Okay, so most of my buddies and co-workers know that I'm into classic arcade games, so last week a co-worker tells me that his dad's neighbor has an arcade game sitting on his porch that he would give away for free if someone would haul it off. I got the guys number and called him that evening, and he told me that "it's an old game called Phraze Craze, it's really dirty from being outside, and theres been mice or rats living in it". Well, I thought for free I'd at least check it out, might be able to salvage a monitor or coin door. I set up a time to meet him yesterday afternoon, and borrowed my brothers truck because it has a utility bed/lift gate, and set out to get the game. It was in a town about 15 miles away, out in the boonies. I get there and I can see the cab on the side of the house - I knew it was a Nintendo cab, and from the orange sides I first thought it was a converted DK jr., but as I got closer I could tell by the cut of the cab, as well as the width and the center speaker, that this was a MB widebody! Needless to say, I jammed my handtruck under it and high tailed it back to the truck, only to find that it has a flat tire! Doh! And no spare! Luckily the seller (giver?) had an air compressor, so I was able to get the tire aired up - it had a pretty fast leak, but I was able to make it into town a few miles away and $15 later I had a patched tire. I had already loaded the cab, so I dropped it off at my dads house, partially because I don't have much room in my garage, but mainly because I didn't want any unwanted critters in my garage.
My dad lives out in the country, so if there were any live mice in the cab, hopefully they would run out into the walnut orchards. Anyway, long story short, here it is, my first FREE cab - as you can see, the mice/rat crap was everywhere, along with alot of paper and nesting material. Shop vac'd it up and it doesn't look too bad. Didn't find anything living in the cab except for a few spiders. The smell is pretty bad though. The cab itself is in remarkably good shape considering where its been for who knows how long. The monitor has almost no burn, but the chassis and frame are both pretty rusty - I'm going to clean up the boards and recap it, but I don't know... Same with the power supply - alot of rust. I can save the control panel, it has a few extra holes in it, but I have a small mig welder to take care of those. The coin door is severely rusted/pitted, but I'm going to try to save it. I'll be happy if I can get this cab looking half as good as Gregatrons recent restore. The worst part about this is that the Nintendo serial tag was missing from the back, so no serial number...


