Sarurday pickup - Oh Yeah!

gameguy1957

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Set your wayback machine to 1980. I'm at the local skating rink with a friend and his older brother. It's dark, with the only light coming from the reflections off of a disco ball, blacklights in the ceiling, and the glow from a row of video games lining one wall. The blacklight reflects off of the Star Wars mural on the back wall, but we don't venture over there. It's where the older kids go to make out when the lights are down like they are right now. "Another One Bites the Dust", by Queen, is being played on the turntable by the DJ. "Blinded by the Light", by Manfred Mann, is next up on the play list.

We skate some, but also bring plenty of change for the games. The games are mostly black & white video games, pinball machines, and a couple of EM rifle machines. My friend's brother shows up to play one game – an old b&w racing game. He puts on the driving gloves that he brings with him and gets bonus time over and over again. He's good enough to draw a small crowd.

While he's playing we are stuck on a motorcycle game next to the driving game. It's my second favorite game in the place, the racing game is #1.

When his game finally ends we get a chance at it and drop many quarters trying to emulate him.

---

Fast forward to about six or seven years ago. I still love video games, but play is limited to a PS2 since all of the good arcades went away a decade or more earlier. I'm in a local thrift store and see two games – DK Jr. and MK II. Neither are my favorite, but I had never thought of having an arcade machine in the house and figured it would be fun. So I call my wife and ask if I can bring them home. She says yes, as long as they don't get in the way....

I get them fixed and things could have ended there, but I eventually found the old original Luna City Arcade website … thoughts start going through my head about getting more games and I make a list. The racing game and motorcycle game are on the top of the list.

But they continued to elude me for all these years. They would appear occasionally, but on the other side of the country.

So I wait, and watch, and wait some more. By now they've reached a kind of legendary status from the nostalgia associated with them and the long term search to find them.

---

Then I did a search on eBay earlier this week for arcade games locally. Not just one, but both games, locally, from the same guy. I wait nervously all week and watch the last thirty minutes tick down second-by-second.

I ended up winning both.


And now about the games.....
 
Oh yeah! Old school goodness.


I am now a happy camper.


They are both in great shape for their age. They've been stored in a warehouse for almost thirty years. I'm going to give them a good cleaning inside and out and then check all of the electronics before hitting the power and doing a smoke test on them.
.

-JM
 

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Your posts kept me on the edge of my seat, you are a beautiful wordsmith:)
Those games look frickin brand new-congrats
 
Wow, an Atari Night Driver! You don't see those too often. It looks to be in awesome shape, and I love that side art... so simple yet vivid. Great story, as well! Thanks for posting it.
 
Awesome scores. They seem to be in great great shape. I'm crossing my fingers for you hoping they both work when you first click the switch.
 
I've had a chance to test them.

The Stunt Cycle works except for the throttle. I'll look into that later this evening.

Night Driver works, but has horizontal collapse on the monitor. The cab is plywood and not rotten, but it appears to be separating at the bottom. I'll clamp it and put some bracing in it to make it solid again, then get on to rebuilding the monitor chassis.

-JM
 
Any chance they are the same games from the old rollerskating rink?
 
Any chance they are the same games from the old rollerskating rink?

No, they came from a city just over the state line. About thirty miles from here and I think these games are actually in better shape than the ones at the rink. The skates and greasy food covered fingers took a toll on them, even back when they were newer.

I did end up with a lot of other games (27 - 30) from the local rink and Putt-Putt. They had been converted, but the operator was good enough to have kept all of the original parts that were removed. It made it easy to un-convert them.

-JM
 
Figured out the problem with the Stunt Cycle controller. The 5k pot inside of it is shorting itself to the controller. I'll fix that tomorrow and it will be ready to play.

-JM
 
Great pickups. I guess it is a regional thing as to what video games are rare and which are easy pickin's. I have turned down 7 or 8 Night Drivers over the last couple of years. Most have been sitdowns and while I want to add a driving game, I just don't have room for sitdowns.

ken
 
Gamerguy - congrats on getting some really cool classic games!

I think I saw those two games for sale last week on Craigslist or eBay. Thought it would be really cool to get the Night Driver.. but I just got something similar! A few weeks ago I finally got a Datsun 280 Zzzap game that my brother had picked up for me a number of months back. If you have never seen this game, it is essentially Midway's version of Night Driver. I believe that Night Driver came out first, and then Midway copied it (the original name of the game was going to be Midnite Racer..... pretty obvious that it was a copy).

There are a few differences between the games. I believe that Night Driver has a 4 way shifter (right?), while 280 Zzzap only has a High/Low shifter. One neat aspect of 280 Zzzap is that it has a mirror/background/black light setup (like Space Invaders or Asteroids Deluxe). Cant remember if Night Driver also had this kind of setup? Other than those two things, the gameplay and graphics are pretty similar.

I had played Night Driver as a kid and loved it, but never saw this game. My brother is a collector/fan of 280 Z cars.. so when he saw this and knew I loved arcade games.. he picked it up for me. I read somewhere that it is actually the first game to use a licensed product in the theme.

I will try to post pics soon. Congrats again on getting the games!
 
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Great pickups for sure! (and an absolutely fantastic car btw!!!)

I have fond memories of both those games and would love to add them to the collection if I had the room. :)

Enjoy 'em! :beerchug:
 
Great pickups. I guess it is a regional thing as to what video games are rare and which are easy pickin's. I have turned down 7 or 8 Night Drivers over the last couple of years. Most have been sitdowns and while I want to add a driving game, I just don't have room for sitdowns.

ken

Yea, I've seen several sit downs, about 8 - 10 hours away. This was the first upright I've seen in person since the one at the skating rink. And that's been at least 25 or more years ago. The only other uprights that I've seen for same were over 20 hours away.

-JM
 
Per my last post.. here is my 280 Zzzap game. (The first 3 pics are of my game.. but taken before I got it.. the 4th pic I found online and shows the gameplay.. but not my pic).
 

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