Where did all the Defenders go?

Sorry if I missed it but many Defenders were purposely converted to such games as CLOAK & DAGGER. This might have been mentioned as well.

IMG_1781.jpg


11003501.jpg


11032001.jpg
 
Really, and I know it's sacrilegious, but it's a hell of a kit cabinet. The control panel can be replaced with simple wood, it's got a good layout, looks good, nice room for a kit sideart sticker, etc.

The kits never borrowed me, because without them they would have thrown most of those cabinets away since they weren't earning (or in Defender's case... WORKING) anymore.

Now the cabinets are still here, and just need deconverted. Good stuff.
 
said it before, will say it again ...

BEST arcade blog on the internet. great content, story, pacing, pics, etc.

please keep the content coming!

fakearcade.jpg
 
That was a good read. It also explains why I don't really see a bunch of these for sale.
I have a friend that wants me to keep on eye out for Defender for him.
He's a tile guy so I'm keen on making this happen for him. Can't wait to get rid of some carpet. :)
 
Really, and I know it's sacrilegious, but it's a hell of a kit cabinet. The control panel can be replaced with simple wood, it's got a good layout, looks good, nice room for a kit sideart sticker, etc.

The kits never borrowed me, because without them they would have thrown most of those cabinets away since they weren't earning (or in Defender's case... WORKING) anymore.

Now the cabinets are still here, and just need deconverted. Good stuff.

Defender was probably the most common cabinet to see conversions in before the Dynamo HS-series cabinets came along in the mid-1980s (Ikari Warriors [1986] being the first game to appear in one [HS-1] that I know of).

Defender is the quintessential classic arcade cabinet in my opinion.
 
If JROK would have come out 5 years earlier there would be a lot more alive just sayin..
Those boards....
 

Attachments

  • Pcb_repair_defender_17.JPG
    Pcb_repair_defender_17.JPG
    119 KB · Views: 51
I can remember the day I walked into our local Arcade here in our small Canadian town. I walked through the doors and went directly to where for years the Defender machine sat. When I got to the machine I dropped a quarter into the machine and put my hands on the control panel. WTF? The control panel looked weird, next I looked at the screen to see some game I had never seen, after that I can remember looking at the marquee. The Defender had been what I now know as being "Converted". I turned around without even hitting the start button and walked straight to the owner who was sitting at his counter handing out quarters.

I said Hey Gus what did you do to the Defender? He could see I was upset and he got very defensive and rudely snapped back that the game hadn't made money in a few years and added No one cares about Defender anymore. I can clearly remember thinking to myself, well I do!

I walked back to the Defender hit the start button and played the Defender now converted to: Double Dragon.

This was in 1989 or 1990., I guess I was actually lucky that for 10 years I was able to play my fav game, most Defenders were probably converted years before, Gus put it off as long as he could.

A few years later I was down town one day and I ran into the old Tech. that use to repair games in several of the local arcades. I told him that story and how I really miss playing Defender and never see them around anymore. I asked him that if he ever came across a Defender to let me know that I would like to purchase one. This was in 1993 and a week later I owned my 1st Arcade game, Defender!

I still love the game today and now understand better why Gus had to convert the Defender to a newer game. I watched as Gus slowly converted Kangaroo, UniWarS, Bubbles, Q*Bert, Frogger, Asteroids, and many others to new games.

Long live Defender....



I bought the Joust and Bubbles from Gus, he had converted the Joust to Bubble Bobble and the Bubbles to Wonder Boy, I always teased him that he should have converted Bubble Bobble into the Bubbles cab LOL
 
Defender is probably the most memorable game from my adolescence. It was as fun, but could never play it for more than one level... I've always wanted one, but I think that the cabinet is the ugliest I have ever seen...
 
Damnit. Just need one. Great article, again, Tony. Love the history.
 
This was in 1989 or 1990., I guess I was actually lucky that for 10 years I was able to play my fav game, most Defenders were probably converted years before, Gus put it off as long as he could.

With one exception, I never saw older games on location when I was a kid. The first arcade game I ever played was Pac-Man, in 1980 when it was new (I was only 5 years old). The next one I played was Donkey Kong, in 1981 when it was new, and then Q*bert, in 1982 when it was new. I didn't start playing arcade games regularly until 1984, starting with Karate Champ VS and then Punch-Out, both of which were released that year, and despite there being several places in my small town which had arcade machines, and occasionally going to Space Port at the Bangor Mall, I never saw any of the classics from the late '70s and early '80s anywhere.

The exception I mentioned was Pizza Hut in Bangor, Maine, which had the same Galaga cocktail machine for ages; into the early 1990s at least.
 
Thanks for the feedback gents - lots of cool stuff in the works for 2018 on the blog.

I guess there's a few things to come out of all this (which I really should add as a conclusion to the article).

1. With so much inventory out there, and a massively popular game which sold in huge numbers, just simple mathematics tells us that you are going to find a large number of those cabinets converted.

2. As someone pointed out above, if ops didn't convert some of these cabinets, their future would have been a lot less uncertain.

3. Most of the conversions can be reversed, and the advent of JROKs means it's easier than ever to de-convert Williams cabs.
 
Back
Top Bottom