Retrobotics Arcade

If it's big, cool and exciting, then it must be what we all want ... ;)
The "fork on the side" gave it away.

Not sure if the OPs VAPS gives any hints though. Alien3 or Dark Planet perhaps?

boong-ga-boong-ga-the-arcade-game-jpg.819694
 
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Figured I'd start an actual thread for some of the stuff we've got going on in here. I post in the lit-up thread enough as it is...
My wife and I got into collecting together, a few years ago, when we moved in together. I hadn't been collecting prior. I had a MKII machine and a Jukebox from when I was a kid, but I had never considered the "collecting" aspect, until my wife and I had them in a room with the pool table and thought "wait, there's some empty space here, how about another game or two?"
Knowing nothing, we picked up a dead Tempest. It took us 9 months to get that thing working...

Naturally, it has all ballooned completely out of control from there. One machine became two. Two became four.. And so on. Mostly projects, some total de-conversions, all brought back to life thanks to the great knowledgebase of KLOV.

In our new house, we have four rooms dedicated to the arcade, all linked together.

The first room houses mostly 80s and 90s raster games. The only exceptions are Space Invaders and Space Duel (but only because some weird magnetic anomaly prevents us from putting it in the vector room). This is definitely the largest game room, and it is dominated by the presence of the 6P X-Men machine.
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The second room is the "vector room." As with the first room, there are a couple exceptions - namely Firefox and Ms. Pacman are in there, because there just wasn't enough room in the cocktail area.
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The third room is the smallest - the cocktail area. What mixes better? Cocktail machines and a wet bar? I'd like to build a bench into the wall behind the machines and eliminate that bookshelf, replacing it with floating shelves.
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The fourth and final room is the pool room. It's more of the "quiet space" if the arcade is too loud and obnoxious. No neon, no blacklights. There is a full kitchen, but it came like that. Not really sure how to progress the decor of the room from here. Excuse the dog photobombing...
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Everything in the arcade, all the games, all the lights, various bits of decor, are controlled through home assistant, which is an absolute godsend for powering everything up for a party (and for maintenance). We've got a video about it on our Youtube Channel as well! And we'll probably post videos in this thread as we do them.
Got to love the Coctail Cabs
ooooh, a Crystal Castle Cocktail Cabinet
I bet you cant say that 4 timesin a row!!
🤣Seriously, love it
 
The vector room got a little bit of a rearrangement today. New game has made it in!

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It is Star Trek S.O.S. in dedicated upright form! Picked this up over memorial day weekend, non-working. Luckily I was able to find the parts I needed, and got it mostly working fairly quickly. The monitor and boardset both had some issues, and it's still not 100% but definitely good enough to get into the game room. I also took the opportunity to burn a freeplay ROM while I was working on the boardset.

Naturally, breaking the cardinal rule of "Don't move color vectors", it did have some trouble right after it got moved in. Immediately blew the 10A fuse, and something is going on with the audio reset. It's not happy. It started giving me some messages directly from hell. Interestingly, the same series of garbage every time it booted.


C̸̞̓͋̔O̸̺̖͙͌N̵̥̐͘G̶̳͔̠̃̋͝R̷͙͑A̸̯͛́T̵̡͇͒Ȕ̸̧̯͍́Ḷ̶̡͛À̶͖̿͜T̸͎́͛I̸̦̺̤̾̃͝O̵̠̦̽Ñ̶̹̲S̵͈͆̆̓ - Star Trek

I cleaned up a bunch of connectors, and I was able to stop it giving me sweet nothings from the void, but it still doesn't seem to initialize properly on first boot. I have to go and manually hit the reset switch on the service panel in order to get it to work 100%. But oh well. I'm guessing that the linear needs a cap kit maybe?
 
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The Williams Row has expanded again!

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Welcoming Bubbles! This one was converted to a Double Play Baseball, and has been brought back (mostly)

Notice no CPO. For that, I'm waiting on This Old Game, so I figured might as well have it playable in the meantime!


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Here's a before and after. The only reproduction parts in this are the harness and I think the control panel plate. Everything else is original.

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Also, for whatever reason, it has prototype Bubbles ROMS. I had NO IDEA that in the prototype version, you can't knock enemies down the sink. Adding that feature is an excellent change for the release version of the game.
 
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I do have a defender cabinet! The only problem is it runs Joust....

Eventually I'll probably deconvert it.

You still have that? I thought you sold it off.
That said, I hope whoever buys it does not deconvert it. Or do I?
That's a strange game. Maybe transplant the PCBs (to preserve them). Then remake the cabinet back into a Defender/Stargate. 🤷‍♂️
 
You still have that? I thought you sold it off.
That said, I hope whoever buys it does not deconvert it. Or do I?
That's a strange game. Maybe transplant the PCBs (to preserve them). Then remake the cabinet back into a Defender/Stargate. 🤷‍♂️
Yep. It's still here. I fixed the cracked bezel and it's just sitting in the hall outside the arcade. It still works. I think I powered it up a couple weeks ago.
 
Maybe update the listing as a FS instead of a MMAO?
Needless, the more I think of it, the more I hope it remains as it is.

And update "in my gameroom" to "in the hall outside my arcade". LOL

 
Maybe update the listing as a FS instead of a MMAO?
Eh. I'm not under any pressure to sell the thing. I'm not using the space it's currently taking up.

I do want to expand my collection of Williams titles though. However, the ones at the top of my list through process of elimination are getting quite expensive. Stargate and Defender are at the bottom of the list. Mostly because I suck at those games.

Needless, the more I think of it, the more I hope it remains as it is.

Until I have sufficient funds and will to allocate to it to deconvert , it'll remain as it is. I figure if I do get around to that, I'll pull the PCB stack and laser cut some kind of enclosure for it. Maybe frame the marquee. Who knows.
 
The vector room got a little bit of a rearrangement today. New game has made it in!

View attachment 824576

It is Star Trek S.O.S. in dedicated upright form! Picked this up over memorial day weekend, non-working. Luckily I was able to find the parts I needed, and got it mostly working fairly quickly. The monitor and boardset both had some issues, and it's still not 100% but definitely good enough to get into the game room. I also took the opportunity to burn a freeplay ROM while I was working on the boardset.

Naturally, breaking the cardinal rule of "Don't move color vectors", it did have some trouble right after it got moved in. Immediately blew the 10A fuse, and something is going on with the audio reset. It's not happy. It started giving me some messages directly from hell. Interestingly, the same series of garbage every time it booted.


C̸̞̓͋̔O̸̺̖͙͌N̵̥̐͘G̶̳͔̠̃̋͝R̷͙͑A̸̯͛́T̵̡͇͒Ȕ̸̧̯͍́Ḷ̶̡͛À̶͖̿͜T̸͎́͛I̸̦̺̤̾̃͝O̵̠̦̽Ñ̶̹̲S̵͈͆̆̓ - Star Trek

I cleaned up a bunch of connectors, and I was able to stop it giving me sweet nothings from the void, but it still doesn't seem to initialize properly on first boot. I have to go and manually hit the reset switch on the service panel in order to get it to work 100%. But oh well. I'm guessing that the linear needs a cap kit maybe?
From that pic, the iRobot and Firefox look like they have panel displays. Just an illusion?
 
From that pic, the iRobot and Firefox look like they have panel displays. Just an illusion?
Just an illusion. Firefox has its original amplifone Raster, and I robot has its (very dead) disco monitor:(
 
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