. I love the attention to detail. I remember having to make these for my Bubbles cabaret scratch build. I think I ended up using a Dremel for the inside bevel and my bench grinder wheel to hone the lower part to make them fit into the holes of the coin shroud.

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I had to repair and repaint the cabinet. There were some big gouges in the paint and original crooked side art. I filled the gouges and sanded things smooth. I did not want to strip the existing paint nor laminate the sides. There does still seem to be mostly complete Joust art under there. So I intentionally chose a water-based paint for this one, so that it *could* be removed in the future while hopefully recovering the original art if someone so desired.

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I was really torn on a color. The original blue was dull and muddy. I didn't want to do black. But I kept coming back to a KLOV thread from long ago by @supertechnoboy in which he envisioned a red Altered Beast cab. After staring long and hard I decided that was the way to go.

I found a red that matched the "Altered Beast" logo text on the side art pretty well. I painted the cabinet in that color and installed gray T-molding.

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Tonight I applied the side art.

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It looks crooked in the pictures because of the cabinets weird angles. It's aligned to the back edge of the cabinet well and looks nice and straight.

Working on the CPO and controls now.
 
Looks good. Nothing wrong with saving a conversion instead of restoring to the original game. It's getting so expensive to restore/deconvert a game to original that it's not really "worth it" in most cases unless you just enjoy the process and don't mind wasting money. Otherwise, it's usually easier and cheaper to just buy a complete game. This game is looking nice!!
 
Nice work. So this has always been a game that I wanted to make dedicated in my Arcade. I'm not sure why I got rid of my original Altered Beast, but I'd really like to build a new one. Throwing the old Sega 16 multi in there wouldn't be a bad idea either.
 
Nice work. So this has always been a game that I wanted to make dedicated in my Arcade. I'm not sure why I got rid of my original Altered Beast, but I'd really like to build a new one. Throwing the old Sega 16 multi in there wouldn't be a bad idea either.
Thanks! I think it's coming together nicely. I have the Apocalypse 16b multi in the project bin! Once I get everything functioning again with the original game I'm going to flash the chips for that and install! I finally found someone selling the rotary selector unit on the A-P forum so I nabbed that too. It will be a really nice setup I think. AB, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Tetris…
 
Thanks! I think it's coming together nicely. I have the Apocalypse 16b multi in the project bin! Once I get everything functioning again with the original game I'm going to flash the chips for that and install! I finally found someone selling the rotary selector unit on the A-P forum so I nabbed that too. It will be a really nice setup I think. AB, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Tetris…
Yeah, I really need to grab that kit. I'm not good at building that shit so I need it all done for me. Hopefully they are still building them.
 
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