Home Use Asteroids!!!! But what would you do?

TheDrewster

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I just got home from picking up a HUO Asteroids. I am ecstatic! The seller won the game in an Asteroids tournament back in the day. It has a whopping 17 plays on the right counter, and 000000 on the left.

The marquee is mint, the control panel is mint, the front of the game is mint, the monitor is burn-less (but currently plays blind), BUT......



....It was sitting in the lowest part of his garage and took on water :( The lower rear panel of the game is rotted out, the sides are swollen about 5" up, and the base needs immediate attention.


Every other aspect of the game is PERFECT except the water damage......so what would you do? Would you restore it? Leave it as is? It kills me because the original art is perfect except for this damn water damage!!!
 
Arg, that sucks. So close to perfect. Of course i would probably build a new cabinet UNLESS the original could be saved without affecting the artwork. That's a tough one though. Great score, lets see some pix!
 
I have heard of similar cabs where guys pealed back thin layers of plywood with the artwork to save the art and replace the rest of the wood but isn't Asteroids particle board or mdf? Could you remove the bottom and grind off the insides to get it to the point of attaching new wood?
 
Welp, heres the damage, Ill get more pics of the cabinet as a clean her up more. Think its savable?
 

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DOes dp make an asteroids cab?

Huo kit there basically. Might be worth the effort to get it back to the way it should be. Makes me want to cry a litle. Poor feller.
 
Finding a nice asteroids cab is not that hard. I think you can easily find one in 8 condition. I think I have 3 or 4 of them right now and 2 are pretty nice.

Now finding orignal bezel, monitor and control panel in good shape, thats a different story. I would say buy it if its under $200. Find a good cab and transfer guts. Your going to spend a ton of time and probably a great deal of money trying to fix it, and in the end, it will probably not turn out that great.
 
Finding a nice asteroids cab is not that hard. I think you can easily find one in 8 condition. I think I have 3 or 4 of them right now and 2 are pretty nice.

Now finding orignal bezel, monitor and control panel in good shape, thats a different story. I would say buy it if its under $200. Find a good cab and transfer guts. Your going to spend a ton of time and probably a great deal of money trying to fix it, and in the end, it will probably not turn out that great.

I paid $60 for it. The shroud will need to be replaced and I just saw that the marquee is indeed scored on the back, which is a shame as well. Also I did find some minor burn once I wiped away the inch of dust on the screen, but not nearly as bad as a commercially used monitor. I have new buttons and a GO5 repair kit coming from Bob Roberts and a new shroud being ordered from ArcadeShop.
 
This is weird. If the guy wasn't interested in the machine, why not sell it BITD when it was still worth commercial value.
Also: how can the monitor have any burn when the counter is only up to 17 ? Must mean it has been running for hours and hours without being played......did they use it as a decoration light ?
 
This is weird. If the guy wasn't interested in the machine, why not sell it BITD when it was still worth commercial value.
Also: how can the monitor have any burn when the counter is only up to 17 ? Must mean it has been running for hours and hours without being played......did they use it as a decoration light ?

Atari games have a wonderful feature called free play. In the home enviroment, free play is the norm. My space duel is a victim of that. I think its counter is 99998 or something like that and it has some light free play burn.
 
That's bad, but if you have the skills to fix it I say go for it. I don't think there would be any way to save the original sideart, though (at least not the bottom 8" or so). I picked up a Star Wars cab awhile back that had water damage on the bottom, and I'm in the process of fixing it by cutting off the bottom 3" of the cab and splicing in new wood... I'll post some pics and my progress this week probably.

Nice score for $60! Let's see some pics of the front. Does it have an owl eye coin door?
 
I would swap the good components into your other cab, then sell this one to someone who really likes to do resto work. This one looks like a time and money pit.
 
See if you can peel the art up from the bottom. That's what I would do. Then do your bondo repair and reapply the art there with something sticky. Cut a new piece for the back. Kind of alolt of work for an asteroids but id try and keep it together if the first 5 inches of the bottom is all that is bad.
 
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