December 2009 Finds

[InsaneDavid]

Really nice free find today, just finished hauling it upstairs.

Over the summer my girlfriend mentioned that there were a few arcade cabinets at the school she teaches at. On the way to California Extreme back in July we stopped by and I took a look at them. Basically they're Jakks Pacific TV Games joysticks built into half size replica arcade cabinets. Two are Galaga replicas and one is a Pac-Man replica. One of the Galaga cabinets was totally dead but the other two worked fairly well. I guess they've been there for a few years and were donated to the school for one of their media rooms. A couple months ago she mentioned that the other Galaga quit working and that the Pac-Man would periodically reset.

A few weeks ago I asked if anyone had fixed the cabinets and she said the school had asked a couple places and they were told it would cost more than it would be worth. I offered to take a look at the cabinets and repair them in exchange for taking one of the Galaga cabinets home. Everyone at the school jumped on the opportunity, the principal herself replying "He just wants one of them? He'll fix the others for free? He can have it!" They were all pretty enthusiastic about getting the other two machines repaired.

I was there for about four hours working on the machines. Each one has a Jakks Pacific TV Games plug and play gutted and mounted inside, with the inputs running to arcade controls. The Galaga cabinets feature Pole Position, Galaga, Mappy, Ms. Pac-Man, and Xevious. The Pac-Man cabinet has Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Pac & Pal, Pac-Man Plus, New Rally-X, Bosconian, Dig Dug, and Galaxian. The Galaga cabinets have the parts from the rotating joystick (for steering) mounted to a little spinner adjacent to the joystick. A 13" CRT TV with the back removed is mounted inside each, using the standard AV jacks. The TV's are securely fastened to a TV shelf that slides out for access to the game electronics.

The cabinet construction is arcade quality as are the controls. The TV audio has been relocated to a professionally mounted speaker above the display area, beneath the marquee, as is done on an actual cabinet. The marquees light and are vinyl sandwiched between two pieces of glass. The TV area is covered with a piece of smoked plexi and the controls are standard arcade fare. The joysticks are selectable between 4 and 8 way (a slider on the underside sets this) proving that if Jakks would spend a little more Xevious and Bosconian would have proper 8 way movement, the game can do it, it's a control blockade. The plug and play is hardwired to use the AC adapter. The plug and play AC adapter, TV power, and marquee light all plug into a power strip inside the cabinet which is then hardwired to a fused socket and switch on the back of the cabinet. From the outside a standard three prong PC power cable is used, keeping everything safe and secure. Official artwork is used on the sides, front, marquees and control panels.

Problems with the cabinets were mixed, covering blown fuses, loose grounds, broken connections, worn switches - pretty much the standard wear and tear. Figuring out the order things have to be taken out (remove back, disconnect speaker, loosen bracket and slide out smoked plexi, unscrew TV shelf, slide TV out, disconnect plug and play, etc.) took up most of the time as did testing things as I went along. Really these weren't designed to be worked on with how buried the control panels are. However I was able to get them all fixed and tuned up to 100% functionality. Then of course it was time for me to collect my cabinet as payment (and just get the sucker to fit in the back of a Camry).

So here she is, four hours of hybrid arcade repair for this...







And yes, I got this one working too, just needs a new fuse for the external power connection. They really are beautifully made, I couldn't make one nicer if I tried. With the graphics and T-molding, it really does look like an authentic Galaga cabinet, just half the size.

My plans for it? Well, after I haul it to my parent's house in a couple weeks to put it into storage (I REALLY don't have the space for it but it was now or never - notice how one of the pictures was taken from outside my apartment?) I eventually plan on turning it into a classic vertical MAME cabinet. Pretty much everything I need is already on the cabinet. I'm going to rework the control panel a little (remove the "spinner" which is useless for anything other than what it's being used for now) and cut a new monitor mount for a vertical PC monitor but that's about it. Wire up an encoder, wire the speaker to a little computer speaker amp and it's ready to go.

Needless to say, I'm pretty psyched to have this.