Anyone have film footage of arcade manufacturing and assembly?

gorfchampion

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Anyone have film footage of arcade manufacturing and assembly?

I've always wanted to see film of our classics being manufactured/assembled. Kind of like watching old film of American cars being built. Seems like there's plenty of footage of that. What about the classic arcade games? Does anyone have any film, or know where a person could buy footage? Is there any film at all? I've seen pictures of different games on the assembly line; but video would be great to see...
 
Check the pinball section for the "what's the name of the secret game?" thread. there are a couple of videos taken at a Williams plant. While most is pinball oriented, there are some scenes about doing Mortal Kombat...
 
Check the pinball section for the "what's the name of the secret game?" thread. there are a couple of videos taken at a Williams plant. While most is pinball oriented, there are some scenes about doing Mortal Kombat...


Thanks man. I will do that. It just seems that there would be a ton of footage considering how many games were manufactured BITD. Anyone else??
 
There's a documentary on YouTube from ~1981 or so called "Into the Valley of the Invaders" that has some shots of Atari's manufacturing assembling Tempest and Centipede machines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrEvJ-u1tns&feature=channel

Kind of funny since Space Invaders originated in Japan, and the US mfgr. was in Chicago...

There was also an episode of Nickelodeon's Live Wire that had the President (I believe) of Midway Mfg. on and there were some shots of Ms. Pac-Man machines being assembled. I think Buckner and Garcia also were guests. The clip that was online seems to be down now.
 
Scott has some footage of an Atari assembley line he showed at CAX a few times. I remember seeing them cutting a Kagaroo cabinet and painting it. Not sure if he has the vid on his site.

http://www.atarigames.com/
 
There is a faily comprehensive news segment on here of a chicago arcade manufacturing plant - I think it was Bally or Midway. It's buried in there so it will take some detective work to dig it out. It's not available anywhere else.

http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/
 
There's a documentary on YouTube from ~1981 or so called "Into the Valley of the Invaders" that has some shots of Atari's manufacturing assembling Tempest and Centipede machines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrEvJ-u1tns&feature=channel

That was really cool to watch. I was 10 years old and in 5th grade when that was made. The weird thing is nobody had a clue the the entire industry would crash in three years.

As a minor note, I think I would consider selling my Harley to have been able to spend a day in the Atari employee break room to play all those games. Thanks for posting that link.
 
Yes...I really liked that documentary...lots of shots of the manuf. plant..cool to see all those classics when they were new...and once again another confirmation that most games where shipped in boxes...I don't know why I always figured they would be in crates...:D When I started purchasing some games NIB I found out that the games were mostly shipped in cardboard like most other things...
Wow...its a shame to see how innocent and fun games used to be...it was more of a social event to go to the arcade and play games with your buds...now everyone plays games at home...takes away from the experience in my book...
 
That was just an awesome link, i've never seen any of those videos!! Yea, the arcade atmosphere was different than just about any place you could go. I never saw fights or insantity among players in the arcades, there was a sense of everyone into their own world playing games that was respected and pretty much accepted by the others in the arcade. Even if you were not a super star player or maybe walking in an arcade for the first time there was a game everybody could have fun with and get into in an arcade. I'm really glad I got to experience this era as a kid, I think i enjoy classic video games even more 25 years later.
 
Cool vid! Thanks for sharing that. I was most impressed with how low the Atari staff's high scores were. Pssht even I can beat those! :D


There's a documentary on YouTube from ~1981 or so called "Into the Valley of the Invaders" that has some shots of Atari's manufacturing assembling Tempest and Centipede machines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrEvJ-u1tns&feature=channel

Kind of funny since Space Invaders originated in Japan, and the US mfgr. was in Chicago...

There was also an episode of Nickelodeon's Live Wire that had the President (I believe) of Midway Mfg. on and there were some shots of Ms. Pac-Man machines being assembled. I think Buckner and Garcia also were guests. The clip that was online seems to be down now.
 
I wish Mr. Rogers did one of these.

My favorite was the time he went to the shoe factory. Or maybe the Crayons... So hard to decide.
 
That is cool.

Mr. Rogers was the shit... Except for the puppets.

I remember another Kids show where they take apart a 2600 stick and show you how the contacts work... And that you can just press the switches.

That was the end of one of my 2600 sticks... and left a big handprint on my ass.
 
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