Incredible Arcade Raid on an old Cruise Ship

Man I got a bit angry reading that they let water get to the cabs after like 30 years of them being safe from the elements...

Looking at the photos some of those cabs look damn near new... So it's really dumb that after 30 years some of them got water damage right at the last moment.
 
And of course, they didn't answer the key questions of interest.....

1. What is the list of games recovered ?
2. What was the average price per game (including purchase and crane/etc costs) ?

What a raid !
 
Man I got a bit angry reading that they let water get to the cabs after like 30 years of them being safe from the elements...

Looking at the photos some of those cabs look damn near new... So it's really dumb that after 30 years some of them got water damage right at the last moment.
They didn't purposely allow the water to get to the machine.

Thieves had stolen the brass window frames allowing the rain to get in. The cabs were then moved to a safer place until they got the go ahead from the seller to take the cabs.
 
Man I got a bit angry reading that they let water get to the cabs after like 30 years of them being safe from the elements...

Looking at the photos some of those cabs look damn near new... So it's really dumb that after 30 years some of them got water damage right at the last moment.

It's probably a fairly safe bet that the condition of the ship was of greater concern to the owners than a bunch of video games stored in it that were going to be scrapped if nobody collected them. I agree that it sucks to see the games exposed to water this late in their lives, but their value to the ship's owners vs. the value of the ship itself puts them (understandably) in the category of acceptable losses.

Also:

They didn't purposely allow the water to get to the machine.

Thieves had stolen the brass window frames allowing the rain to get in. The cabs were then moved to a safer place until they got the go ahead from the seller to take the cabs.

This. But it all comes back to having permission to take the games in the first place, which (as I understand it) nobody did have when the window frames were stolen. It sounds as though a best effort was made to preserve them, which given that nobody had actually bought any of these machines at that point, was a decent thing for the owners to do.
 
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They didn't purposely allow the water to get to the machine.

Thieves had stolen the brass window frames allowing the rain to get in. The cabs were then moved to a safer place until they got the go ahead from the seller to take the cabs.

Yeah I realize that but if they had done the deal when they initially raided and moved them out within a few weeks it would have been fine. The window frame stuff didn't happen until months after the initial viewing.
 
Yeah I realize that but if they had done the deal when they initially raided and moved them out within a few weeks it would have been fine. The window frame stuff didn't happen until months after the initial viewing.

Right, but it took months to get to the point where the owners were willing to sell. Bear in mind that they gave a last-minute deadline to get everything out within 10 days or it was going to be scrapped when maintenance on the ship started.

Basically, the deal wasn't doable at the time of discovery. It took time to bring the owners around to selling the games, and the games were water-exposed in the interim.
 
And of course, they didn't answer the key questions of interest.....

1. What is the list of games recovered ?
2. What was the average price per game (including purchase and crane/etc costs) ?

What a raid !

There's a pretty good thread (click here) over on dragonslairfans.com about this raid. I can't remember if it answers the quetions you have or not, but it was written just after it happened back in 2012 and does have some info that's not in the article referenced here.
 
I sort of felt like if there were ever a Bouncer to be found, it would have made its way on to that ship somehow, haha.
 
This happened over three years ago, even though the blog post was apparently only written 6 days ago.

These games saw year after year of summers and winters through the port holes, the sun rising, the sun setting, FOR THIRTY YEARS. They were just sitting there, unsure of their fate, wondering if they would be rescued, wondering if they would ever be played again.

Glad I'm not the only one who scarily personifies these things, although I do so less metaphorically LOL
 
And of course, they didn't answer the key questions of interest.....

1. What is the list of games recovered ?
2. What was the average price per game (including purchase and crane/etc costs) ?

What a raid !

Here is a list from the thread I just posted above:

shiplist.png
 
I thought I was losing my mind...this story was popping up all over the place, and I was SURE I'd seen it a few years ago.
 
I thought I was losing my mind...this story was popping up all over the place, and I was SURE I'd seen it a few years ago.

Yeah, it's a case of 'what's old is new again'. It's a cool story and all, but I'm not really sure why it's suddenly become as popular as it has recently.
 
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