Dear Midway...

ifkz

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 3, 2006
Messages
1,544
Reaction score
45
Location
Texas
Dear Midway,

I hate your early 80's cabinets that were made out of compressed cat hair. May the management team responsible for that enjoy the record unemployment (in the early 80's and now). I had to fix my Galaga-hair cabinet, never exposed to water, by jamming a flat head screwdriver into an area of good t-molding and hammering it straight down. Please used at least MDF from now on.

Signed,

Collector of your 30 year old arcade machines.
 
I realize that you are just on a rant, but I still don't get it............This rant could be about most cabinets and the frustration of restoration. I don't know that my midway cabinets have been any more or less frustrating than any other used/ abused cabinet I'm trying to restore. They all have one issue or another, they are 25-30 years old. If you don't want to restore cabinets, then don't.
 
Dear Collector,

For all intents and purposes, we no longer exist.

By the way, it's horse hair. When we said "Our games are made for champions", we meant with champions. Namely, Secretariat.

Sincerely,
Midway
 
Lets extend this into the early 90s as well. The NBA Jam cab I was working on was falling apart. I had assumed this was from abuse, but from the sounds of things, this is normal wear-and-tear for a Midway.
 
Dear Collector,

For all intents and purposes, we no longer exist.

By the way, it's horse hair. When we said "Our games are made for champions", we meant with champions. Namely, Secretariat.

Sincerely,
Midway

Now this made me laugh...a lot. You sir get a friend request.
I'm well used to restoring cabs, just take a look at my VAPS. I just hate these particular cabs the most. Just a light hearted rant.
 
Contra is up there for cabinets that really suck to restore.

I would wright

Dear Midway,

You deserve to be bitch slapped for putting those on board batteries on some of your earlier games such as Omega Race and Tron.
 
I don't have any particular company I target my frustration at, its more about the weight. The heavier it is the harder it is for me to restore it. Not that I can't move them, its all about those freshly restored corners and a couple hundred pounds of dead weight. Galaga's are easy...Tron not so much.
 
I only have one midway cab that has problems. The bottom corners are falling apart but only because a previous owner removed the levelers so the cab just sits flat on the floor.
 
Funny stuff in this thread.

I hate all particle board cabinets. They are problematic, fall apart, swell, break, lose their t-molding grip, etc. Plywood cabinets FTW. My Ms. Pac is plywood and so is Burger Time. I think Tapper, Domino Man and Tron are all particle though. Those have actually been ok.
 
My Midway cabs - Pac/plywood, Ms Pac/plywood, Galaga/MDF stuff, Tapper/particle board, Gorf/mix of particle board and plywood
 
Dear Collector,

For all intents and purposes, we no longer exist.

By the way, it's horse hair. When we said "Our games are made for champions", we meant with champions. Namely, Secretariat.

Sincerely,
Midway

I think my neighbors might fear me after the maniacal laughter that created, bravo. I needed a laugh today too, thank you. :)
 
Dear Midway,

I must applaud your efforts for making one of the most pain in the arse joysticks I've ever worked on: Pac-Man. Getting a new self centering grommet installed (from Bob) involved the removal of about 15 different pairs of nuts and bolts, separating the plywood from the metal top, and the removal of the top joystick leaf button assembly. Bravo! So sorry that 8 way joysticks came about and made maintenance much simpler in the years that passed. :)
 
Dear Midway, thank you so very much for choosing AMP as your edge connector of choice on Pac series games. When those finally spread out and the video and sound signals are lost, the resulting drop in price is greatly appreciated.

Also thanks for conserving our precious resource; brass. Your fuse holders are amazingly thin and while they don't work worth a damn, I'm thankful that more material wasn't wasted in their manufacture.
 
Dear Midway, thank you so very much for choosing AMP as your edge connector of choice on Pac series games. When those finally spread out and the video and sound signals are lost, the resulting drop in price is greatly appreciated.

Also thanks for conserving our precious resource; brass. Your fuse holders are amazingly thin and while they don't work worth a damn, I'm thankful that more material wasn't wasted in their manufacture.

:D lmao...I love this thread..some good hearted bitching to those companies long since gone...Man I could write many letters....

Dear Atari...
While I enjoy the artwork on your cabinets and the wonderful colors why must I have to give up one of my testicles each time I have to lift one of these dam beasts up or down stairs...I mean what the hell was in these dam cabs..I think it was some type of secret steel/wood composite designed as an anti-theft device to prevent anyone from even thinking about stealing a cab from location..I'd rather try to move an elephant with a skateboard than attempt to load one of these heavy ass atari cabinets on a dolly and hope I'm not killed in the process.
That is all.
 
Now this made me laugh...a lot. You sir get a friend request.
I'm well used to restoring cabs, just take a look at my VAPS. I just hate these particular cabs the most. Just a light hearted rant.

I feel your pain. That particular cabinet is a bitch if there's problems. If nobody's worked on a Galaga, they wont' know what you're talking about.

I also had a dedicated Contra once and to my dismay it was made of the same bullshit material. The box the game came in was more sturdy then whatever the hell that stuff is called they built the cabinets out of.
 
:D lmao...I love this thread..some good hearted bitching to those companies long since gone...Man I could write many letters....

Dear Atari...
While I enjoy the artwork on your cabinets and the wonderful colors why must I have to give up one of my testicles each time I have to lift one of these dam beasts up or down stairs...I mean what the hell was in these dam cabs..I think it was some type of secret steel/wood composite designed as an anti-theft device to prevent anyone from even thinking about stealing a cab from location..I'd rather try to move an elephant with a skateboard than attempt to load one of these heavy ass atari cabinets on a dolly and hope I'm not killed in the process.
That is all.

If you look inside an Atari cabinet, there's extra shit. There is shit in an Atari cabinet that doesn't even need to be there. Also the wood they used somehow is more dense than any other wood, lol. It's like rock wood or something. Also somehow their transformer blocks weigh more. Just look at the marquee fixture too... in most games it's just a simple piece of wood up there, but in Atari, it has to be a shelf that's removable. WTF? There's even extra pieces of wood for the pcb to screw to.
 
Dear Atari,

Why do you need to make your monitors so hard to remove from your vertical games? Centipede was bad enough, but at least I could reach around the back. But Tempest...I had to use spring clamps to grip one tool while turning another. Another thing, what's up with your plastic threaded nuts? Did you really think they'd fall off? Really?? Extra hard pains in the arse to remove, let me tell you. They will be replaced with regular nuts.

That is all.

--ifkz
 
Back
Top Bottom