Games with the most unreliable hardware

Tornadoboy

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 28, 2009
Messages
9,112
Reaction score
1,412
Location
North Attleboro, Massachusetts
What games are notorious for having consistant hardware problems? Just thought this might make an interesting thread.

Games I know of:

- Vectorbeam's Sundance and Barrier / Used a rare type of monitor who's tubes were coated with defective spray, which is why they're so rare

- Pole Position 1 & 2 / power supplies go and edge connectors overheat/burn off

- Omega Race / leaking batteries in the worst possible location

- Marble Madness / Trackballs supposed to be unusually quick to wear out their bearings

- Looping / would thermo-cycle their main processors to death until the legs would literally fall off, I've seen this personally

- Victory / problems with background generation circuits

- Atari System 1 / ARIII regulator/sound board issues

- Monaco GP / power supplies go
 
Last edited:
Atari's TX-1 was even more unreliable than Pole Position. Not sure of the root cause(s). Just bad engineering I think. They overheat easily. Finding working TX-1 boards is a multi-year effort at this point. I'm just hoping Funspot's holds together until my next visit, whenever that is.
 
the mcr power boards that go in Tron, Tapper and such. they don't seem to die, they just stop putting out full power. makes ya nuts when it's putting out +4.95 which will just get ya either a solid white screen or a little jibberish on the monitor.....ugh.
 
I've always heard Tempest was a headache for arcade owners back in the day. Mine's been really solid for the most part, but maybe that's because it's used lightly in a home setting. The Ultimate History of Video Games book by Steven Kent has a few pages talking about Tempest. What stood out to me was Dave Theurer's story that the monitor crapped out on him one time while he was working on the game. He looked at the monitor and saw that several components had become so hot they desoldered themselves.
 
I've recently learned that Konami X-Men boards and those similar are prone to eventually losing sound completely due to the caps on the sound board leaking fluid and messing up the traces on the board. Luckily for me, my sound still works. But for how long?

I don't know of a solution to avoid this unfortunate issue. I've heard scratching the coated material off the caps and around them will help to prolong the life of the sound board, but I've also heard it's not a guarantee.
 
What am I missing? Why can't you just replace the capacitors with new ones as a preventative measure?

The board is tiny and I don't even know if it's removable from the main board. Also, I wouldn't know which replacement caps to get or where to get them. I guess it's a fix for the more experienced.
 
Last edited:
Q*berts and Baby Pac-mans, high failure rates on both. The Vidiot on Baby Pac's and nuclear power supplies on Q*berts which take out the speech processor, etc along its path.
 
Stern power supplies.

When is the last time you saw a Stern cabinet with the original linear? I have seen one working in my life!

Scott C.
 
I know they have been mentioned already but the biggest ones on my mind are Baby Pac and Pole Position. Also, Williams CPU boards and anything else with a PCB mounted Alkaline or NICD battery. Some CapCom CPS-1 boards have a battery backed RAM that loses its stored data when the battery dies. I am not sure of the symptoms but I have heard that will kill the PCB. I believe something similar happens to the sound on Altered Beast when a battery dies. Funny that nobody mentioned Pioneer LD players or laser rot on the discs. Although they are easily replaced, GO7 flybacks like to die. I have heard stories of shotgun like noises or ferrite core becoming imbedded in nearby ceiling tiles when they go off. I have had several WG4600 tubes (RCA tube?) have green shorts. Dirty optics on Rowe BC series change machines. I'm sure there's more that I missed.
 
Back
Top Bottom