Worst arcade game/component designs...

Yeah... Here's an easy few...

Gold plated sockets that contact the tiny SIDES of the pins of the chip. Commonly found on Galaga boards. TI was one maker of this crap.

Silver plated steel pins on chips. Commonly found on Galaga, Pac Man, Galaxian, and other boards of that era. Not just related to PROMs but also found on TI 74xx logic chips too.

Ceramic substrates with soldered on pins in SIP format. If they bend in the slightest the pins and solder pads pop off and break contact. Commonly found as resistor packs on Pac Man, Super Pac Man, Ms Pac Man, and Galaga.

Leaking capacitors that eat traces. VERY well known for killing audio hybrid chips on many different Konami games including Simpson's Bowling, X-Men, Lethal Enforcers, and MANY others. Also found in early to mid 90s Ford airbag computers. I documented repairs on the Ford airbag computers found in the Mazda Miatas on the miata.net forums.

Solder plated edge connectors for power and/or pulling power at levels approaching the margins on edge connectors. Commonly results in burning traces and bent (from heat damage) pins on the edge connector. Atari and Midway/Namco were big culprits here.

Crappy capacitors that dry out or just simply stop working. SNK used them on many thousands of Neo Geo boards. Intel, Asus, and other manufacturers also got caught up in using those caps on PC motherboards... not to mention the thousands of TVs, monitors, and other devices with those inside.

RJ
 
i was just getting ready to say, anything with batteries attached to it.
 
Some of the high score batteries used on older Nintendo games like Mario Bros. (1983)
CMOS batteries used on most Neo Geo MVS systems.

Oh and the dozens of boards used in Sega games like the Model 1 and 2 games. I just ripped out a boardset for Virtua Fighter to do some testing at home. It has 2 audio boards and a small mixer board. A large steel case enclosure that houses one I/O board, 2 CPU boards, and 1 Rom Board..............not including the filter board........that's just a Model 1 system. Model 2 systems like that are Daytona, which has an equal number of boards except for the force feedback board.........

My Virtual On boardset is technically smaller in comparison, 1 CPU board, 1 Communications Board, 1 ROM board, Power AMP, and Lowpass Amp.
 
MCR board stacks with those horrible interconnects.

Baby Pac-Man is like the trifecta of crap - batteries on one board, bad tin plated connectors on all boards, multiple boards with a complicated wiring interconnects, etc...

Pole Position also wins in several categories - power connector edge fingers that can't handle the current, tin plated to boot. Battery that leaks and destroys the board. Bad power distribution on the board, so even when you do have good power to the board, you can get a fair voltage drop from one end of the board to the other.

Galaga has those horrible sockets and corroding custom chips, and those resistor packs that break if you look at them wrong.

Battlezone.

-Ian
 
My personal pet peeve right now is the square bases on my Nintendo cabs. Both have two sides falling apart opposite sides on each machine. One is front and back other is left and right. I'm just waitin for them to fall over and bust monitors. I may just remove them until I can replace them later this year. :|
 
Lets not forget particle board and mdf ... they should have made all cabinets from plywood.
 
TI and their gold plated legs on EPROMs. I can't remember the last time I pulled a Stargate ROM set and didn't break at least 3 legs off.

4116 RAMs that run so hot that you can burn your fingerprints off.

Anything with AA battery holders on the boards.

Atari for putting their power switches on the lower back corners where it is virtually impossible to reach without pulling the game out away from the wall.

Laser disk games. Horribly vibration prone.

ken
 
- Konami audio board with leaky caps (Ex. X-Men). Luckily, there are guys that can now fix them with a cap kit if done early enough.

- CPS2/CPS3 Suicide Battery.

- Nintendo Vs. Daughter Cards. Could they have chosen something more difficult to swap in and out? You almost need to take a mallet to it to get it seated correctly.
 
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Sega Daytona USA cockpit.

Ever try and work on one of those, or move it on anything but flat floor?
 
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