List Your Arcade Collections Here

[Baloo]

It was a lot that belonged to the dad of a girl I went to university with. He had em all in storage since the 80s when the arcade he was a part of folded, and didn't want to see em all go the landfill so he saved his favorites. Unfortunately he couldn't afford the storage fees any longer, so I took them all off his hands for free. It cost me $550 to rent the 2 semi trailers to haul em all in

I tried opening up a retro arcade but it ended up failing due to poor demand, limited advertising, and location. I had to store the whole lot in a warehouse in the back of my friend's bookstore (free rent though) and he didn't want to run it while the bookstore was open. I sold and traded machines for the repairs and to pay for repainting and wiring up the warehouse to use as an arcade. With my limited income....it was a total failure since I couldn't get a decent location. Ended up selling the lot for 10K to someone on the newsgroups, they came and took it all away. It was a hell of an experience though...and every single machine in there got the hell played out of it!

From the sales.....I gave half to my friend's dad too. I ended up coming out a few grand ahead and I had a lot of fun...but I'd never buy a lot that big again!

As for the pins, one of those Mata Haris worked well, the other, not so much. Not pictured were also a Flash Gordon, a Bally Playboy, a Bally Kiss, the Spy Hunter I bought (fully shopped for $500) and the Joust

On top of that, the guy that fixed my machines lent me a High Speed, a Pinbot, and a Bride of Pinbot to use as well. He lent me a few other machines too....Aliens, Carrier Airwing, etc, as well as a couple of pool tables. I wish I'd thought to take better pictures back then but there were a few other swank machines in there, like a working Phoenix, a Gunsmoke, and a few others I can't remember off the top of my head, as well as a couple of non-working EMs, a dead 2 player Super Sprint, and a handful of other goodies.

Wow, that really is an awesome story dude! How long was your arcade open for? Love the pics too, that's a really nice selection of great games!

Wow man, good story!

A handful of us out here have been thinking about opening a place with an arcade and pinball row, maybe 20 machines. Other ideas bouncing around to be included in the space, but man is the risk high but the location could be incredible due to the foot traffic it receives. Just don't know, times are so flaky and a few of the arcade spots here have closed up their extra locations or relocated to high traffic spots. If they had the pockets to research the market then it may not be a good idea to attempt near their old turf.

Seeing as I'm quoting a post from 5 months ago, did you guys ever try anything to run an arcade?

I'm on my way to obtaining my first arcade machine, a Tempest that's been sitting in the attic of my church for 20+ years now, hopefully in a few weeks I'll have it moved out and into my house, then I'll take pictures and post them in here

[InsaneDavid]

This thread reminds me that I need to take some more recent pictures of my few games as well as update the information pages at my website.

My issue is I don't have any space but that's the issue no matter the size of your location in this hobby. Really though, I'm pushing it for the size of my apartment / all the other furniture in here. That was supposed to be resolved at the beginning of the summer with a move planned but that fell through, however to be honest that was probably for the best.

I'll go chronically since, again, I don't have a ton of machines. List first then some pictures.

Pole Position (upright) (few salvageable parts sold, MAME'd then decommissioned)
Galaxian (cocktail)
Klax (cabaret)
Mini Galaga MAME (custom)
Tetris (board only)
Sly Spy (board only)

Pole Position upright was purchased for $50.00 and was a smoldering pile of shit, like, literally. The guy I bought it from thought it a good idea to take the back door off and put it in his garage right next to his cat's litter box. It ended up taking a completely thrashed (internally) machine and making it worse. Controls, coin door, glass work, and cabinet (aside from the stench which Atari cabs love to soak up) were all in good shape but almost everything else was totally rotted. Scrapped the monitor and anything else that was headed for the trash. Some parts including the damaged PCB's were sold to people to help them restore their machines. Entire cabinet was gutted and scrubbed down, sanded, scrubbed down, painted - essentially restored. The vinyl on the sides was in decent shape so it was left alone but I removed the bottom inch or so due to peeling. Over the course of a couple months I converted it to MAME without doing any external modifications. I kept it tight and cheap, using a mouse for all control inputs (steering, shift hi, accelerator on/off) and a little keyboard hack for the coin mech.



The one thing I kick myself for not doing was keeping a detailed measurement set or template for this...



Yeah, I made an entirely new monitor shroud for the original monitor size and never documented it. Sorry PP owners of the world! The cabinet was a lot of fun but after a couple years of playing a simulated Pole Position (as well as PPII, Indy Heat, Championship Sprint, etc.) I started to desire the pain in the ass task of keeping up with an original machine. That and the cabinet is bulky as all get out. So I stripped it once again, put the control surfaces in storage and the glass is hanging on the wall. Anyone want a COMPLETELY empty Pole Position cabinet for free? It's in the central valley and I'll be down there in October to help load it. Seriously.

Galaxian cocktail table was purchased off the show floor at California Extreme 2008 for $500.00 - yeah, retail price. I don't know what it was but I HAD to have it. It's serial number 0367 and has the early version board with the more difficult gameplay. The invaders shoot in front of them rather than dropping shots behind, effectively leading their target (you). I've done a little work to the machine here and there, removing the security brackets on the coin door, replacing the player 2 control lever, little things. Too bad no one makes a correctly colored reproduction Galaxian cocktail overlay.

I should also mention that if you want to get technical the machine cost me nothing. I sold my mint set of English translated Sailor Moon manga books on eBay to purchase the machine, the entire machine. They sold in a few hours for a Buy It Now. Those same books are on their way to becoming essentially worthless with the manga having a more accurate English re-translation and reprinting that begins this Tuesday (9/13/2011).



Klax cabaret was a grail of mine I was after for a long, long, long time. On the seventh or eighth attempt at purchasing a Klax cabaret machine I finally made the connection and got this one for $225.00 delivered. Pretty damn clean inside and out with the exception of the usual wear from play. The control panel has some cigarette burns and the typical Klax purple to brown fading. Reminds me I was supposed to contact Rich at This Old Game about doing a reproduction of the cabaret panels. The only thing I dread about this machine is the day I have to work on the monitor since I don't see how you'd discharge the monitor before getting it out due to the shape of the cabinet.

A little while later I bought a Tetris board since their control panel layouts are identical. Last month I built a JAMMA extender and now have both boards mounted in the cabinet, swappable through the coin door via a connector swap.



And my pride, a Galaga mini MAME cabinet. Custom cabinet based upon the full size original, roughly 3/5ths full size. I didn't build the cabinet but was awarded it as part of a repair contract. It was running a little plug and play joystick with a TV but I pulled that stuff out and made it into a classic vertical orientation MAME cabinet. It's in storage with my parents and damn I'd love to have it here. That should show how tight space is.



Marquee and bezel rework were done by me.



It actually plays really comfortable if you sit at it, almost like a cocktail table upright.



As for Sly Spy I don't have a cabinet to play it in but the board was a really good deal and I have a marquee and bezel for it as well.

[flywheels]

Just picked up a new shoot 'em up PCB today - Thunder Dragon. I was contemplating selling my Raiden Fighters 2 cabinet since I'm having to move my "man cave" to a smaller room, but I figured I'd keep it since it was a wedding gift from my wife. Was bored w/ Raiden Fighters (thanks to the Xbox 360) so I searched out a new PCB. This is the first board I've bought so I'm hoping it really is as easy as plug and play.

[Dr. Morbis]

I guess it's time to update my list again; with the recent addition of a dedicated Bank Panic, I'm now sitting at eleven cabs. They are:

-Lunar Lander
-Frogger
-Kickman
-Ms. Pac-Man
-PlayChoice-10 (Dual Monitor)
-Bank Panic
-Bubble Bobble
-Tetris (Cocktail)
-Anteater
-Zoo Keeper (project - not working)
-and a Neo 29 Candy Cab operating as a covert MAME

[Flack]

That's a nice collection of classics, man! My friend has a working Zoo Keeper and a non-working Tetris. You guys should swap war stories, hah.

[RetroGaming Roundup]

Thanks to the topic of our October show I finally got around to posting a walkthrough of my arcade -Scott


http://www.retrogamingroundup.com/vi...alkthrough.htm

[cyberfluxor]

Seeing as I'm quoting a post from 5 months ago, did you guys ever try anything to run an arcade?

Replying to this nearly 3 years later!

The discussion is still kicked around every few months, more like a thought exercise than anything else. We will point out where some empty store fronts are, work out what the rates would be, then imagine what it takes to cover the minimum overhead. Not to say it's impossible because there are successful venues around here. I do not see it happening, not unless somebody won the lotto and did not mind dumping some of that money into a gaming facility.

A few months ago I sold off a large stock pile of PCBs and artwork/marquees to one person who likely just resell a majority of it, but that's fine because he's better at tracking down the people who need those items to complete restoration work. Here is my current breakdown of machines:

Sold:
Fighting Vipers
Police Trainer
Mata Hari (SS pinball)

In the past year pick-ups:
pair of Time Crisis II
pair of Time Crisis III
two Space Invaders Deluxe
Super Buster Bros.
Centipede
Night Moves (cocktail pinball)
Code One Dispatch

Owned a good while now:
pair of Cruis'n Exotica
X-Men (4-player)
Arkanoid
AmeriDarts
Rygar (in an old Williams cocktail)
Pac-Man (original cocktail, replaced with an early multi-Pac board)
Robotron: 2084
Neo-Geo (red 2-slot)

The Code One Dispatch needs to do something, bought at auction cheap just for the monitor and discovered the Konami Viper board was bad. I tried flashing new chips for the board but did not do the trick. Trying to stay clear of auctions and sellers, I tend to stumble across warehouses of stuff too often.

[celerystalker]

Never did post my stuff here. I have:

Dedicated cabinets:
Popeye
Centipede cabaret
Time Soldiers
Sunset Riders (4-player)
Neo Geo 1 slot that was set up as a dedicated Metal Slug

PCBs and MVS carts:
US Championship V'ball (US and Japan versions)
WWF Wrestlefest
Devastators
Ninja Baseball Bat Man
Metal Slug
Windjammers
Super Sidekicks 2
Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad
161-in-1 multicart (didn't want to re-purchase my AES collection for MVS)

Sunset Riders gets a TON of play with parties and kids. Centipede my brother and I like to play poorly for points, although Ibought it at my wife's request. Windjammers always goes over big, and Time Soldiers just is a personal favorite. I'm trying to find the same kind of wire harness disconnects as the ones already in my Sunset Riders to make it easier to convert from the Konami kick harnesses to the standard used in Wrestlefest, Ninja Baseball Bat Man, and US Championship V'ball when I'm in the mood for some 4-player. Right now I play them as 2 player in the cab or on my supergun I built.