Has anyone embraced the damage on a cab?

Burn4Evr

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So I've never been very picky on dings and scratches on cabs and really only have one minty cab (a cyber sled , but just by luck.)
So now I have a War Final Assault cab that was converted to a midway skins, but I can see the War artwork underneath. There are also gouges and rough spots and tears on the art and wood.....
So I am not going to restore this cab but I think the war art is cool..... has anyone repaired a cab making it look "battle damaged" using what damage has been done to the cabs to make it look intended?
 
I can't say nobody has but for me personally, damaged sideart just looks like damaged sideart....not battel-damaged, "toughened", etc...just damaged! No matter how I look at it. That's just me though,
 
I've never done it intentionally, but I will say that ALL of my cabs are in used condition.

Everything is 100% funtional, right down to the last coin light, but they have a ton of Patina and wear and tear. I like them that way.

The one exception would be my new DPTwiz Ms Pac cab. That one will be outfitted with NOS parts. After all, I'm entitled to ONE museum quality piece, right? :)
 
Funny to find this post because I was recently thinking the same thing about my games. I've given all of them a once-over and in some cases a little repair but overall I like my machines in a used (but not abused) condition. My machines, coke machine, pay phone, etc. all have the bumps and scratches of a machine that's been in the wild and I kinda like it. But "damage" is a subjective term, so what I find acceptable may not match everyone else's...
 
When I bought my MKII cab, the one side of Raiden has a nice scratch going down from when someone moved it or something.

It bugs me a bit, but I don't wanna take off the original art so I just put it so that you can't see that side of the cab. Problem solved. Only other thing is that some jackass used tape to pack it at some point and it ripped off part of the one Midway decal.

Overall though I think if it's "Used, but not abused" like Bones3010 said I can live with it. If it's trashed though, I would do a full restore personally.
 
The normal art for War is beat up, bullet holes and scraped paint and "military" looking.
Covering real damage with "theme" damage or wear would fit this cab in my head at least.
Obviously this wouldn't look as good on a Tron or something like that......but let's say you had star wars cockpit with a big chunk popped out.... would reproducing blaster fire be accepted as cool, or just making things worse?

On the War I have I am currently looking at the aging and weathering done by model builders and guys like Volpin Props
 
I get everything working 100% and then worry about looks. Can't say I have tried to make one look beat up :)

Cabs get a nice cleaning and I remove rusty parts and de-rust and repaint any metal parts that need it. CPO's get replaced if they are really bad.

I do have one cab that is near mint...my Centipede...has all the OG glass and artwork(Just about as flawless as you can get for something in the wild),but some bad ass tagged the one side with sharpie like 10 years ago. If I can get that crap off this will be my "minty".
 
Ive installed new sideart and marquee's,bezels etc but my playchoice is by far in the worse shape and it will stay that way why? Because its in the same exact condition when my father gave it to me,its not horrible but it could use some bondo and T moulding and paint touch ups but i like it the way it is.
 
Everything is 100% funtional, right down to the last coin light, but they have a ton of Patina and wear and tear. I like them that way.

I'm with smalltownguy2 here. I have the occasional upgrade here and there and will restore cabs to a certain degree but maybe not to the level of Chris25810, Phet or Fizgig.

But I would never intentionally harm new artwork.
 
I never intentionally damaged a machine, but I had a tough time deciding to replace the original cigarette burned CPO on my Defender with a nice new repro... The cigarette burns at the Start buttons were exactly as I remembered the Defender I played.

In the end, I put the repro and new buttons on and used the original (and a weird Willis repro) as wall art.
 

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So I've never been very picky on dings and scratches on cabs and really only have one minty cab (a cyber sled , but just by luck.)
So now I have a War Final Assault cab that was converted to a midway skins, but I can see the War artwork underneath. There are also gouges and rough spots and tears on the art and wood.....
So I am not going to restore this cab but I think the war art is cool..... has anyone repaired a cab making it look "battle damaged" using what damage has been done to the cabs to make it look intended?

I have not done this but I have somewhat considered something like this. I came across a pretty nice original atari system 2 cab that is missing the side art and has a few scrapes and very small scars to the original white vinyl on the cabs sides. Other than this it's in very nice original condition. I have collected a number of very nice condition original paperboy pieces to put in the cab. Being that all but one piece of art on this cab would be original with very light wear I want to keep it as original as possible but have considered putting on new side art.

Knowing that the new side art would likely look a little out of place I have considered the idea of fading the art a bit then giving it a few small imperfections like scrapes and possibly even a small tear or two once it's installed to give it the look of original art that has been on the cab for many years.
 
I would never damage new art or old art in good shape, what I'm talking about is something that is already damaged beyond repair.
In this case taking a gouge thru the art that shows the wood underneath and trying to make it look like stressed metal.

My options on this machine are

Leave it as is (which isn't the worst thing)
Buy repro art for a cab that will probably be Mamed anyways (not likely)
Buy a completly different art/custom art
Or customize the damage that has been done.....like putting a poster over that hole in the wall you made or movng a couch over a pizza stain
 
Although, I have to say I do like some of the points that have been brought up here, like the weirdness of brand new art on a used cab looking strange.... personally I think a bit of fade and patina is a good thing.

Its cool that there are so many preferred styles, I love this hobby.

I hope that I can make the damage done to the cab look good, if not I'll just paint it or put new art on it.
 
I would never damage new art or old art in good shape, what I'm talking about is something that is already damaged beyond repair.
In this case taking a gouge thru the art that shows the wood underneath and trying to make it look like stressed metal.

My options on this machine are

Leave it as is (which isn't the worst thing)
Buy repro art for a cab that will probably be Mamed anyways (not likely)
Buy a completly different art/custom art
Or customize the damage that has been done.....like putting a poster over that hole in the wall you made or movng a couch over a pizza stain

One more option, is you can sell it to me. haha If it's the one what was on Ebay.. War on one side Skins on the other, everything there basically to put it back together... I really wanted that cab.. I have the perfect game to fit it too..

Anyways, if you strip it down to the "War" cab that it is, I'd leave the dings and stuff in it. Just ad's to the whole war theme in my opinion.
 
It most certainly was the one on ebay, I thought I was just getting the cab for $25.....it had a monitor, skins game pcb, the keypad, joystick, lights and power supply.

I bought it because it was down the street from me and the War art looks cool even damaged.

Right now its either getting mamed with a small selection of fighters (to go with the WAR theme) or Ill splurge and wire it for jamma and buy some fighter pcbs.....mame seems much easier
 
I would never damage new art or old art in good shape, what I'm talking about is something that is already damaged beyond repair.
In this case taking a gouge thru the art that shows the wood underneath and trying to make it look like stressed metal.

My options on this machine are

Leave it as is (which isn't the worst thing)
Buy repro art for a cab that will probably be Mamed anyways (not likely)
Buy a completly different art/custom art
Or customize the damage that has been done.....like putting a poster over that hole in the wall you made or movng a couch over a pizza stain

in my case if I added new side art it would look akward on the otherwise original machine. If I made the new art look a bit more "worn" it would likely be a better fit. The plan wouldn't be to damage the original cab or art but just the new side art to make it look fitting on the aged cab.
 
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