Tron's Legacy.

As the end of the year rapidly approaches, and as we find ourselves inundated with the onslaught of red and green stuff in stores, and as the angry Winter storms line up on the horizon to take turns reminding us that it's too late to rattle-can coin doors in the back yard, and as a little movie by Disney that is the sequel to another little movie you may or may not have heard of is about to hit the theaters, it's time to think about a little word called legacy.

I look back at the past year and wonder where it went and what I have to show for it arcade-wise. Did I spend it wisely ? Did I pad my own arcade-legacy ? Do I even have one ? Will I ever have one ? Do you have one ? Does anyone even care ? I did manage to buy and repair more games and circuit boards and monitor chassis than I can dare to remember. Fought the good fight against parting out games. Met some new collectors and old collectors and probably made a few new enemies as well. The work of an arcade preservationist is never done.

And what about the legacies of those we lost ? Halfway through this past year, I said my goodbyes to my faithful furry companion of nearly 12 years. He was always there waiting for my return and watching me work on the games I would bring home, waiting patiently for me to finish and then take him for a run. Can a dog have a legacy ? Even if it only matters to one person ? I say sure, why not. He probably did more to make me a better person than most humans ever will. A dog will keep you honest. You just can't lie to your dog. He knows exactly how you feel at every second of every day. You know exactly how he feels of every second of every day. I guess we are even in that regard. But dogs have us in spades when it comes to love and forgiveness and loyalty. That is every dog's legacy. Loyalty is a quality that is lost on a lot of arcade game owners ( I hate referring to the owners that part out and smash games as collectors). I just could never understand how someone can turn on one of their games so quickly and strip it down and sell off the parts. I think you can tell a lot about a person by how he treats his dog or his arcade games.


And what about the legacy that most of us are currently concerned with, the movie Tron Legacy. Will it have any kind of lasting effect on the hobby of arcade game collecting ? Will it inspire a new generation of collectors ? Will it appeal to the general populace ? Or just the quarter and card-carrying nerds that loved the original Tron. It would be a shame if the effort Disney has put into this movie is wasted. Wouldn't it be great if just like the suit at Disney that woke up one day and thought about bringing Tron back and making a sequel, the hack game owners could watch the movie and wake up and want to bring back arcade games ?


One can only hope that the memories brought back by seeing Tron and Flynn's arcade on the big screen again will transcend greed and easy money and motivate these arcade game owners to stop the madness. It would be as though a spell that had been cast over these lost souls is suddenly broken. They look down at the sledge hammer in their hand and then at the game that was about to get vaporized and would wonder what had come over them. Maybe the movie will create a higher demand for classic arcade games in complete and working condition and in turn cause the market value of the games to increase. This would make it a lot less lucrative to sell the machines in pieces. Can one movie do all that ? Never underestimate the power of a little Disney magic. This could be and should be Tron's legacy.

Travels, Tribulations, and Triumphs.

It's been far too long since I have been able to find the time to come on here and spell out the gory details of my latest arcade related finds, repairs and adventures. The good news is, while I may have neglected my blog, I have not neglected my mission to save and restore games. So without boring everyone to death too much, I figured I would do a little "cheat sheet" version and fill you in on my arcade travels, tribulations, and triumphs over the past few months.

Since we last met, I have stood in just about every major city on the West Coast. I picked up games in the Seattle, Sacramento and San Francisco areas ( Boot Hill, Super Hang On and Atari Video Pinball ) and dropped off games in Norcal and Socal ( Tron and Warrior ). A quick thanks to all of those involved in those deals and there will be more on that later. I also dropped in on my tech, mentor and (most importantly) my friend Tom who is recovering from a potentially life saving surgery. Get well soon Tom.

I met up with some collector friends and some old friends along the way, met an operator and checked out his warehouse, and took in some sights too. Winchester Mystery House, Disneyland, Seattle Space Needle and the Hollywood "Walk of Fame" were nice breaks in between long sessions at the wheel and showed that you can mix arcade business with pleasure.

While back at the fort it was business as usual. My Gravitar is almost ready for prime time, a couple more Amplifone HV boards have had their death sentences commuted and are now fully functioning members of society, and 2 games belonging to other arcade enthusiasts have been revived. A Star Wars arcade that sat idle for 17 years has been ressurected after I rebuilt the WG K6100 in it and a Crystal Castles is back amongst the living. A Centipede cocktail table was restored and now has a new home. It's honestly just as satisfying fixing a game for someone else as it is fixing my own. Sometimes it's even better.

So there it is. My summer of arcade love all wrapped up in one neat little post. Nothing like an old-school-arcade-infested walkabout to cleanse the toxins left behind by 5 day work weeks and everyday obligations.

Tempest : Act III

After buying and selling a few Tempests over the years and then regretting it every time, I know that this machine will never escape my clutches. With that in mind, I decided to go one step further with this Tempest in the way of a monitor transplant. This machine is certainly clean enough and being an early artwork model I deemed it worthy enough to be fitted with an Amplifone . I hauled the game into the laboratory to get a little "Mad Scientist" on it one last time.

I removed the WG K6100 and began putting the Amplifone pieces in place. The Amplifone high voltage board was rebuilt and upgraded as was the deflection board. This high voltage board was missing the brightness/focus assembly so I "borrowed" an assembly from an Electrohome G07 chassis. I was in uncharted waters with this focus assembly and would have to just hope for the best.

I had to disable the pin cushion correction circuit on the motherboard so the picture would look right on the screen. After following the steps outlined on the link at Ionpool.net the game was ready for a test. I powered on the game and everything worked like a charm, even the G07 focus assembly. The original mounting blocks give it a factory look and I am really happy with the outcome.








The elements that brought this machine into my possession and the state that it is in now were some of the most satisfying experiences I have known in this hobby. The road trip to get the machine, the rebuilding of the broken corner, being able to salvage the overlay, rebuilding the monitor and experimenting with the G07 focus assembly, getting the sound working and then installing the Amplifone have made this machine one of my favorite pieces.

The End.

"Add to Cart"

Don't you just wish it was that easy at times when looking for rare and obscure arcade games and parts ? I guess in some instances for a price it can be. But in doing so, you lose out on one of the most thrilling aspects of the hobby, that being "The Hunt". I have been on some crazy adventures over the past 15+ years. They have taken me from dark barns and warehouses and factories to airplane hangars and houses that reminded me of movie scenes that I really never care to be a part of. I can remember a road trip returning from Socal back in the day with a pickup truck bed so full of motherboards that I am sure some were left scattered along the highway like pieces of fruit from a tractor trailer on it's way to the cannery. We got pulled over on a lonely stretch of highway near San Luis Obispo just before midnight. I can only imagine what the officer was thinking seeing a load of motherboards under a tarp in a pickup truck. I am surprised he wasn't holding one in his hand that he had picked up along the road asking if it belonged to us.

You just never know where your next find might come from. If you put enough feelers out there you are liable to find a game almost anywhere. Empty houses, along the curb, a tractor trailer behind a house , the possibilities are endless. Endless to the point that when people ask me where I get all my games I really don't even know how to answer them. I prefer the vague approach and with a grin just say "Oh you know, here and there...".

One thing is for sure, when you find an obscure game it will be in an obscure place. That probably explains why no one else has found it. I remember back about 8 or 10 years ago meeting an old-timer along the side of the road in Lake Tahoe and sliding an I-Robot and Zaxxon from the back of his truck to the back of mine. I forget how I even found out he had the Zaxxon, but when I asked if he had anything else, he came back with "just some old game called I-Robot". He had rat-holed these games on his property on the edge of somewhere-next-to-the-middle-of-nowhere and decided it was time to get rid of them. Apparently he didn't think anyone would care about the I-Robot. Obscure games in obscure places is a strange phenomenon. Who would ever imagine finding a Vectorbeam Warrior and a Hercules pinball in a barn in rural Idaho ? Not me until I did.

I have spent many years chasing down games. Occasionally a game falls in your lap and that's ok, but I find it a lot more rewarding to go out and hunt them down. There have been many times where my imagination would run wild on my way to a storage unit or warehouse only to come up empty. It happens, either the games or the prices are just all wrong and it's back to the drawing board. Either that or pay the premium and go the "add to cart" route and buy things from fellow collectors and retailers. It's not the route to games and parts I have taken too often or that I am very familiar with. I prefer the route that leads me through rolling countrysides and down back roads and alleys and towns and places unknown. Leave a light on for me and don't wait up.

Tempest, Where Art Thou ?

After searching high and low, I finally found this Tempest in Reno as I have mentioned before. I decided to make a weekend out of it and after spending a couple nights in Reno doing a little relaxing and gambling, it was time to pick up the game and head for home. There is something to be said about a long road trip to pick up a game that you have been wanting for a long time. I think it adds another level of satisfaction to the purchase. It gives you some time to bond with the game too before you get it home and attack it with every tool in your garage in an attempt to save it.


"Triage"

This is an "early artwork" Tempest. Only the first couple of thousand Tempests came this way and so I really was hoping to be able to keep the side art and control panel overlay intact.

The hardest part about a game with this many problems is knowing where to start.This time I will lay out the exact order that I like to do things for those of you that could use a little direction in your lives. I always like to start at the bottom. I always check and make sure the game has solid leg levelers on it and replace them and the plates if needed. Make sure your game is on solid ground before anything else. The next stop is in the bottom of the game. Clean out any loose pieces rolling around in there. I make sure there are no foreign objects lodged on fuse holders or anywhere else they don't belong before plugging in the machine. I take everything out and sand the bottom with my finishing sander so it looks fresh and then vacuum it. Make sure the power cord looks solid and replace it if needed. When I plug in the machine, I make sure I am ready to test the +5 volts at the motherboard right away in case it's way too high so I can adjust it. I usually set the dip switch settings to free play prior to firing it up so I don't have to worry about if the coin door wiring is good or not. In this case, the monitor was missing so I was just checking to see if it played blind. I could hear the game but the volume was too low and could not be adjusted any louder.

The cabinet wasn't any better than the insides. The rear corner was busted up and the back of the game was cracked from a fall it took while being unloaded from a semi trailer at one time. Ouch ! The control panel overlay had a gash in it, the marquee was cracked ( note to the Atari employee that designed this style of marquee: I'M COMING FOR YOU !!! ), the coin door had holes in it from a lock bracket, and did I mention that the rear corner was busted up ? All in all, this game was a midsummer night's nightmare. I promised the previous owner that I would do everything I could to save this game. It was time to make good on that promise.


"The Road to Recovery"

Time to get this show on the road, the road to recovery that is. I dropped a deluxe rebuild kit from Bob Roberts into a dead WG K6100 that I had acquired for this machine and I now had a working monitor. Now I could actually see the game playing for the first time and everything looked good. I reseated all the socketed chips on the motherboard anyway to make sure they were solid. The volume was low so I suspected one of the audio amplifiers on the AR-II board, but which one ? I did a couple checks with my multimeter on them and then compared the results with another known good AR-II board. One of the audio amplifiers was metering differently so I changed it. Sure enough, I noticed one of the legs on it was broken as I removed it from the AR-II board. I put in a new one and now had Tempest at full volume. I went ahead and rebuilt the rest of the AR-II just to be safe. The game was now fully operational and working beautifully.

Looming ahead of me all this time was that broken rear corner and other pieces that were damaged in the fall. I also had to make an executive decision on the control panel gash and I ordered a reproduction marquee. I knew I was going to have to get all "Mad Scientist" on that rear corner at some point and see if I could fix it. It was time to unleash the weapons of mass reconstruction on this game and hope for the best.

Tempest is also the name of a play that some famous dude called William Shakespeare wrote. The play is about some people on a boat that gets hit by a gnarly storm and they end up on an island and a bunch of weird things happen, kinda like the tv show LOST. You would think he could have been a little more original. Personally, I think the play should have been about the arcade game. So without further ado, I bring you my version of Tempest. As our friend William Shakespeare once said, "Let every eye negotiate for itself, trust no agent".



Tempest, I found thee :


But thee is not looking too good. The corner is broken, and the rear panels are cracked and separated:


Ok, enough with the Shakespeare talk. Let's get down to business. Time to tackle this broken corner:

I started cutting around the wound and sanding it smooth:


A little bondo and it's ready for a patch:

I cut the patch out, shaped it and glued it:



After the glue dried I finished shaping it:


Some primer and paint :


No more separation anxiety :


The overlay has a gash in it:

I clamped on a straight edge and using a razor blade I cut it right above the damaged part :

I peeled off the lower damaged part and removed the adhesive:


I taped off the rest of the overlay with blue painters tape and then primed and painted the lower half of the panel black :

I swapped out the coin door with a nicer one and gave it a fresh coat of paint :

"Something wicked this way comes"



This is one I will savor for a long time. Until we meet again...

The End.

This Just In...

More unspeakable acts against arcade games were uncovered today in rural Idaho.

P.E.T.A , "People for the Ethical Treatment of Arcade games" received a tip that games were being housed in filthy living conditions inside an old dirt floor barn. Acting on this tip, P.E.T.A discovered several arcade games in poor health being housed inside the barn without heat or electricity. The roof had severe leaks that also contributed to the poor condition of the machines. P.E.T.A has also confirmed that one pinball and one jukebox were rescued from the site. The following pictures were taken by our Boise correspondents and we must warn you, they are graphic in nature:














Initial examinations of the machines have revealed that the deflection board was missing from the Omega Race and the main boards and 2 displays were missing from the Bally Strikes and Spares. We are hoping that some of these machines can be rehabilitated and saved. This post will be updated as information becomes available.

The Fugitive.

I finally have the game at the top of my "most wanted" list under lockdown. The capture went pretty smooth and the fugitive known as Tempest was taken in to custody without incident. I had been tracking this one for quite some time and caught up with it near "the biggest little city in the world", the seedy little place otherwise known as Reno, Nevada. The game was hiding out on the edge of town, just beyond the lights and sounds of the downtown casinos. This game had been passing some time away in a storage unit behind a house on some property. It was night as we moved in to get the first glimpse of where the game had been hiding for the past few years. As the coyotes howled, we rushed the building and found the game ready to surrender. As with most fugitives, I think being captured came as somewhat of a relief. The game will now be well cared for and brought back to its former glory. The game was extradited back to Idaho where it will be processed and admitted to my arcade to serve a life sentence without the possibility of being sold.

A fellow collector had harbored the game for the past several years, but as we all know, time passes and priorities change. He finally decided it was time for him to give up the Tempest. What made this an extra special capture was the fact that this appears to be an early artwork model. You can add this one to the list of games that I feel lucky to own. I can't wait to get started on the rehabilitation process. Stay tuned for more as this fugitive is prepared to be locked away in my arcade forever.


The first mug shot :

Notice the numbers next to the player 1 and 2 start buttons:

The rear corner will need some attention :

The game looks a little better after some clean up :



To be continued...