Gorf joystick question

jkoolpe

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Hey all!

I'm finishing up some work on a friend's Gorf cocktail to have it ready for California Extreme.

One thing I noticed...his cocktail has a 4 way joystick, but my recollection of playing Gorf uprights is that it should be 8 way, and the game's entry on KLOV says the latter.

I don't believe that the sticks on his cocktail have ever been changed out though.

Should it be 8 way? If so, I'll need to take another look at the sticks to see if there is a problem with them.

Jon
 
Hey all!

I'm finishing up some work on a friend's Gorf cocktail to have it ready for California Extreme.

One thing I noticed...his cocktail has a 4 way joystick, but my recollection of playing Gorf uprights is that it should be 8 way, and the game's entry on KLOV says the latter.

I don't believe that the sticks on his cocktail have ever been changed out though.

Should it be 8 way? If so, I'll need to take another look at the sticks to see if there is a problem with them.

Jon
it's 4 optos, but the actuator section is very open to trigger 2 of them at once, making it 8 way. I've moved diagonal in the game, so it is 8 way.
 
Update:

I went ahead and tested the Player 2 stick, and it was behaving like an 8 way.

So then I opened up both control panels, and for the record, they're both typical Midway leaf switch style sticks (like in PacMan) and are definitely not optical.

What I found that is that there was a thin, plastic plate that was bolted underneath the stick with a cut opening through which the joystick shaft passes through. For the Player 2, this opening was physically larger and mounted so that it was square to the shaft while this same piece in the Player 1 stick had a smaller opening that was mounted so that is was rotated 90 degrees versus the Player 2 stick.

So due to the above, one was not able to push the Player 1 stick around enough to make contact with any 2 leaf switches simultaneously which would normally make your ship move 8 ways.

Solution: I removed the 2 screws that bolted the plastic piece in Player 1 stick which left is loose in the housing but it did not otherwise get in the way of movement which resulted in being able to move the stick sufficiently to make contact with 2 leaf switches simultaneously so that it now behaved as an 8 way.

Not the perfect solution, but it worked :) .

Jon
 
While the upright game used an optical stick, the cocktail used an 8 way leaf-switch joystick.
Comparing a Ms. Pac-Man stick to the GORF cocktail stick you can see the differences in the pivot plate, stop plate and wear plate.

Gorfp30_page-0001 (1).jpgMs. Pac-Man [Parts & Operating] [English]p51_page-0001.jpg
 
I was going to post a picture, but you beat me to it :) .

Anyway, the plastic piece I was referring to is #15 in the exploded diagram. For whatever reason, the one in the Player 1 joystick on this particular cocktail was mounted as shown in the 2nd picture for the Ms. PacMan stick. So maybe someone replaced the original stick with this one at some point.

I asked my friend about it (the current owner), and he said he picked up the game some time ago as is and had never messed much with it since (and had not changed out the stick certainly).

So for now and as I said, I just removed the two mounting screws for the plastic piece (shown as #9), and that seemed to the allow the stick to behave as an 8 way. And fortunately, the now loose piece did not interfere or otherwise prevent the stick from functioning.

Jon
 
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