Finally Found One!

This past weekend, I received a call from a friend of mine who was “talking to some guy that said he had a couple arcade games he wanted to get rid of…” I’ve heard that kind of story before, so I was cautiously optimistic.

“One of the games is called ‘Tron something, or something…tron”. WHAT?

That immediately got me thinking that it could only be two games (if I was lucky)…Tron or Robotron. Both were games I really wanted to add to my collection. Years ago I had a Tron, but sold it because I needed the money for a small bulk buy. It was the only game I had in the past that I regretted selling. The coolest cabinet by far of any of my favorite games!

So I made a trip to meet the guy who had the games. He happened to be a local man I knew, but had no idea he had a couple games. He confirmed that he had two games he wanted to get rid of…a Tron upright and a ‘Moon Lander’ cocktail. He was about to “put them out on the curb for the trash haulers”. Seems his house got hit with a major power surge, wiping out both games. I couldn’t contain my excitement at getting another Tron. Never heard of Moon Lander. I thought maybe it was either a Moon Patrol or more likely Lunar Lander. LL didn’t have a cocktail from what I could tell, but Moon Patrol did. After a quick KLOV search, I found Taito released a cocktail cabinet for a game called Moon Lander. No flyer at arcadeflyers.com, and no MAME rom or emulation for it. Must be pretty rare.

The price was right, so I set out to pick them up. Grabbed a poor friend to help me haul them out of his basement. Man, I forgot how heavy these Midway cabinets were! Ended up getting both of the cabinets into my van:

After unloading, I had a chance to really check them out. They are both not working (of course). I was disappointed to find out that it wasn’t going to be as easy as replacing fuses. However, both PCB’s looked good, and the monitors seemed to work. From what I can tell the Tron had a bad power supply, and not sure yet on the Moon Lander. There is some cabinet work required for both. Seems the preferred method to get the locks open was to tear apart the particle board. Also, there is significant corrosion from the battery on the Tron power supply that was still soldered on. I ripped it off, but will need to clean it thoroughly to see if I can get a Bob Roberts repair kit to fix it. The artwork on the Tron is good except the side art. Will have to call Phoenix Arcade to get a set. The paint is peeling off the glass top of the Moon Lander, but I am not going to mess with fixing it. I plan to sell that game as soon as I get it running and fix up a couple cabinet issues. If you’re a “bronze age” collector and want this rare find, let me know!

I’ll have more info later as I dig into the games and further troubleshoot them.

Tron:

Moon Lander: