Estimating "how many are left"

Sir Kongsalot

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To me one of the most interesting questions in this hobby is to consider how many of any given arcade game remain in the world.

You're definitely never gonna get anywhere close to the real number, but it's fun. Maybe more than just fun though. Like endangered species, the number becomes more and more important as it falls.

There's a lot of issues with doing such an estimate, maybe number one of which is that there's a vagueness to what counts as a "game." Stuff like, do you need a full, intact cabinet to count one, or does just a working PCB count? (After all, there are plenty of games that existed mostly or even entirely as kits, and rarely/never as dedicated cabinets.) If somewhere there is an intact Pac Man cabinet running a 60-in-1, and somewhere else there is a working Pac Man PCB... can we add them together and count that as one Pac Man, even if it's just a "potential" Pac Man?

I myself just reunited a Donkey Kong PCB with a DK cab that had been converted to Jr.... so did I just add one to the existing numbers of DKs?

Anyway, let's go with Donkey Kong for now, because that's the game I know most about.

How many original, dedicated machines can we suppose are left?

My estimate is that there are probably less than 1,500. [EDIT: I realized that a number this low was a little foolish, after sleeping on it]

Here's how I break it down.

DK's KLOV profile says:
"There are 717 known instances of this machine owned by Donkey Kong collectors who are members. Of these, 599 of them are original dedicated machines..."

So that's 599 that we know about for certain. Let's just round it to 600.

There are almost certainly more DK machines now in private collector hands than in commercial/arcade settings. Between us, we could identify a bunch of machines "in the wild," but even if every single member were to report in with all the known public Donkey Kong machines, I doubt that we could crack 200. But let's be generous and say that it IS 200.

That takes the total to 800.

Now, out of the non-public/collector-owned DKs, how many have been counted by KLOV? That one's tough, and even trying to answer it relies on some bigtime guesswork. However, I do think that it takes a bit more than just a whim to own an arcade machine (and especially to keep one running). It's not at all the same thing as having a boxed up Super Nintendo in your closet. Any particular title will have been produced in very low numbers relative to a consumer product (other than perhaps a car model), and owning one of these takes space, foresight, and I would say passion. If you have that passion, it's likely you'd be a KLOVer.

Therefore, I would estimate that at least half, and probably as many as three-quarters of the DKs in collector hands have been counted by the census [EDIT: That's where I made my big mistake... it's probably less than 20%]. Going by that supposition, it would mean that 150 to 300 are owned by KLOV non-participants and aren't counted in the census.

So, if we take my max (300), we're up to 1,100.

We'll tack on a margin of error of 400 or so, and there ya go: out of the 80,000+ machines produced, I propose that there are likely 1,500 or less existing original dedicated Donkey Kong machines.

What do you think?
 
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I'll definitely go thousands, since I am probably vastly overestimating KLOV participation as a proportion of the total number, but tens???

Tens of thousands of working, original Donkey Kong machines?

At least half of these things were either junked or converted by 1990, and that was 22 years ago (and when arcades still actually existed).

If there were really tens of thousands left, I think they'd be a lot more visible, on a number of levels. The demand for parts, etc. would be the most telling indicator, and Mike's Arcade and the like are very small businesses. There just isn't enough action to suggest a 20K+ population. And of the 600 census'ed machines, something like, what, 599 of them have needed some sort of at least intermediate-level repair? How many of the rest did/do, and how likely is it that the owners figured things out for themselves without bringing the problem to KLOV or some such? These machines are a major pain in the ass, and I can't imagine tens of thousands of people suffering in silence (or hiring repair techs to deal with them).

If there's one thing I've seen so far in this hobby, it's that it's actually a really small world. Just look at how often KLOVers are constantly bumping into each other on eBay, CL, flipping each other's machines, etc. They make up a considerable proportion of the trading volume.

If there really are tens of thousands of DKs left out there, then it's definitely a very quiet majority.
 
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yeah, I would say your way low. Your problem is assuming klov registered is 75% of known games. I would say its more like 15-20%. Plus I think the registered numbers are probably lower for the common games. Collectors will grab/look for the rare titles and register them.

Just look around at all the people here who do not have their games listed up in klov. If those were added in and people would update their listings, I would think numbers would almost double. I just noticed you don't have your games listed up on vaps..

I can tell you from selling games, 90% of all people I run accross have not heard of klov. They may find the game they want with a google search that takes them to klov, but they probably would not notice the vaps listings or the forums. When I mention klov to them or tell them about CAX they are interested. I think about 5-10% of those grow into members, but most are just happy with the one or two games they wanted..
 
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These machines are a major pain in the ass, and I can't imagine tens of thousands of people suffering in silence (or hiring repair techs to deal with them).


I must disagree with this too.. I dont think they are a pain in the ass to work on.. I think DK machines are very easy to work on.. I have prob fixed 15-20 in the last year alone.. Wish the vectors were as easy..

Im pretty sure they made over 75,000 DK machines.. I stand by my estimate.. We are not talking about a rare machine.. Even the operators say they are easy to work on.. Its like Ms Pacs and Centipedes, they are everywhere..
 
But you're saying that from within the bubble of being a smart technical person who works on arcade machines!

A DK may be easy to work on, relatively, but we're talking about a general population that can't install a hard drive in their computer. With this stuff you're soldering and splicing wires and reburning EPROMs. This is WAY beyond anyone who isn't specifically into electronics.

And the Sanyo 20-EZ is the most devilish and brutal device ever constructed by man. Holy christ, monitors!
 
VAPS is an incredibly inaccurate/unreliable source for numbers. Half the members on KLOV. haven't registered their games and of the half that do, I would bet half of those don't keep it updated. I know of at least ten local collectors that aren't members of KLOV and I'm sure there are many more. With all the games I've bought over the years only one or two came from KLOV members, the vast majority coming from non-collectors tired of having a 30 year old game taking up space in their garage, basement or barn.
I'm sure the number of existing games is a small fraction of the number originally produced, but you are most definitely flawed in your estimate. It would be safe to add 10k to your DK estimate if not more.
 
I don't think it's fair to say "they are everywhere."

Ms. Pac, okay, maybe, but I know of ONE on-location DK in my county (Santa Cruz, CA), and that's in one of the last big arcades in the US.

One of the reasons the Rusty Quarters guy opened an arcade is because he noticed that people would be waiting outside of his previous business in the morning to play his DK machine. (And this is in a major metro area.)

You can find one if you go looking, but they're definitely not in every pizza place and bowling alley anymore!

In any case, I see what everybody is saying and I could bump it up to 10K.
 
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Im pretty sure they made over 75,000 DK machines.. I stand by my estimate.. We are not talking about a rare machine.. Even the operators say they are easy to work on.. Its like Ms Pacs and Centipedes, they are everywhere..

I was tearing down my DK Jr, particle board cabinet last night and noticed it was serial# 59,xxx Possible they made this many of the DK Jr? If that's the case then im sure the DK count is higher. I run into more DK's then Jr.s easily.
 
Here is something to add to your equation. (I'm not doing the math)

I live in a small town in Iowa. I have found 4 DKs in 3 houses and 1 bowling alley. (found within 25 miles) So being small town Iowa that is pretty good number. So how many DKs do I have left to uncover within 26 miles? I bet their are more than 50% of the 80k DKs made still out there. Just imagine how many DKs are in huge cities if I found 5 (including mine) in my small town area. I wouldn't be surprised if I found another 5 in the area.
 
I can tell you from selling games, 90% of all people I run accross have not heard of klov. They may find the game they want with a google search that takes them to klov, but they probably would not notice the vaps listings or the forums. When I mention klov to them or tell them about CAX they are interested. I think about 5-10% of those grow into members, but most are just happy with the one or two games they wanted..

This. Of all the games Ive bought and sold over the last few years, less than 10% of them were transactions with anyone from KLOV
 
The other thing to factor in is how easy it is to convert to something else. DK cabinets got converted to Dr Mario and ?????? (Obviously Arkanoid, they showed up in everything :D). So there are a lot of DK cabinets sitting out in storage units, barns, backrooms, etc. waiting for the current owners to die so the heirs can say "Let's get rid of this sh*t Dad was sitting on" because there was nothing the operators could convert them to.

In the last year or so I have been in lots of places where there were two, three or more DK machines just sitting there rotting away. Plus it is one of the 3 most commonly asked for machines (Ms Pac and Pac are the other 2). So there have to be a lot of them out in home gamerooms with people that are not collectors, they just wanted an arcade machine to go with their pool table.

Even I have DK cocktail. I finally got the video to work right and the sound just went out on it. :(

ken
 
I agree the estimate was low but VAPS is also sometimes slightly inflated... lots of times I buy a game or PCB from someone and add it to my VAPS, but they never remove it from theirs and the person they bought it from never removed it from theirs either. It is certainly fun to guess, but I like to imagine they're still out there everywhere, makes driving past abandoned old buildings more exciting :D
 
yeah, I would say your way low. Your problem is assuming klov registered is 75% of known games. I would say its more like 15-20%.

This is typical of a lot of fandoms. While the numbers of collectors always grows online, it is still in the vast minority when it comes to the overall amount of collectors. And that still doesn't count the amounts of product that is not in collectors (online or not) hands.

Let me put this another way with an example of Transformers collectors. Let's take a look at some numbers.

TFW2005 total members: 61,299, Its likely that 75% or more of those members are collectors.
Shmax total members: 2,206, 100% of those members are collectors.

Now Shmax is a collection tracking website, but I can see that many other collectors use other website, and a lot of them use spreadsheets or their own systems. So maybe the % of collectors that use Shmax are less than 25%?

Aside from those numbers, Hasbro (the company that makes Transformers) has repeatedly came out and stated that the collector's market makes up 5% or less of their total toy sales!

So what you see here is that while there are tens of thousands (or at least 100,000) of collectors online, there are probably 2-3 times (if not greater) that number who aren't online, and even so it only makes up 5% of the market. That leaves a whole lot of other product out there.

You can apply this model to any hobby really.
 
I like your thought process, but I agree with the majority and say it's way low. I've been collecting for about 20 years and just when I think I've found everything there is to find in my area, more machines keep turning up (and following me home).

There is still a massive number of games sitting in basements, garages, and storage unaccounted for, and no simple way to collect that data. There is also skewing of numbers based on distributers BITD and those trends carry forward even today; you can attend auctions in different parts of the country and after a while you'll notice concentrations of certain manufacturers and titles based on what was available locally.

One other metric you could use would be numbers based on reproduction artwork; many of us have replaced an overlay to resell a game without ever adding that machine to any collector database. If you knew how many of those were sold, you could extrapolate a more accurate number of surviving machines.
 
There is also skewing of numbers based on distributers BITD and those trends carry forward even today; you can attend auctions in different parts of the country and after a while you'll notice concentrations of certain manufacturers and titles based on what was available locally.


Too true. I've locally found uncommon titles a few times, only to find out others across the country have not spotted said titles even once.
 
The only games you will ever have a shot at estimating surviving numbers based on vaps totals is those titles that combine these 3 qualities, rare, sought after in the collecting community, and unknown outside of it.

When you get all 3 of those working together you can assume that the title in question is most likely to enter collecting circles and never leave.

Example, there are 51 registered Quantums, which is a little more than 10 percent of the total number of machines made. With the high pull and registration rate of those games I could estimate that accounts for about 25 percent to 50 percent of the survivors.

While Asteroids Deluxe has 368 registered examples, which only accounts for 1.6 percent of the total production. This one only has the "sought after in the collecting community" thing going for it and thus registration percentages aren't nearly as high.
 
This is typical of a lot of fandoms. While the numbers of collectors always grows online, it is still in the vast minority when it comes to the overall amount of collectors. And that still doesn't count the amounts of product that is not in collectors (online or not) hands.

Let me put this another way with an example of Transformers collectors. Let's take a look at some numbers.

TFW2005 total members: 61,299, Its likely that 75% or more of those members are collectors.
Shmax total members: 2,206, 100% of those members are collectors.

Now Shmax is a collection tracking website, but I can see that many other collectors use other website, and a lot of them use spreadsheets or their own systems. So maybe the % of collectors that use Shmax are less than 25%?

Aside from those numbers, Hasbro (the company that makes Transformers) has repeatedly came out and stated that the collector's market makes up 5% or less of their total toy sales!

So what you see here is that while there are tens of thousands (or at least 100,000) of collectors online, there are probably 2-3 times (if not greater) that number who aren't online, and even so it only makes up 5% of the market. That leaves a whole lot of other product out there.

You can apply this model to any hobby really.

Great example, I have a huge collection of TF, and none of it is in any tracking system.
 
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