I noticed Arcadecollection (a fellow collector from The Netherlands) had a picture of his Centipede as avatar on the Dragonslairfans forum (
www.dragonslairfans.com) and I saw some interesting differences. So I asked if he could mail some picks, and I was really amazed.
I've done extensive studies on the several version of Centipedes . F.I. I know that there was a _very_ limited run of 25" cocktail (!) machines.
Any way, there are generally a couple of differences between the US built Centi's and the Irish one's.
The US:
- US: purple marquee background, Irish pink
- US: "dark" blue bezel and CPO, Irish bright blue
- US: bezel insects are green/blue colored (indigo ?), red on the Irish
- US: one of the Centi's antenna's on the side art goes up in a bend, Irish is shorter and bent down.
-US: line around the Centi side-art is most often yellow, sometimes pink and (reported, never seen) light blue
However, I've never seen one like Arcadecollection's machine before. I think it was Alpha1 who pointed out that this is a Bertollino Centipede, thus built in Italy.
The things I notice:
- very obvious: the T-molding. Could be retro-fitted but it's really different
- the bezel is completely different. The insects are on the sides instead on top. It looks like they did this to allow for a bigger monitor. It indeed looks to be bigger than 19". Arcadecollection mentions 22"....anyway, very interesting !
- side-art: antenna same as Irish version but it looks to be a bit bigger than the Irish/US versions. The right "beam" of the "star" on top extends to right under the right claw of the centi. On the Irish cabs that beam is a bit longer and goes further than that claw.
Also, most noticable, the mushrooms lack the pink/yellow color !
All an all a very interesting cab indeed !!!
There is a Hantarex monitor inside which could be another indication for it to come from Italy.
There's a "Nova Apparate" sticker on the coin door which is interesting because there's also a flyer in the Arcade Flyer Archive with Nova Apparate. But I think that that was only a distributor, not a cab builder, but I could be wrong of course.