New Project: Tetris Cabaret

That donkey kong cabaret q bert is epic

Yeah I had a hokey tpg as well :50: Are you on carpet or hard floor? I keep my games on sliders but it's a hard floor so they move easy. Agreed though having some sort of tpg would've helped phet a lot.
It's low height carpet tiles. The sliders work reasonably well on it. Even with wheels, it takes some effort though. I just want to wave a wand, and the game magically roll out.
 
I now have two TPGs, tube tester/rejuvinators, LCR meter, shorted windings tester, and true RMS dmm and wouldn't want to be working on these beasts without them.
I have enough trouble with this crap already.

Need to learn how to use one of these oscilloscopes someday too.
 
… a TPG would have saved you so many headaches. It's a great way to easily narrow down a problem between pcb, harness, and monitor.
Yes it would...unless you have a broken green wire in the tpg harness to the chassis...which has also happened to me.
 
So anyway, had the game in the Arcade powered on all day yesterday and I probably played it about 20+ times. I mostly played Tetris, but I did switch it over to columns every now and then to change it up. I'm actually really glad I went through this whole process of trying to figure out what was wrong with the monitor, cause I was able to clean it, cap it, reflow some solder that needed to be reflowed etc. Now the picture on the monitor is absolutely gorgeous.

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And it fits right into my new cabaret row:

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Heck yeah. It does look really nice. The convergence and colors look great. And it never hurts to know you've reflowed solder and capped a monitor.

I often complain about how many times I've installed cap kits for it to make zero difference in the display appearance... but I still find value in knowing it was done.

Great job all around on this project!
 
Now I just gotta take it back outside for glamour shots. I was so excited to get into the arcade that I skipped that part this time. But it's easy enough to wheel it back out to perform that last step and properly finish this thread.
 
So my other only dilemma is, what order should I put these cabarets in? I feel like the Robotron should be at the left end as it's the tallest, then the Ms Pac, then the Tetris and then the rest of them can stay the same. Am I wrong?

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Stagger the heights to balance it out.
So my other only dilemma is, what order should I put these cabarets in? I feel like the Robotron should be at the left end as it's the tallest, then the Ms Pac, then the Tetris and then the rest of them can stay the same. Am I wrong?

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Robotron should be at the left end as it's the tallest, then the Ms Pac, then the Tetris and then the rest of them can stay the same. Am I wrong?

Yes for godsake! Move them!

You could arrange them like this, by falling height. Or another possibility would be Robotron on the right end, with Tetris next, and the shorties in the middle. Ms. Pac Man is the fat older sister that's fun to play with, but no one really wants to look at. Keep her in the corner by the wall. With the taller ones on the ends you get a nice swoop effect.

Whatever, it looks horrible with Robot Ron in the middle.
 
So I was heading to bed, doing my final rounds of the house and decided to stop in the arcade for one game of Tetris. Put it on the difficult level where they drop the extra blocks. My 14 year old son Rayce came down and said "hey dad I was looking for you to say good night." I said "oh would you like to join me?" So my son and I played about 10 minutes of a head to head Tetris game. Super fun. Rayce said he had never played the game before and liked it, but he didn't like the extra blocks coming down. I told him we were on the difficult level, so I'm hoping he's gonna go back, put it on easy and get comfortable with the game. I have to admit it was pretty timely as one of my Facebook memories popped up from November 4, 2017, which was a game night I had with my boys. They were 6 and 8 and one of them ended up falling asleep in the game room we were down there so long. We looked at the pics a bit, laughed and decided we're gonna start going down to the game room a lot more often. Win! Oh and here are the pics from that night, 8 years ago:

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The fun part about looking at the pics while in the arcade was that my son kept comparing the lineup and positioning of the games from 8 years ago to today. It was amazing how much he noticed. He then really took a good look at the cabaret row and told me that he loves the cabarets, but he finds the cabaret cabinet the Tetris is in a little strange with that laid back marquee. So then I proceeded to give him a little history lesson on midway cabarets. He told me his favorite so far was the Ms. Pac. It was fun to see how interested he was in some of the history. He asked a lot of questions. Asked me which games I built, which games I restored, etc. So in just the 20 minutes we were down there, I felt like we finally connected over the hobby side of the arcade a bit.

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So my other only dilemma is, what order should I put these cabarets in? I feel like the Robotron should be at the left end as it's the tallest, then the Ms Pac, then the Tetris and then the rest of them can stay the same. Am I wrong?
Ok for fun I asked AI to re-order the cabinets so they're visually appealing and this was the result lmao

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Also, I feel like the Tetris should be on the far right due to the way it lays back. Having it between games with taller sides seems odd. It'd be kindof like having a mini in between two regular uprights.
 
Also, I feel like the Tetris should be on the far right due to the way it lays back. Having it between games with taller sides seems odd. It'd be kindof like having a mini in between two regular uprights.
Nah, the shorter Nintendo and Asteroids cabs are to the far right because there is a window behind them. If anything, I'll just swap the Robotron and Tetris.
 
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