Etsy Update

I updated my etsy store with some new items and made a new banner for it. Check it!

My Etsy Store

Mortal Kombat 2 Restoration Project

Found this gem on craigslist a while ago. It's a Mortal Kombat 2 in an old Simpsons four player cabinet. The guy we got it from cleans out laundromats around the valley and sells the games. We spotted this online and jumped on it, because MK 2 is the best MK in my opinion. It also came with a bigger 25 inch screen. It was at the guy's home, in the back yard, in a shed. He has three little kids and were climbing all over this game. The thing was in rough shape. The kids basically used this as a jungle guy. I witnessed the kids using the joy sticks to pull themselves up onto the control surface. We figured we need to save this game from little kid hell abuse. So we got it back to the gallery and starting tearing it down, removing the control panel and inspecting it. This thing was in terrible shape. Totally neglected and had a large number of band aid repairs done to it. Had some half assed side graphics on it that were peeling off and taking the paint with it. All the buttons were sticky from who knows what and the joysticks were crunchy. Coin returns were stuck, dried soda all over them.

So first thing was take the side graphics off and give it a fresh coat of paint. It too a hell of a lot of goo-gone to get all the sticker residue off. next up were the coin mechs. We cleaned them all up and fished out all the pennies and other debris stuck inside. We also installed new locks. Next, we moved onto the control surface. We took it all apart, cleaned up all the buttons and moving parts which were corroded with soda and who knows what. Had to swap out a few microswitches, they were too far damaged from little kid abuse.

We repainted all the bolts flat black and cleaned off the overlay. This is by far the most fun we've had restoring a game. We brought this game back from the dead and is one of the most played games in the gallery! Check out the pics below!

Burger Mania!

I have taken my first step into a larger world of geekdom, by finding places around the valley that have arcade machines in them and going to check them out. I am a fan of Burger Time and heard a place in Deer Valley has an original Burger Time cabinet. The joint is called Burger Mania, so that in itself was reason enough to visit. I also read very conflicting / mixed reviews of the place on Yelp! so I had to see for myself. The place was kind of crappy. Had a huge menu, gyros, breakfast burritos, hot dogs, burgers, and it was all so so, it tasted like the frozen stuff you can get at the grocery store. The burger reminded me of burgers I used to have after little league games, pre-formed patties. Anyways, that's not the point, I wasn't expecting a fancy meal, that was just the icing on the cake. I wanted to check out Burger Time. To my surprise, they had like 7 other cabinets there, a real mini arcade. They had a couple shit sports games I wont mention cuz who cares about sports games. But they had a multi-cab, Carrier Wings, a Galaga cabaret ( had a fast chip in it which was disappointing) Burger Time, BAD DUDES! , and some random airplane game, looks like a Xevious clone. Which was in a cannibalized TRON cabinet *tear* So all the games were in various states of disrepair. Burger Time screen was fried, hard to see. Same deal with Galaga. Controls were funky all around. But can't hold that against them, they're trying to sell hot dogs, not maintain an arcade. So on with the pics. I took care to photograph all of BAD DUDES' artwork. I love games like that. They're like the B movie of the arcade world.






I love the artwork on Burger Time, check out the details!

BAD DUDES! Are you bad enough to save the President!?

Scramble Arcade Restoration

I recently picked up an arcade machine with the intentions of restoring it. I saw this baby on craigslist and felt bad for it. It's called SCRAMBLE made in 1981 by STERN. STERN makes pin ball machines and this is one of their forays into stand-up arcade machines. I am a sucker for yellow, so after seeing the side side art and bezel art, I had to have it.

Scramble is a side scrolling game. You are a space ship with forward shooting guns and bombs that you drop on enemy rockets, turrets, and fuel tanks. One unique feature of this game is that you have to replenish your fuel supply. You do this by bombing the fuel tanks on the ground with your. Scramble was re-vamped a couple years later and sold as Super Cobra. The only thing that changed was instead of a spaceship, you were a helicopter. But you were still in space?!?!?!

Here it is when I first saw it. Sitting in a guy's gigantic dirt lot full of old construction equipment and various crap as you can see. It's surrounded by junk. I love an underdog and this was definitely an underdog. It was located in Laveen, Arizona, somewhere I never knew existed and never cared to look into. But my friend and I drove out to check it out. The game was in neglected shape, but not too bad. It didn't work, lights came on, it had power, but monitor was dead, or something, that's not why I am buying it. My main focus was the side art and artwork on the bezel and marquee. They were in good enough shape to convince me to buy it.

The owner and I agreed on a price and I loaded it up.
Now the fun part begins, the clean up and inspection. This thing was dusty, full of spider webs and who knows what else. I took the back off and opened the coin door and let fly with my leaf blower! My driveway was a cloud as twenty years of dust. I spent a long time blowing crap out of this thing. Then I vacuumed all the rocks and stuff out of the inside.

Look at those sweet side graphics...I found some old toys and some wasp nests inside.


No Idea what this plug on the inside of the cabinet does...
The artwork on the marquee and bezel are what made me fall in love with this cabinet. Look at these crazy Heavy Metal esque graphics! I love it! Also, its yellow, you don't see too many of those.




The bezel is glass and the artwork is screen printed on the underside of it. Now this has been neglected for years so the paint is starting to chip off. But that's ok, I love the used, neglected look of these old games. Check out the paint that's fallen off...



Also, the joystick overlay is stainless steel! With a screen printed graphic right on top of it! So cool. Joystick overlays are usually just painted black. So this is a neat detail.
I will be working on this thing off and on. My plans are to repaint or replace all the rusted bolts and repaint the front. I like how the sides look but the front is nasty. Has a big splotch of red paint on it. I am going to give all the black metal bits a fresh coat of paint and clean up the outside of the coin door. After that, I will start to look at why it's not working.