How rare is this Gremlin Fortress?

K3587

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Ok, so...exactly how rare (and valuable) of a piece am I sitting on here? This Gremlin Fortress has little to no info online, and the ROMs have never been dumped. Found an article online that says the game was built, field-tested, but did poorly and wasn't produced. Any idea on the finite number of these in existence?

I bought it as part of a small lot that also included Asteroids, Gun Fight, and Laguna Racer. Seller said the guy he got them from inherited them, and had them in a semi trailer they converted to a man cave type room. The previous owner died and they sat for a good 10 years before they got removed and sold by the guy I got them from. Lord only knows how the original owner came across it.

I have signs of life, but not yet a working game. Power supply has been replaced by a switcher. I have a manual with schematics and the power harness takes +5, +12, and -12, as well as 3vac it still gets from the old power supply. Power is good at test points, so I'm satisfied there's no power issues. Monitor comes on and shows garbage that sometimes changes to different garbage when the coin switch is hit. When powered on, you hear a high-pitched noise and an explosion, which I assume is the normal boot up noise of a cannonball being fired and landing.

I have replaced all RAMs and some other socketed chips and haven't gotten much else out of it. The manual lists a few other non-socketed chips and a couple transistors as part of its troubleshooting if the game won't boot, so I now have those on order. I'm hoping that once I replace those, I can get it to boot and play. Board repair is not my strong suit, so if I give up on it at some point I'll seek outside help on repairing it. With simple hookups and full schematics, I bet someone more well-versed in PCB Repair could bring it back to life if I cannot. I'm not ready to tap out yet, though.

Anyway to ask again: what value would you place on this? With no prior sales info, I'm guessing the answer across the board will be an unknowing shrug. Is this rare enough it needs to be in a museum? Yes, it will be for sale. No, I don't want to sell it as-is. No, I don't have a price yet. No, I don't have the ability to dump the ROMs. Without the machine working, there's no way to tell if they're the issue yet so there's not much point right now. If I get it running, we'll take it from there.

I'm excited to have it though, and I'd like to think I'm going to bring a piece of arcade history back to life. That, or like 40 of you guys have one and I'm just delusional. I'll get more photos after I've done some more work to it.
 

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It's really tough to place a value on super rare proto games. "Pretty much whatever a captive buyer would pay" is your answer, unfortunately.
 
If the ROMs really aren't dumped that might be the first thing you try to do since if you damage them poking around the board randomly you won't have any way to replace them. You don't have to release them to anybody but at least you will have a backup copy.
 
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If the ROMs really aren't dumped that might be the first thing you try to do since if you damage them poking around the board randomly you won't have any way to replace them. You don't have to release them to anybody but at least you will have a backup copy.

Yeah first thing to do would be dump all the roms before messing with anything else. If they get screwed up and no dumps exists then there isn't much chance of getting it going again. Go buy an eprom burner that supports the chips or have someone local with one do it, they aren't that expensive.
 
I have been looking for one for a while.... But I am not willing to pay prototype prices for it. I was under the impression it was primarily a Japanese release and is rare in the states, but was common in Japan. There was a Facebook post a little while back where it was asked about because someone had 3-4 boards they were working on for repair or trade..... Part of the reason I dont believe it is a prototype only.

Brian
 
Couldn't find the picture with the stack of Fortress PCBs, but I saw this was posed in the Bronze Age Facebook section in the last week as well.... Like I said, I have been looking for a long time and it looks like an awesome game that I would love to add to the bronze age section of my collection, but I would hesitate at calling it a prototype. Wish you the best of luck with your repairs.

Brian
 

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I saw that same post on Facebook last week.

Agreed. Don't expect prototype prices on it and it's not a museum piece or a grail. But, it's a very cool find in my eyes as another Bronze Age collector. You did good deal there on the lot and I'd like to have it myself just because it's cool and uncommon. Hey, let me know if you are selling Gun Fight or Laguna Racer which they made a lot more units of by the way. :)

If I were to price this one, I'd hold out for $500 non-working and go for $750 working simply due to the rarity. It may be rare and cool (to me) BUT there's not a huge market for these. Your timing is good though. 10 years ago, it's a $50 non-working and $100 working game. But, the market has lifted off a bunch lately if you ask me. I guess us 40-50 year olds make a lot more money now to buy the games from our childhood.

As a reference point on a slightly more common Gremlin/Sega game from the same time period, I paid $650 for a fair to good working Head On. I think I paid too much for it because if I had held out, I could have gotten like machines for $450-500 working but I went with the bird in the hand. I think you stretch the pricing upward from here because someone like me will want this one for the uniqueness.

So, there...I put a price on it. Any other opinions out there?

Couldn't find the picture with the stack of Fortress PCBs, but I saw this was posed in the Bronze Age Facebook section in the last week as well.... Like I said, I have been looking for a long time and it looks like an awesome game that I would love to add to the bronze age section of my collection, but I would hesitate at calling it a prototype. Wish you the best of luck with your repairs.

Brian
 
Still working on it, but the game boots and is playable. The ship on the left doesn't come up, so gotta get that going. But, all the sounds seem to work and the game plays to completion and keeps score.
 

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Still working on it, but the game boots and is playable. The ship on the left doesn't come up, so gotta get that going. But, all the sounds seem to work and the game plays to completion and keeps score.
Congrats on the progress. Love to see these come back to life.
 
This is headed to Grinkers.

If anyone has a lead on that pile of boards, please PM me.

Thanks! : )
 
The audio is probably unique, but the pcb is just a dual vic, no?

that board does look dual vic to me as well.

I wonder if it has the same video processor IC that some Carvival boards had? I fixed a Carnival that had random bad graphics and it ended up being that IC.
 
Sweet! Nice score, Steve! Helllloo Bronze Age Challenge!



This is headed to Grinkers.

If anyone has a lead on that pile of boards, please PM me.

Thanks! : )
 
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