The Simpsons Restoration! My First Real Project!

Zoma

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Kyle, TX, Texas
When I was just a wee lad, my father would take me off into some of the roughest toughest bars in San Antonio, TX to play through The Simpsons arcade game. I have fond memories of the first time we got past the graveyard stage, the first time we got to the kabuki warrior boss and ended up running out of quarters, the time we finally ended up beating the game... and now, I finally own this beast!

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My personal moving crew posing with the two cabs we scored. $100 for the both of em, both had been sitting in storage for years and the owner's wife was fed up with his dreams of building a MAME machine. I was convinced that neither would work, but we were surprised to find...

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After popping in the Simpsons board I bought (first purchase from a KLOV member!) the cab popped right on! Wow! I can't even begin to express how excited we were. Our first step was getting artwork for the control panel and the marquee. After striking out at multiple places due to "copyright infringement" we found a local printing place that would print artwork for us.

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These are my quality testers. They approved this one, naturally.

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From the joysticks/buttons I'm suspicious that this thing was a TMNT cab in a previous life before being changed to the Skins Golf Game that it was when we picked it up. Of course, someone could've just swapped those sticks in so I can't say for sure. We weren't too happy with how the marquee's backlighting was working out. The owner had just put in a single lightbulb instead of a florescent light, so we went out of our way to find cheap florescent fixtures. Of course, pictures do it no justice, but it looks far far better now.
 
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I made the mistake of ordering only a single 3p/4p harness from a retailer thinking I would get a harness that plugged into both 3rd and 4th player. I learned my lesson. We hooked up Lisa because it was my little sister's birthday and she had mentioned she wanted to play as Lisa.

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Here's our finished control panel, minus joysticks. We made the mistake of applying t-molding before we applied the artwork. Oops! We also went with CONVEX buttons and Zippyy sticks. I am sure someone will be bitching about not using the original buttons, but I really like the way these things look... not to mention the price.

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The cab has been "completed"! No side art (yet) but I'm still looking for something affordable!

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A good closeup of the control panel. We used the original plexi from the Skins game with the old joysticks, so you can see the older holes where the joysticks' bolts once were.

UPDATE 8/21/12:

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Applying side-art made by RidicRick25. Though it came in 3 pieces, the actual cab turned out so beautifully I can't complain.

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The finished product. So sexy!

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This was my first project. We made a few really dumb mistakes that could've otherwise been avoided with a little more research, but in the end I am SUPER happy with how this project worked out. I'll probably end up updating this whenever I get the side art as well, but for now this thing is complete! In case anyone was wondering about the pricing and statistics of this particular cab...:

$50 Cabinet
$18 Yellow T-Molding
$55.60 Zippyy joysticks
$11.12 CONVEX competition pushbuttons
$35.03 Marquee
$32.48 Control Panel Artwork
$130.00 PCB
$10.02 New Locks
$61.80 3p/4p Harnesses (two shipping charges hurt, ouch.)
$131.74 Side art by RidicRick25

Grand Total: $550.19

Not bad for this cab, eh? :D
 
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love how you total'd up the costs.

Damn that's a cheap CPO!!

"WHY YOU LITTLE!!!!" - H.J.S
 
I saw that Tapp plastics will make custom cuts. Does anyone know if they have the measurements for any cpo's? I saw a video of how they do it. It's pretty cool. Everything is laser cut. Would sure save a lot of guys on this forum hassles of having to make new ones.
 
excellent job, i switched the trim on mine to yellow when i saw your reddit post. i noticed you left the black trim on very top horizontal part...or do you have a metal bar thing there? i had forgot about that part when i first did mine too
 
Nice job! That cabinet was a definite go-to when I was a kid. Never finished it but might have to force a buddy to do it with me this weekend.
 
Thanks everyone! I'm looking to finish up two or three more projects here in the next month or two and I'll probably post them all here. A lot of the cabs have been long, tedious processes.

excellent job, i switched the trim on mine to yellow when i saw your reddit post. i noticed you left the black trim on very top horizontal part...or do you have a metal bar thing there? i had forgot about that part when i first did mine too
Yeah, it's just the bar that keeps the marquee in, no trim unfortunately. That would be suuuuper cool to have a yellow bar instead though. I might consider spraypainting that sucker. Great suggestion!

Congrats... That game looks awesome.. You still from San Antonio??
Not in San Antonio anymore. My folks moved up to Austin when I hit middle school and I'm actually living in San Marcos nowadays. Still pretty close-by though.
 
Looking good! Gameongrafix does have the side art and that's where I got mine. It's not cheap, but I don't know of any other place that sells it. I was definitely happy with the results though.
 
Proud to say that after a very reasonably priced set of side art from RidicRick, we were able to complete the Simpsons cabinet! The only thing really left to get to finish this off are locks for the coin doors, replacement coin mech bulbs, and the plexi to cover the screen... But who cares about that stuff, the side art is done! Yahoo!

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Thanks again RidicRick! You rule.
 
Correct me if I am wrong, but the easiest way to tell a TMNT cab is by the single speaker port, right? Although I think The Main Event came in the same cab, but with a different cp.
 
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