This weekend's pick-up: Bubble Bobble

larrylemming

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I've been looking for a Bubble Bobble cabinet for a while. When one popped up on CL on the Mason City CL, I jumped on it -- and ended up over-paying... I didn't pay full asking price, but the truck rental kinda hurt. But, what's done is done, and in the end I still got a game that I've been wanting.

When I went to pick up the cabinet, I mentioned how I thought Bubble Bobble was only sold as a conversion kit and that the cabinet reminded me of a Joust cabinet. Well... got it home, opened it up again to get a more thorough look, and found the Joust documentation packet, so yup, it's a Joust. Also found some pieces of the Joust board set still in the cabinet (sound board and power board?)

However, I'm not going to restore this one as a Joust -- I bought expressly because I wanted a Bubble Bobble.

Overall condition is a B-. The sides, and probably the back and front, were painted black at some point in time. I'm going to be stripping these to bare wood and re-painting it, probably a shade of medium blue, possibly integrating Bub and Bob into some kind of new side art. CPO is just a generic Romstar one, so I might design something a little nicer there too.

The conversion is a bit of a hack job, with the Bubble Bobble board running off of a switcher, while the original Williams PS is still sitting in the bottom of the cabinet. Wiring harness looks pretty bad, so I'll be fabricating a new one while I'm at it. Also, there are a few board issues to sort out (graphics glitches).

I was really hoping for something I could put straight to use, but hey. I'm still pretty happy about this one. Sellers were great guys too.
 

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Nice little pickup there. I'd like to see it once you get the blue on there.

The truck rental thing, I've been there. More then likely the truck rental is more then the game itself (which was in my case 3 times as much to rent the truck). If your going to stay in the arcade collecting world, I would recommend buying your own soon.

There's been many times that I've asked friends to drive me to a location to pick up a game. Easier to pay for gas and food then to rent a truck again. So I finally broke down and so did my car.. now I own a truck instead.
 
I think it's kinda odd that my post was deleted in this thread, very odd.......
 
I think it's kinda odd that my post was deleted in this thread, very odd.......

Doesn't even show up as a deleted post. Very odd indeed...

Anyway, as far as the truck goes, I've been looking at buying a truck for a while. Problem is it would need to get parked on the street, as I don't have enough off-street parking where I am right now. However, there is a dealer not too far from me selling cargo vans for $1500... very tempting....
 
Nice pickup indeed! BB is a rare title to have. I've weighed out the truck thing too- i add up the cost of how many truck rentals i'll do a year and i could have owned a truck for all the rentals ive done in the last 2 years. I've decided its time to put aside a small fund to buy a beater game truck. You can get those on craigslist for like $2500.
 
I think it's kinda odd that my post was deleted in this thread, very odd.......

There aren't any deleted posts in this thread, or I'd be able to see it. Most likely I would guess that something went wrong with your connection when you were sending it, or perhaps a crazy browser glitch.
 
I see a deleted post in this thread :confused:

There aren't any deleted posts in this thread, or I'd be able to see it. Most likely I would guess that something went wrong with your connection when you were sending it, or perhaps a crazy browser glitch.
 
A lot of Jousts met their demise as Bubble Bobbles. I have reconverted (deconverted?) 5 or 6 so far. All you needed to do to convert a Joust was drill 2 button holes, rewire the control panel, hack the wiring harness and you were good to go. In your case, they didn't even bother to scrape the paint off the bezel and paint it black.

ken
 
Nice find! Bubble Bobble is pretty rare to find in board-form alone, much less a full cab conversion. Good thing you got what you wanted. Hope you can find/repair those graphical glitches and get the cab in the shape you want. It's a pretty nice looking Joust cab overall.
 
A lot of Jousts met their demise as Bubble Bobbles. I have reconverted (deconverted?) 5 or 6 so far. All you needed to do to convert a Joust was drill 2 button holes, rewire the control panel, hack the wiring harness and you were good to go. In your case, they didn't even bother to scrape the paint off the bezel and paint it black.

ken

Actually, they did paint over the instructions on the bezel, but left the rest.
 
Nice pickup!

One of my fav games. Bubble Symphony is pretty awesome too.

I hope Taito does a 30th anniversary collection in 2016 that has the entire BB catalog. :D
 
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