Last New Game of 2011 – Asteroids

On my last work day of the year, I came across a Craigslist ad for an Asteroids cocktail. I made arrangements to go see it after work. The game did not work, but was in great shape so I had to pick it up. I really like the game Asteroids but never had the chance to buy one until now. I purchased this from an Engineer that planned to fix it up himself but it ended up just being in the way. Classic arcade games are great but unless you have the space and the time to work on them, they can be tough to restore.

The really cool thing about this cabinet it that it fit right into the back of my RAV4 without even having to lower the back seats. The car was made to carry cocktail cabinets! This is only my third cocktail I’ve ever owned, and the first that I planned to keep.

Fits perfectly in the back of the car!

Once I got the game home I was able to mess around with it trying to figure out what was wrong. The first thing to do when getting a new game is to open it up and make sure everything is connected and there are no visible signs of problems. If there are some bad connections or other problems, you could end up causing more harm just testing it with power. Everything looked OK so I powered it up. Nothing. I then reseated all of the connectors on the wiring harness. This time I got full sound. It looks like the game works, but plays blind! That’s great news because that means I can focus all of my time on the monitor. This game uses a Vector monitor, which displays lines instead of pixel graphics. It’s the second vector game I’ve owned and I hope it’s easy enough to get working.

It’s pretty clean inside. Just some 30 year old dust.

After checking out the monitor I found a blown fuse. I tried another but it blew immediately. I researched online and the symptoms point to a bad transistor in the monitor. Since I generally install cap kits to any new game I get, I went ahead and ordered a cap kit with new transistors from Bob Roberts. I also ordered new buttons, an Asteroids PCB cap kit, and a power supply rebuild kit. These should help me bring this game back from the dead! More to come later after I start installing the new parts. There are also more pictures available on my Asteroids Cocktail photo page.