The not-so-great outdoors: what arcade games have you seen left to rot outside?

pookdolie

Permanently Banned for excessive trolling.
Joined
Oct 8, 2009
Messages
7,935
Reaction score
96
Location
California
The not-so-great outdoors: what arcade games have you seen left to rot outside?

I know there's lots of pictures in the internet of graveyards. What arcade games have you seen left to rot in the wilderness (or, at least, in the sun/rain)?

I remember seeing a Karate Champ abandoned in a junk pile behind a business. Joysticks were rusted frozen...
 
I had a Head On cab in my possession for a while that was in pretty rough shape. Ended up giving the cab away to a local for free, after parting it out.

:(
 
I saw a lone gutted space invanders deluxe sitting outside an ops
warehouse once.. like it was a warning to all the other machines to
stay in line.. Musta been there for years.

Kinda sad.
 
The Pac-Man and Galaga I picked up a few years ago were sitting outside in the parking lot of a flea market. I don't know why - there was lots of room inside the flea market building where they could have stored them. At least I got them cheap. I was able to save the Pac-Man and restore it, but it took a lot of extra effort to fix sections of delaminating plywood and the bezel was trashed. The Galaga cabinet, being particle board, was totally falling apart. However the bezel, marquee, control panel, coin door, etc. are all good so I'm using the original cabinet pieces as templates for a new cabinet build.
 
I have seen a Warrior, Seawolf, Hercules pinball, Atari Space Race, Tank, Biplane, Space Panic, and many, many more, all in the same place left to rot in the sun, snow and rain. ArcRevival and I saved what we could, but it was not a pretty sight.
 
photo7.jpg

photo8.jpg
 
I saw a Super Pac in the early 90's sitting behind a Laundromat, before I was into collecting. Looked like it had been outside a bit.. Next day it was smashed, looked like vandals destroyed the tube and anything internal they could..
 
A few weeks ago I was visiting a buddy of mine who lives out of town. We were out and about when I just barely caught a glimpse of a Ms Pac-Man sitting on someone's porch. My buddy said it's been sitting there for quite a while too. Next time I'll have to snap a pic if it's still there. I was tempted to stop and see if they wanted to get rid of it even if it's worth the parts.
 
I stopped at a Antique shop one time because they had a game sitting outside. It was a Double Dragon conversion in a Williams cab. Completely waterlogged, and rusted. They wanted $1400.00 for it.
 
My parent's neighbor had a Space Panic that was visible from the street just behind the fence to his place for years.

He finally got rid of it a few years back, and I rescued the boardset and manual for a friend, and I have the uber-cool bezel as artwork for my garage now :D .

The rest of it wasn't worth bothering with anymore :( .

Jon
 
My parent's neighbor had a Space Panic that was visible from the street just behind the fence to his place for years.

He finally got rid of it a few years back, and I rescued the boardset and manual for a friend, and I have the uber-cool bezel as artwork for my garage now :D

Did he get the boardset working?
 
Been waiting for the right time to post this one. About 10 years ago my wife saw a cabinet outside a local "antique" auction place in town. She stopped by and called me on my office phone to tell me it was a Choplifter. Being a fan of the game I asked her to talk to the owner.

This could be a long drawn out story but in a nutshell it has 3 inches of water rot/swell at the bottom, it was a black painted Atari cabinet conversion and the owner said he "ain't even gonna plug it in unless you're serious and have cash on you." Also "I want $250 for it and I ain't interested in bargaining."

Needless to say, we passed. A few months later my wife is out again and notices that damn thing is getting rained on - no one in their right mind would possibly be still asking $250 for this thing at this point right? I tell her to offer $50. The guy gives her the same answer only now he adds - and I quote - "I'd sooner see it rot out here than take less than $250 for it."

I know we've all run into this attitude before but honestly - who are you really hurting here? By this time I was only looking at a possible working boardset if I was lucky and anything past that would be bonus. Instead of having someone pay him $50 to haul off a hulk just this side of garbage he waited around until a year or two later when I drove by and noticed it had fallen apart in the weather. You just can't fix stupid. I guess when your idea of "antique" is China-made "sculptures" from the late 1980's and 1990's and items clearly from the clearance rack at Wal-Mart, you cannot be faulted for being a moron.
 
The first machine I saved...

When I was stationed in Japan near Yokohama area (2006-2010 time frame). I had gotten into this hobby, and wanted a arcade machine of my own. Of course in Japan American style machines are rare unless you're on base. So anyhow with some connects, I was linked up to a big time Japanese distributor that had basically an amusement graveyard. Here the machines that operators have pushed out of their facility to accommodate for the newest latest and greatest, lie in hopes of a new home, or being parted out at best. If not they are recycled and possibly reincarnated as a new machine.

Through two trains, and a taxi, I met up with the owners of this huge warehouse where the electronic corpses lie in filth and elements of the outside weather and rodents. I had gotten luck to get some almost to be parted out machines that were the best out of the whole place. I was destined to get one of these bad boys as my first for the collection.
I have to say, I've been lucky with all 3 of my machines.

Image176.jpg

It was kind of creepy at first. It was in a old warehouse/garage type place. HUGE! Had a few carnival rides and other amusement machines laying around. There must have been at least 1 of every type of candy cab there, some were in bad conditions, some were fine looking. Most were gutted out rotted messes.
Image175.jpg


Not sure how much stuff still worked out of the bunch, but I did find a couple of Blast Cities sitting off to the side that they prepped for me to look at. I ended up with the one closest to the right. (It was the type of cabinet I was on the search for and I got it!)
Image177.jpg


They were both running Capcom vs SNK in attraction mode so I could see what I was geting. Right away I checked for screen burn and found the one on the left had a burn screen, but the rest of the cab seemed in good shape. The one on the right had a very very faint burn that you could only see when the screen turned totally white. The cab was in good shape as well, but one side seemed scuffed up. I still chose it anyways because it had a better monitor and the damaged side art added character and history to the cab.

They told me they would do a whole cleaning and inspection of the insides to make sure everything was good to go. That is how they operate over there, they try to keep and sell things no matter how old pristine as possible. A week later they delivered it, set it up, and made sure that everything still worked. Something you don't really find here.

Then:
Image184.jpg


Now:
DSC01798.jpg
 
i remember passing by a Pole Position sitting out in front of a house near the road on one of the Indian reservations while on a trip to the Olympic National Park years ago. i didn't stop by (at the time no space and already a couple of non-working cabinets i'd been hauling around from home to home,) though now i wish i'd at least checked it out. looked like by then it had already gotten rained on though, which was another reason not to bother.
 
In 1996, while living in Grover Beach, CA I noticed a Super Zaxxon dedicated cabinet sitting outside next to someone's garage. I drove by it for a week then finally approached the resident of the house. They told me it was their roommates who moved out and just left it. I asked if I could take it, they said sure.... score. Well, sort of....

It was complete, but missing the monitor bezel. Side art was fully intact but the cabinet had absorbed a bunch of water and was swollen up pretty bad. I did what i could to salvage all the parts, even consider peeling off the side art since it was complete. Board tested fine too.... Cabinet ended up getting the skilsaw but at least it didn't die a slow death.
 
In 1996, while living in Grover Beach, CA I noticed a Super Zaxxon dedicated cabinet sitting outside next to someone's garage. I drove by it for a week then finally approached the resident of the house. They told me it was their roommates who moved out and just left it. I asked if I could take it, they said sure.... score. Well, sort of....

It was complete, but missing the monitor bezel. Side art was fully intact but the cabinet had absorbed a bunch of water and was swollen up pretty bad. I did what i could to salvage all the parts, even consider peeling off the side art since it was complete. Board tested fine too.... Cabinet ended up getting the skilsaw but at least it didn't die a slow death.

Damn, you lived in Grover? Wasn't it Grover City back then? I got my semi waterlogged Defender project from a theatre up the road from the beach.
 
A couple years back, I was on the way to the shooting range with my wife wen I drove past a house out in the country that had a Video Poker Machine and Final Fight outside. Got em for $50 total. I got them home and the Video Poker fired up but the monitor was jacked beyond belief (but I could see the PCB running through a little line of video on the monitor. Ebayed both PCBs. Everything else was junk. I got $110 for the working poker PCB and $65 for the untested Final Fight (board was very clean).
 
I saw a Space Invaders sitting outside an old warehouse once when i was working. I went back a few times and it was always out there but the whole place was closed up and fenced in. They finally cleaned the place out, by the time I saw anyone over there it was already gone.
 
Back
Top Bottom