Poor Gauntlet

I'll see your Golden Tee and raise you a Gauntlet with Punk Shot artwork, running The Simpsons :D
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Ive seen Gauntlets locally that became Mortal Kombat, Wrestlefest, Simpsons, Golden Tee, Multicades, seems Gauntlet really gets no love and is converted to any old game, sad :(
 
Gauntlet stopped earning a profit in 1988.

That GT kit looks well done.
 
Gauntlet stopped earning a profit in 1988.

That GT kit looks well done.

+1

Why is it so hard for the people on this board to understand that when a game drops to 50 cents a week (and yes Gauntlet went there) its time to convert it to something that will earn money again.

All of our classic games died or never earned to begin with. Its the way it works...

Matt
 
not hard to understand, heck the number of bizarre conversions to keep that machine earning, we had a Tron here in FL that was converted to a Two Tigers then to Silk Worm, yeah terrible shame for the Tron, but the machine at least kept going!

its when the conversion has gone to far to make it worthwhile to put back to original :(
 
I'll give you the Golden Tee conversion...BUT Punk Shot, that game was HORRIBLE!!! I find it hard to believe even that game outearned Gauntlet!
 
Everytime I see "poor (enter game name here)" I know exactly what the thread is about. What about poor operator that paid $4800 for a game thats been making $10.00 a week for the last 50 weeks??

Lets face it, some games suck and need to be converted to something else that makes money. BITD it was decided that games should pay for themselves within a year to 18 months. MANY games didnt do that! Along came the likes of Mr Do! and things changed forever.... Lets not forget about the countless Millions that Street Fighter II and MKI made.

SFII brought so many games back to life when the kit came out. I know of an operator that was converting 3-5 games A DAY to SFII.

Matt
 
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I'll give you the Golden Tee conversion...BUT Punk Shot, that game was HORRIBLE!!! I find it hard to believe even that game outearned Gauntlet!

I guess on route any new game even if it sucked, would still draw people in for a while ??
 
I'll give you the Golden Tee conversion...BUT Punk Shot, that game was HORRIBLE!!! I find it hard to believe even that game outearned Gauntlet!

Back then even the worst games in the world made money for 3-4 weeks. We called it "curiosity quarters." There was no way to tell if a game was any good up front so you had to pull the trigger and convert something that wasnt making money anymore.

I agree that Punk Shot sucks but it did earn for a few months.

Matt
 
Define awhile......

The average was three to four weeks. Anything beyond that meant that the game was actually a good one. Toki, Bubble Booble, Rastan, Twin Corba, Sky Shark and Raiden are examples of games that actually paid for themselves.

Matt
 
Interesting, I found a couple of Gauntlets that were converted into Crime Fighters.....

You ARE right when the game is brand new it does earn the first couple of weeks but depending on the kit, the longevity of the income is up in the air....
 
Interesting, I found a couple of Gauntlets that were converted into Crime Fighters.....

You ARE right when the game is brand new it does earn the first couple of weeks but depending on the kit, the longevity of the income is up in the air....

Yeah, it sucked. We made it a point to not get excited about anything until the game was on the route for at least 6 weeks. If it was doing better then $100 a week past then that meant we were going to be in good shape.

Kits were one thing, they were cheap. I think Mr Do! kits were around $695 or something like that. New games were expensive when you compared the two but dedicated games like Out Run, Hang-On and Afterburner made money. So it was tough to decided on how to spend money on the route. Buy 10 kits or 1 dedicated game???

Matt
 
Thanks for the insight.... One question, do you recall the cost of an Arkanoid kit back then?

Around that time kits were falling into the $995 to $1495 range where they stayed until SFII came out and drove the prices up to $1895 to $2295.

I think Arkanoid was around $1295.00.

Matt
 
Back then even the worst games in the world made money for 3-4 weeks. We called it "curiosity quarters."

I bet Wacko got more than a few of those.

Interesting, I found a couple of Gauntlets that were converted into Crime Fighters.....

There were kits made specifically for this conversion, I think.
 
Strangely My The Main Event machine was Never Converted too anything different.

You would have thought it would have been converted pretty fast too something else.
 
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