well, its no big deal but i do feel a little guilty and i have a couple minutes to kill here anyways...
my first arcade game was a centipede cocktail. it was complete and traded to me as working when he stored it in a barn, several years later it was reasonably clean and complete but the trackballs needed a rebuild and i think there was an issue with the board, it almost worked right but there were some garbage characters on the screen. my plan was to restore it and sell or trade for a cabinet to MAME.
well, i lost my job and times got tight, and i realized either i would have a nonworking centipede and no MAME cab, or i could try to trade the centipede to someone for a decent looking upright. i had zero money to invest, and posted it on craigslist.
noone wanted to trade me anything, the only interest was in buying it! tempting because i didnt have any money, but i needed the cab for MAME or i knew that would never happen, so i refused to sell it, and said i would only trade.
within a couple hours there was somebody at my door with a jammatized early 80s atari cab, and i bid farewell to the centipede cocktail. i asked the guy what he was gonna do with it and he admitted he was gonna make a 48-in-1.
now i know centipede cocktails are not the rarest of gems, but still, it was a cosmetically decent cabinet in nearly working condition with all original hardware, and it makes me feel guilty i sent it away to be gutted. the inside was immaculate, and with a little TLC and some new CPOs it could have been fairly easily restored.
i mean, i guess at least now someone is maybe using it rather than sitting broken in my garage or someones barn slowly disintegrating, but i know thats bullshit, what i did was wrong in my own eyes. all i did was pass the dirty work onto someone else.
I COULD HAVE SAVED IT!!! (sob...)
also, i "cleaned" the word atari off the glass under the logo on one side...
