Long story short, I had a free Saturday a couple weeks ago and late Friday night an ad pops up for an Arkanoid 5 hours away. I'm sure no sane person has ever driven that far for an Arkanoid but:
1) It has a really nice spinner with an almost perfect purple top which has been hard to source, whereas my current Arkanoid (yes I already have one) has a plastic knob that looks like a thousand cigarettes were extinguished on it.
2) It's in a decent Gremlin cab, my daughter has been asking for a Frogger and I had intended to accomplish that through a bitkit anyway.
3) It's only $200 (Canadian pesos).
4) Most importantly, I got sucked into wanting to know what game had originally been in there. Older style coin mech and not a woody. I couldn't say for sure what it was, the owner couldn't find any useful info and I wanted to find out.
So I made the trip. Sadly, the answer to my curiosity wasn't obvious. There was no label indicating the original game, but a few clues:
-Cab is 1/2 plywood (not mdf), original off white laminate that is pretty glossy (like the inside of a freezer)
-Inspection date on the coin door is Oct 29, 1980
-Monitor (appears to be original with zero burn-in!) is a Sega Nanao plugged into AC 100v
Sadly the control panel is not original, so no help there.
Based on date, it's too early to be a white Frogger (assuming these do exist) or a Zaxxon. Which leaves a bunch of stuff I'm not very familiar with:
-Carnival
-Head On
-Deep Scan
-Invico
Or maybe an early
-Moon Cresta
-Space Firebird
-Astro Blaster
The only pic I can find with my coin door is Astro Blaster, and to me it looks well laid out for a G80 cage. So I'm guessing that's it. But I've seen videos of later woody astro blasters that have a WG4600 monitor (and different coin mech).
Any educated guesses from the Gremlin experts?
Is the coin door actually a clue, or were those regularly swapped during production?
Is there info anywhere on Gremlin serial numbers?
Really appreciate any thoughts. But if it's an Astro Blaster this could start an unnecessary project because "Fighter pilots needed in sector wars"!
1) It has a really nice spinner with an almost perfect purple top which has been hard to source, whereas my current Arkanoid (yes I already have one) has a plastic knob that looks like a thousand cigarettes were extinguished on it.
2) It's in a decent Gremlin cab, my daughter has been asking for a Frogger and I had intended to accomplish that through a bitkit anyway.
3) It's only $200 (Canadian pesos).
4) Most importantly, I got sucked into wanting to know what game had originally been in there. Older style coin mech and not a woody. I couldn't say for sure what it was, the owner couldn't find any useful info and I wanted to find out.
So I made the trip. Sadly, the answer to my curiosity wasn't obvious. There was no label indicating the original game, but a few clues:
-Cab is 1/2 plywood (not mdf), original off white laminate that is pretty glossy (like the inside of a freezer)
-Inspection date on the coin door is Oct 29, 1980
-Monitor (appears to be original with zero burn-in!) is a Sega Nanao plugged into AC 100v
Sadly the control panel is not original, so no help there.
Based on date, it's too early to be a white Frogger (assuming these do exist) or a Zaxxon. Which leaves a bunch of stuff I'm not very familiar with:
-Carnival
-Head On
-Deep Scan
-Invico
Or maybe an early
-Moon Cresta
-Space Firebird
-Astro Blaster
The only pic I can find with my coin door is Astro Blaster, and to me it looks well laid out for a G80 cage. So I'm guessing that's it. But I've seen videos of later woody astro blasters that have a WG4600 monitor (and different coin mech).
Any educated guesses from the Gremlin experts?
Is the coin door actually a clue, or were those regularly swapped during production?
Is there info anywhere on Gremlin serial numbers?
Really appreciate any thoughts. But if it's an Astro Blaster this could start an unnecessary project because "Fighter pilots needed in sector wars"!

