The legacy/history of your cabinets

Evewalker

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One of the parts of this hobby that really seems to drive me are the rare cases of finding out where your cabinets have been, and what they've been through. I recently picked up a Ms. Pac with a little story behind it, so for those of you who enjoy finding out the history of your cabinets as much as I do, I thought I'd share it.

I recently snagged a very cheap non-working Ms. Pac from a local CL post. Despite it having very serious board problems and some storage incurred wear and fading, the monitor and internals looked disturbingly clean, as well as the bezel and cp being in extraordinarily good condition compared to a lot of other classics I've restored. The G07 in there, for example, has absolutely no burn. It also had just over 6k on the coin counter, and looked oddly un-abused for a in-service cabinet. It had some evidence of being on location, so it clearly wasn't a HUO, which was strange.

The folks I picked it up from got it at an estate sale in a bulk junk buy, which apparently had the possessions of a late gentleman who worked as a "technician" in the area. They had no experience with arcade games, but tried to diagnose it to see if it was an easy fix, before quickly realizing it was beyond them and putting it up for sale. They were very happy I was going to restore it, as even they remarked that it looked good for its age.

Once I got it home and really started to poke around in it, I found a Dedham, MA service call card inside, which was dated "9/21/82". Nothing was written on it, except for "STORM" scrawled across it. Oddly enough, everything on this board, in some form, seems like it has needed to be replaced. It has fought me almost every step of the way unlike any other repair, some of which has been congruent with surge damage.

At this point, with the help of a couple of folks here, it's almost 100% working. However, I have to wonder if a lightning strike on location parked this thing in storage somewhere for 30 years... I haven't had a chance to yet, but I assume it might even be possible to pinpoint the storm that cooked poor Ms. Pac many years ago.

Anyone have any similar legacies uncovered about their machines?
 
I know quite a few stories on my arcade games. I think the story lines are shorter on many of my games as I got most of them so long ago. Here are a few tht remember:

ex atari employees: space duel, star wars cockpit, gravitar, liberator, missile command, maximum force.

from operators who had them in their arcade for a short time and then put into storage(mainly from a guy had an arcade in gilory for 2 or 3 years): qbert, tempest, star wars UR, dig dug, black widow, battlezone, asteroids deluxe, sinistar cockpit. star rider came out of the keyestone arcade.

from atari's gameroom/atari when they closed(vapor trx, airborne cockpit, ariborne UR's, hard drivin compact, primal rage, hydra proto, freeze cab.

Also, my robotron came from a former activision founder.
 
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I have two with good back stories. First is my Tempest cabaret. After I picked it up, I was noticing how different the colors in the marquee were compared to the upright, so I went Googling around to see if this was normal for the cabaret or not. As I'm looking through the results, I see a shot of an AR2 PCB with a familiar-looking serial number. I hit the site it's from and find this: https://atarifreak.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/tempest-cabaret-style-cabinet-2004/

ACQUIRED: MARCH 5, 2004 – NON-WORKING, *RATS NEST*
This is a 'Mini' or a 'Cabaret' model. This model is 9″ shorter, and 20lb's lighter than the full cabinet (But it doesn't have wheels). When I went to purchase it sight unseen I figured that it was a regular upright version….I was pleasantly surprised to find this cabaret addition. There were only 2,176 Cabarets made. This one is #265!

This game was purchased from a private party in Vancouver, Washington. The owner claimed it had spent quite a few years in a local movie theater. Wonder which one? Then it was stored in a home and garage for several years, until March 5, 2004 when I purchased it.

Things done: MAJOR CLEANING. Did I mention major cleaning? This wasn't fun. Mouse infested nasties! We literally pulled out a shriveled up dead mouse!

No trace of screen-burn. There were no keys so I used the old lock drill method for the first time…not too bad. Aside from the critters, the inside looks great all the boards look untouched.



March 9, 2004: All parts removed and finished major cleaning. Monitor out of machine and in state-of-repair. Swapped main power brick out for another I had laying around from an old Gravitar machine. Now the game plays blind. Can't wait till the monitor is done!!

Game done, plays great. Wahoo!

Sold June 17, 2004

1980- ATARI. Vertical oriented Vector 19″ monitor.

Prototype originally called "VORTEX" was eventually renamed to "Tempest"

Model No. 28902

Serial No. 265 from game PCB, Power supply, Main supply, and outside cabinet. ALL MATCHING!!!

The second is my Dig Dug cabaret. A fellow PAC member picked it up last year from an ex-Atari programmer who had taken it home with them when they quit in the 1980s. The story goes that it was a test machine in their engineering labs, the employee took it with the intention of converting it to Centipede, and it then sat in their closet for 25+ years.

What I know for sure is:

- The coin counter has 149 clicks on it.
- It has a bright, burn-free original G07.
- There is no back door sheet.
- There was no art on it. It came with a repro marquee & overlay, and I'm looking into getting a proper bezel & marquee repro'd.
- There is no serial number sticker on anything. I don't believe it was part of the normal production run of 500 Dig Dug cabarets.
- Everything looks right: cabinet construction, woodgrain sides, controls, monitor. I have no doubt that this is an original Atari cabinet and not a reproduction.
- It is by far the cleanest Atari cabaret I have ever seen.
 
For my Die Hard cabinet, I have the original checklist signed by the Sega Tech that installed it at the location, but it doesn't list where it was at sadly. :( The coin indicator has like an astronomical amount something like $20,000 worth of clicks so I dunno where it was at, but it must've been jumping.
 
The only history of my games that I know from when it was new is for Vanguard. It was in a bar in Florida for 2 years (1981-1983), then sold to a guy in high school. He owned it for 26 years and moved it across the country a few times. Then I bought it from him in 2009.

A friend of mine bought a HUO Ms. Pac-Man recently. It was owned by a dentist in Maryland who purchased it new. It was sitting in the same spot in the guy's basement for 30 years. It was super clean. The coin counter had something like 30 on it. A great find.
 
I had a Data East Hook pinball (I sold it a few months ago), but the guy I bought it from used to live in Florida, and he bought it from the Disney World Operator in Florida, and then brought it up to Michigan from Florida, and then I bought it. So nothing to crazy, but kinda cool to say that my pinball was in Disney World!
 
I don't know the stories behind most of the games I have owned. However, I used to have a Stargate that was HUO after 1984. Other than that, I don't really know.
 
The only cab I own that can be traceable is my Aladdin's Castle choice cab. Straight from a Namco e-mail:

"Records are not too detailed on this game, but I can tell you that it was purchased in Dec of 1989 as a Final Blow (Taito) game. In Aug of 1993, it was converted to Fighters History (Data East), and was sold by us in Feb. of 1997. It was operated the entire time in Aladdin's Castle in the Sikes Senter Mall in Wichita Falls, TX."

When I got it, it was trashed and painted black. After years of being my MAME cab, I did the right thing and rebuilt it to a Street Fighter II: CE and uncovered the original Aladdin's Castle side art (slightly damaged on one side, but still original).
 
My Tron was in a barn in Mesquite, Texas. It had been there a while. Thats all I know. It does have 1982 and 83 Texas Gaming Stamps on it though.
 
I always ask the history of machines when I buy them.. Sometimes there are some Killer stories.. My Gravitar was brand new in a arcade in Spokane.. 9 months later the arcade closed.. Was in the owners basement untouched until I bought it:)
 
•Ms. Pac: The guy I got it from got it about 5 years ago with the intentions of fixing it, but he hadn't any experience in video games so it sat in his garage. 60k plays. There is a tag that says the high score of that cab was in the 10ks.
•Galaxian: I have NO clue. Picked it up from a guy in an apartment who had it in storage for an amount of time that I'm unaware. Coin counter is nonexistant.
•Jr. Pac: It was owned originally as a Galaxian that had been in the progress of conversion but wasn't completed from at some arcade closed long ago in San Rafael. I forgot the name. 20k plays on the counter.
•Pac Cabaret: My Pac Mini-Myte was owned by an op in the 1980s and was very lightly used as it was in very nice shape. It suffered water damage but the internals appear untouched. After its use in an arcade, it was stored in a warehouse for ? amount of years until the op decided to just retire forever and sell off everything. 6k plays on the counter, however it was cut at the time of pickup.
 
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I have a well worn 1958 Bally Carnival Queen bingo, and they're not all that desirable, but... just think of all the action that saw through the years. There was sheet metal wrapped around the front and sides and a square hole cut in the bottom of the game where the coins would collect. Sign says "For Amusement Only" - yeah right....
 
My Red Baron cockpit was on location at Cedar Point for most of its life. They had at least one more but it was gutted and used as a Halloweekends prop.
 
I have a millipede that someone won on a local PBS TV raffle back in the 80's.

I also have a qbert that has some wiring labeled 'test'...interesting.

My battlezone was build in December and when I was first cleaning it out I found a small Santa figure buried in the bottom. I wondered if a worker there jammed little santas in the BZ's they were making at christmas time.
 
I picked up a Simpsons cab that had a Lexington, KY tax tag on the back and Showbiz tokens at the bottom. My wife remembers playing The Simpsons at Showbiz when she lived here when she was a kid.
 
I don't know the full history of any of my games, but I do enjoy finding little clues about what kind of life they've had. For example, my Black Knight pinball machine has this inside:

IMG_2562.JPG


I did some research and found out that Time-Out location #09 was in the Coliseum Mall in Hampton, VA. I purchased the game at an auction in Orlando, FL.

Inside my Tailgunner 2 cockpit I found an inventory tag:

CIMG5335.JPG


An arcade in Florida took delivery of the game in 1980... maybe someday I'll find out which one.

CIMG5336.JPG


The game was found in a makeshift warehouse in rural Georgia.
 
I have a couple cool stories. Coolest of all has to be from my Tron that was rescued from a bar that was going to be burned down. I'm sure many of you read the story already and I am proud to say that she now resides in my gameroom. :)

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=249663

Second coolest story would have to be the Journey that I picked up. Long story short, a guy I know had "an arcade game" in his basement, said I could have it if I got it out. Didn't ask, just went and got it and it turned out to be a working Journey upright. Guy said it was in the house when he bought it from a big time car salesman in MN. I *think* it might have been Denny Hecker's back in the day. It had 44,000 on the coin counter, but was in great shape with all the side art there, only missing the tape player.

Last is my Star Trek: Next Generation pin. Bought it from a tech that worked for an op. The cool thing was that the game came with all the detailed location notes and repairs that were done and when they were done in the coin box. Cool to see the history of the game detailed out like that and knowing where it was on route. I kept all those papers and I was going to laminate them and keep them with the game if I ever sell it...but I'll never let it go. :)
 

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My Future Spy & Star Wars each have an Aladdin's Castle dog tag nailed on the side so I know the cabs were working for them at one time.
 
So, this game:
IMG_1714.jpg


It's probably the only one I own that I really know the history of. A friend of mine who was running a "Tracer" (like Photon, lazer tag place from the early 1990s) bought it as a SF2T:HF right at the release and operated it for like a year, and then took it home when Tracer closed and it was HUO (basically unused though) until 1998. He did convert it to a SF Alpha 2 at some point, just trashing the graphics and keeping the wood.

I bought it from him for about $1k at that point and operated it at my first game store, Arizona Gamer, which was light duty compared to an arcade but still got some use. When I sold my stake in AZG in 2001, I sold the game for $800 to the proprietor of competitor Gamer's Edge, who on my advice got a used Marvel vs Capcom CPS2 "B" board to install.

Edge ran the game until 2005, but again, in light duty compared to an arcade. No pizza residue or soda stains, basically it was like having it at an Elks Club. He got to the end of his lease, decided he had a good run and was happy closing in the black, and the machine went into his rumpus room and sat HUO until the summer of 2012.

I bought it back from him in a group machine buy for effectively $400, saw that the suicide battery was still a potential issue, dropped the MVC board into a Candy cab I had and resold it while it was still alive, and used all NOS parts to convert the unit back to SF2T:HF. It operates today at Desert Sky Games in Gilbert, AZ. Come see the monitor, you won't believe how crisp and clear it is. Basically zero burn-in, sooooo vivid it's unreal.

I don't have quite the carpentry or craftsmanship some of you guys here have, but I'm reasonably proud of what I've done here. The cab has some wood damage along the bottom, virtually all from its original run at Tracer, and the coin counter is in the 55k range because it was on freeplay during both HUO stints. I would relish a chance to get a truly mint SF2T:HF, but at this stage in my career and collecting I'm satisfied with a 96th-percentile unit, and of course I'm keeping my eyes open for the next deal.

Anyway I think that's the only one I have now that I can speak for the entire lineage on!
 
Probably my best story is my Dragon's Lair (Space Ace at the moment), which I was able to trace back to the original owners, get the history, etc. Long story short, I am the third ever owner. The first bought it new, vended it, and it kept breaking down, so he sold it to the second operator, whom vended it, and it kept breaking down. That second operator converted it twice, then let it sit in his warehouse until I bought it (as converted) 12+ years ago. It's been restored and in my house ever since. This is the same game as was shown and discussed in a GameRoom magazine article all of those years ago.

Oh, in reviewing the serial numbers of the two Tempest cabarets I'm restoring, they are 20 apart, which means they were on the assembly line at the same time. They were sold new to the operator I just got them from, so I guess that makes me owner number two. :) It also means these have always been together, kind of like siblings, so it will be a shame to separate them after all of these years together.

Scott C.
 
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