Any games in your collection...

Late 80's there was a place called Grand prix race o rama in Ft Lauderdale off State Rd 84 it had a large arcade and a go cart track, even had a cool pizza party place that had pinball back glasses on the walls and game marquees in the head rests of the booths, needless to say the place was great I had a lot of fun there, they had a Donkey kong 3 I use to play a lot when I hung out there, I ended up buying that DK3 from there after I had to borrow $100 bucks from my mom, the game was $400.00 back then, I still have that DK3 in my collection, that location closed a couple years later due to the state buying up property to make 595 expressway, Grand prix did die as they moved off of I-95 and it became a larger arcade and go kart track, in 2000's Boomers bought them, now it is a shopping plaza with no arcade
 

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Finally got the guy to sell me the Tron I played in High School in 84. Tried for 15 years to get the guy to sell it to me. Well he is leaving town and called me a couple weeks ago if I still wanted it!
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Still on the fence about replacing the side art. Also have the Black Night Pinball that was at our bowling alley right after I moved away for school.
 
Still on the fence about replacing the side art. Also have the Black Night Pinball that was at our bowling alley right after I moved away for school.

If you replace it, you'll never be able to recreate the actual, real OG side art ever again. Your hand wear from back then is part of that side art.

I loves me some tasteful patina.
 
Finally got the guy to sell me the Tron I played in High School in 84. Tried for 15 years to get the guy to sell it to me. Well he is leaving town and called me a couple weeks ago if I still wanted it!
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Still on the fence about replacing the side art. Also have the Black Night Pinball that was at our bowling alley right after I moved away for school.
It a tough call on the side art, If its not going to be buried between games, I would consider replacing your side art. But its a matter of how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. your looking at close to $1k for all of it.

repo tron art is pretty good(I think this old game and/or phoenix did it back in the day). 100% get the repo sticker for the spinner. get the upper and lower blacklight covers. you will be surprised how faded yours are when you see the repos. keep your marquee or maybe get an encom one if they still make it. once you get it dailed in, then check how reflective the inner side art is and maybe replace that. maybe look into the lcd screen mod for the background(if that is even available).

but check the PS and deal with rebuilding that first. If it has the battery on the PS pcb thats job 1 to replace or remove. I would consider putting in the arcadeshop switcher. it may add a little humm to the sound, but linear PS can fail high and I think can cook your boards. It a choice of dealing with a little noise or maybe damaging a $400+ pcb.. cdjump can fix it, I dont know how much damage can be done to the pcb if the linear fails high.
 
Out of the many, many games I've owned over the years, certainly there had to be one or five that were the exact same game.

But to be honest, I didn't pay the closest attention to any details about the games BitD. Had I known I'd be collecting them someday, I'm sure I would have noticed some details to look for. I never scratched initials or anything on games, so that tell-tale tip is out.
In my case with my first Popeye (I've owned 2), the game was always at the same spot it stood. It was part of a Nintendo mini row in the arcade with a VS. Golf to its left, with a Donkey Kong next to the Golf...in the 80s! Fast forward to 2000, and it was the first time I was back since 1992, and the 3 same games stood at the same exact spot on the floor!
 
I live less than 3 hours from my hometown, and this is west Texas so everything is five hours away. There's probably been a fair amount of machines that have passed through my hands that have been the same ones I played as a kid. I have a Cyclone pinball machine in my own collection that is very possibly in that category. When I bought it from a guy in Lubbock, he explained that the owner before him had it in Abilene (my hometown) for about 15 years prior to that. Growing up, there was a Cyclone in a Taco Bueno I used to frequent. We also had a Cyclone in the first arcade I ever worked in. Abilene is a city of roughly 100k people. How many Cyclones could there be floating around town? It's entirely possible, given that timeline, that my machine is one of those; or even possibly all three are the exact same one. I like to think it is. I have no way to confirm, so I just say that my machine has that history and no one can prove otherwise.
 
I finally have an answer to this!

A few days ago my wife and I picked up a Marble Madness in CT because we've been wanted to add one to our collection for years... And I remember us finally playing Marble Madness together for the first time years ago at an Arcade in Boston called Roxy's. That was when we added it to our list proper.

Lo and behold, when I moved Marble Madness into the game room today, as I tilted it over to put felt feet on, hundreds of Roxy's R4CADE tokens fell out. It is the SAME GAME. We went back and looked at those photos (from right after we got engaged) and yep, same machine! What a small world.

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You can just barely make out the damage to the front of the CPO and the weird "ATARI" sticker sideart. That and the black plates around the trackballs haha. We had no idea.

The tokens in question: Now we have a bowlful!

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I finally have an answer to this!

A few days ago my wife and I picked up a Marble Madness in CT because we've been wanted to add one to our collection for years... And I remember us finally playing Marble Madness together for the first time years ago at an Arcade in Boston called Roxy's. That was when we added it to our list proper.

Lo and behold, when I moved Marble Madness into the game room today, as I tilted it over to put felt feet on, hundreds of Roxy's R4CADE tokens fell out. It is the SAME GAME. We went back and looked at those photos (from before we were even engaged) and yep, same machine! What a small world.

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You can just barely make out the damage to the front of the CPO and the weird "ATARI" sticker sideart. That and the black plates around the trackballs haha. We had no idea.

The tokens in question: Now we have a bowlful!

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Congrats on the sweet score, cool story! It's an amazing feeling, isn't it?
 
...that you played as a kid, that you now own? For me, 2! The 2nd game I collected was a Popeye that I played in the later 80s that I ended up buying from an arcade that was open seasonally. I owned it for 8 or 9 months. Last June, I scored my Time Pilot that I KNEW the description in the Marketplace ad was inaccurate. Sure enough, 2 half-dollar sized tokens in the coin bucket proved my suspicions as to which arcade it came from! And I KNOW I played it at that particular location!

What about you guys?
Sure. Most of the ones I own now. I HAD to track down a Wild Western because I remember enjoying the hell out of it when it first came out. I only got to play it for one night at a strange arcade in a different city, but I stayed on it all night after I had a few rounds of Phoenix, which I was shocked that it was so different from my Atari 2600 version.
 
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