"Factory restored" leaves alot to be desired

chris25810

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"Factory restored" leaves alot to be desired

I see this term thrown around once in a while so i'm gonna throw up my own arguement as to why i don't consider the factory look to be the best look when it comes to restoring these old relics.

Several of you are aware that i've been looking for a nice Asteroids cabinet to replace my rotten Lunar Lander. The game will have all new artwork so you're never gonna know it was an Asteroids and all my LL stuff is numbers matching right down to the serial tag that will be transfered. I now have a nice Asteroids cabinet to do the swap with and this was a very early cabinet based off the owl eye coin door, low serial number and the half ass way this thing was put together.

The black melamine that was used on Asteroids had a totally different texture than the typical smooth stuff we usually see. This Asteroids does one better by combining 3 different types of finished surface which pretty much says " let's use all the shit we have laying over there to cover this thing and let the Asteroids production begin."

The outside sides of the cab are the black textured stuff which is correct, the inside and bezel area are mostly the textured stuff but wait, lets use this dark woodgrain piece left over from 1977. Here's a nice back door with the same woodgrain on the inside and a black smooth on the outside, 'looks good to me." The two back pieces above and below the door are the correct textured black and the two pieces that make up the top of the cabinet are smooth black.

Am i going to restore the game back to this hodge podge? Once again, these things were built to make money, they weren't built to be a showpiece.
 
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Yeah, it's not like classic sports cars. They all rolled off the assembly line with some degree of a standard to be met.

Not so with the arcade cabs. I've got a dedicated Double Dragon cab that has some kind of chunk of screen printed something on the back side of the front skirting.

My buddy Dave had a Ms Pac cab that had Pac art and paint carefully hidden on some pieces of wood too.

They churned them out to keep the money coming in the coin doors, not to set some sort of collectible standard. It wasn't always about fine craftsmanship, rather slam it together fast, throw the next monitor on the shelf into it, and get it out the door as fast as possible because next month the kids might not like this game any more.

Personally that's why I like my games worn up a bit. The patina of a played game appeals to me more than what some might call 'minty fresh' I never really saw a brand new game BITD, so that's not how I recall them. Plus, I want to be able to PLAY my games, so if they get bumped/knicked, I'm OK with that. It adds character.
 
After a painful 5 minutes of deliberation, i decided to bring the entire cabinet inside/out from this:

asteroidsbefore.jpg


To this, and btw guys this melamine does not come off with a simple razor blade or a heat gun so don't even bother. Get yourself some strong power stripper and the art is diminished to a gooey rubbery booger in about 10 minutes. If the product eats your gloves, skin, applicator and t-molding, you've got the right stuff.

asteroidsafter.jpg
 
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Hey Chris - didn't know you were looking for such a thing. I've got an Asteroids that's in a nice Lunar Lander cabinet - complete with original LL side art...

Alan
 
Hey Chris - didn't know you were looking for such a thing. I've got an Asteroids that's in a nice Lunar Lander cabinet - complete with original LL side art...

Alan

Well now ya tell me Alan, I had to lay another Asteroids to rest to get this one and now I'm too far in to turn back. I know you remember my LL from the auction, sadly that thing swelled up and stinks so bad I have to toss it.
 
Am i going to restore the game back to this hodge podge? Once again, these things were built to make money, they weren't built to be a showpiece.

For that matter, the hardware they used was cheap and the game's graphics certainly could be improved. And why the hell does it play only one game? Don't even get me started on the huge amount of wasted, empty space it takes up. :)

Resto-mod that game and make it fit your vision of perfection. Even the car guys clean up the body panel gaps and use glossy paint on their restores.
 
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Chris, I'm totally with you on restorations. My background is automotive and I've used a term here several times in my restoration posts. In the realm of classic car restorations, they sometimes call it "over restored" when the end result is better than new. If you watch Barrett Jackson, you see this all the time--vintage 1960's vehicles with flawless body work and paint jobs. The cars sure didn't roll off the assembly line like that!

Purists will shake their heads, but I've done things like color-match the carriage bolts on my Galaga control panel (still a work in progress) and more recently, made an automotive clear coated Donkey Kong cabinet with color matched bolts on the coin door. I also left the blue spatter off my Pac-Man because I know why that was there--to hide flaws. Mine doesn't have much in the way of flaws. It just appeals to me to make these games look really nice without going too far astray from the original appearance. BTW, it took me 200 hours to hand paint those graphics on Pac-Man. Not sure I want to do that again!

http://pac-maniac.com
 

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Well now ya tell me Alan, I had to lay another Asteroids to rest to get this one and now I'm too far in to turn back. I know you remember my LL from the auction, sadly that thing swelled up and stinks so bad I have to toss it.

Sorry, I didn't know that you were looking for such a cabinet. We probably could have worked out a deal for it. It was an Operator conversion from LL to AST. I fully restored it as an Asteroids, but left the LL side art.

On a separate note, I bought an early production, very low S/N Asteroids at that same auction. It's off in storage; I really hope that it hasn't swelled up like your LL! I'm planning to restore that one for my collection.
 
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