I am pleased to announce that Jeff’s Classic Arcade made history this month as Site 31 of Lon McDonald’s Joust Tour. Lon travels around the country for business and to support his non-profit companies that he advises, and while he’s traveling he has an interesting quest. Lon is trying to “roll” the high scores on every public-accessible Joust machine he can find. Joust machines have a maximum score of 9,999,999 before they roll back to zero. Lon is attempting to score 10 Million on 50 machines around the country as he tours the US. He generally is trying to do these in public settings, but occasionally he’s rolling private machines. He has already been to several states, including Hawaii and Alaska.

Lon came by the arcade on a Saturday night right after attending the Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee. Upon his arrival we worked together to inspect the machine and adjust the controls to make them more sensitive. There is a fine line in sensitivity that is needed to perform at this level. After the controls were set, he proceeded to play a 10 million point game! He played for almost exactly five hours. I learned a ton of gameplay tips watching for so long. I’ve been able to hit one million several times but nothing much higher. Hopefully I can take some of the techniques I learned and finally “marathon” this game!


For more information on Lon’s Joust Tour, and to see where he’s been, check out the Lonnie McDonald Joust Tracker done by Patrick Scott Patterson. PSP has a great gaming site.

This month there have been some significant changes to the arcade collection. In preparation to Spring just around the corner, I’m making some space in the gameroom for a few new games. I sold a couple games and have one more for sale. Pole Position 2 and Crystal Castles have moved on to other collections. Rushing Heroes is still for sale if anyone is interested. I have a quick writeup of the conversion/restoration that I wrote last week. This game was a project that my son and I got to do together. It’s a great sports game that would be perfect for any sports fan’s gameroom. Please email me or contact me via the Craigslist post.

The other big change was the pinball trade for a World Cup Soccer ’94. It’s exciting to have a new pinball machine to get the hang of. The theme is great too!

One these games are all gone, I’ll be starting my D2K restoration project. Can’t wait! I might also pick up a second pinball machine to add a little variety to the pinball section. Until then it’s great to have a little more space to move around in. More to come!

We got a new game at Jeffsgames’ Arcade…World Cup Soccer ’94. This is a fantastic “DMD era” pinball from Bally/Williams. It was released to commemorate the World Cup Soccer Championship being played in the USA in 1994. The game has a ton of great modes and shots, and the energy is very high! The theme is great for our family. I coach soccer and my kids have all played at one point or another. We’ve had several soccer team parties at the gameroom in the past, and now we can’t wait for the next one.

I really wanted to get a newer, DMD game. I liked my Earthshaker but the rules were not quite as deep as the more modern pinball games. DMD stands for Dot Matrix Display, which is what all pinball machines had from the ’90s on. Solid State games first came out with LED displays for each of the scores. The DMD really adds to the gameplay by displaying animation and other clues to indicate what the current goals of the game are. This allows several different modes and challenges to be required depending on how the game progresses. I really love the animations in this game. My favorite is the goal-kick. The display animates the mascot kicking the ball, followed by the ball shooting out of the goal return shoot. Very neat effect that reminds me of the Catapult on Medieval Madness.

To get this game, I posted my Earthshaker up for trade on Pinside.com. I did a little research on what DMD games were of relatively equal value so I had an idea of the types of games I could get. I found a WCS94 listed up for sale on the same site and started negotiations with the owner. WCS94 was very highly rated and the theme fit, so I made the trade. This is one of those great trades for both parties, because he already had a Whirlwind, which is the other “disaster game” made by Williams at the time Earthshaker was developed. It was even designed by the same designer, Pat Lawler. They were meant to go together and would make a great pairing in a collection!

I plan to do a quick cleaning and replace the rubbers in the game to freshen it all up. I am also thinking about having some of the metal parts powder coated to really make this thing look cool! Eventually I’d love to get LED lighting to replace all the lamps. There are a ton of them so that’s a higher expense upgrade for later on.
Check out pictures of my game in my WCS94 Photo page

Here are a couple great informational links about WCS94:
Pinside.com WCS94 Page
Internet Pinball Machine Database WCS94 Page

I actually finished this machine several years ago, but reviewing my site I noticed I never talked about this on my site. I’m now listing this machine for sale on Craigslist and thought that it would be good to show some nice detail for any potential buyers. Also I didn’t want to lose my thoughts about this project. It was the first time my son and I worked together on a game restoration and I had a blast!
This story really falls into a Conversion story, since we didn’t actually restore an original machine, but we rescued a trashed cab and made a nice arcade game out of it. I picked this game up from a friend of mine who had to clean out a garage he was storing it in. It was a converted Joust that had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in it last. The cabinet was trashed. The control panel was hacked with three buttons per player, all the paint was chipped with rust underneath on the metal parts, and the wood around the bottom of the cabinet was split and had water damage. I never really had any serious intentions of restoring it back to a Joust. It would be too expensive and WAY too much work since I already had a nice Joust. I kept it around to maybe make a multigame or something out of it but never really did anything with it. Fast forward a couple years and I came across an NOS Rushing Heroes conversion kit on ebay. It looked like a cool game so I picked it up. I thought it would be a great project for me and my son to work on together. The cabinet was already wired for Jamma, and the control panel was already drilled and modified for the correct control scheme.
The first thing we had to do was strip the cabinet and repair the wood. We did a lot of sanding and bondo work to repair all the damage. The cabinet was very solid. I really love the design of Williams cabinets.

This thing was pretty beat!

The metal was pretty rough!

I had some great help with this one!

Sanded and ready to paint

That was one UGLY control panel!

After all the repair work was done, we added the new artwork and finished the game up. It really turned out nice! I also picked up a Run and Gun 2 PCB, which is the basketball game based no the same platform from Konami. I have both mounted inside the cabinet and can play either just by swapping the harness between games. The games are really fun to play but the best part of this whole thing was the time my son and I spent together building it. Hopefully we’ll have the opportunity to do this more and have more stories to share between us!

The control panel looks much better

Turned out great!

In the gameroom next to its long lost brother

For more details of the restoration process check out my Rushing Heroes photo page.
If you’re interested in purchasing this game, please check out my Craigslist Ad

If you’ve checked out my Links page before, you know there are a ton of great sites on the Internet related to Classic Arcade Collecting. One of my favorite sites over the past year is Gameroom Junkies. This site is run by a couple collectors in the Atlanta area. Their specialty is the Gameroom Junkies Podcast. The Gameroom Junkies Podcast is a great monthly show talking about not just all things arcade and pinball related, but also about cool touches you can make to your own gameroom. It has been running monthly over a year now. Each month they interview someone related to collecting, whether it be a collector or someone else important to the hobby. The latest episode, Number 15, contains an interview with yours truly! I had a great time talking to the guys and telling some of the stories that I’ve had from years of collecting.

Go to http://www.gameroomjunkies.com and check out all of the great content on their site. They have a section on entitled “Gameroom Showcases”, where they highlight different collectors’ gamerooms. There is also a newer feature to the site called “Minimalist Posters” where they’ve taken a minimalist art perspective on classic arcade and pinball titles.

Listen to Episode 15 of the podcast here.

Until now this website has been a blog about my classic arcade game collection. I’ve blogged quite a few stories of my arcade game restorations. One thing I haven’t talked about until now is my classic console collection. I actually started my video game collecting years ago before I owned a house big enough to hold arcade games. When my wife and I first got married, we lived in a small two bedroom apartment. During that time I got the collecting bug and started collecting old, classic consoles I played as a kid. I was active in collecting these consoles until I made the switch to working on arcade games. I had Atari systems, an Intellivision, and a few classic home computers. My real favorite from my childhood was the Colecovision. This system was released by Coleco to compete with the Atari 2600 and Intellivision in the early eighties. My best friend growing up had one, and we played it at his house all the time. It was known for specializing in excellent arcade game ports. I even bought a Mr. Do! cartridge hoping to get the console but never did. Collecting old consoles finally gave me a chance to have my own Colecovision!

Even the box for these is cool!

I built up a nice collection of cartridges for the Colecovision. I had most of the common games, all of the expansion modules, and several rare or hard to find games. I also had more than one console and several sets of controllers. Since it is winter right now, I can’t work on any of my arcade game restoration projects. It’s too cold in the garage! I’ve been working hard to reorganize my basement work area so this spring I can finish up a few of my projects. This is also where I keep all of my console collection. I’ve been spending some time going through my collection and playing some of the old games. It’s really been fun to spend time with each system remembering some of the great games they had available. I’ve really been playing the Colecovision quite a bit. However, the console and controllers were really showing their age. If I have all of this experience restoring arcade games, why couldn’t I do the same with these consoles? It would be much easier and I could make them look and work like new.

I have two Colecovision consoles. I took my “spare” console and tore it down into smaller pieces to clean each one. I removed all of the labeling, including the plastic plates on the front and top. I cleaned everything. I cleaned the console case with hot soapy water, and any small pieces in the ultrasonic cleaner I used to restore my pinball machine. I cleaned off all of the adhesive on the plates, and reapplied them using spray adhesive. I also reflowed the solder on the joystick connectors to prevent any cold solder joints, which are common on old electronics. The console cleaned up really well!

The board inside is pretty small.

I resoldered both of these.

I had to clean up the artwork and reapply it with spray adhesive

The controllers were much more difficult. I had nine controllers in my collection, so I set up a little production line to clean them all up. Several had disconnected controller wires. The design used crimp connectors to attach the wires to the controller board. Many of these connectors were loose or broken. I cut the broken connectors and soldered the wires directly to the controller board since I didn’t have any more of this style crimp connectors. I ultrasonic cleaned as many parts of the controllers as I could, and scrubbed the controller housings as best I could. A few of them even needed some magic eraser work to clean off all of the scuffs and markings. They came out great!

My controller restoration processing line

There is a lot to these little things

They turned out great!

I’m really happy with the final console. It looks great. I also plan to package a bundle and list it on my trades page. If anyone is interested in one, please let me know!

You can see more pictures of my Colecovision restoration on my Classic Console Collection Photo Page. My entire Colecovision cartridge listing, as well as my other classic console game listings, can be viewed on my page at VGCollect.com.

I completed a lot of restoration work on my Asteroids cocktail during my Christmas vacation. I had to order some parts because my cocktail needed quite a few items “rebuilt” to make sure they were working properly and ensure it would keep working for years to come. I also ordered some new buttons because the old ones looked terrible.
While I was waiting on the parts I ordered, I worked on some of the internals of the game. It was really clean, except the normal dust. That made this much easier! The first thing I noticed when I heard the game playing during testing was the sound was really weak. I’m more used to the sound of the Upright cabinet, which was really more dynamic. The bass on this one was horrible and tinny (is that a word?). The speaker installed in this cabinet was really tiny, and held on with nails through a vinyl frame. Not a great design. The hole pattern on the speaker cover was the same standard hole pattern used my most smaller speakers in arcade games, so I pulled out the old speaker and replaced it with a better one. I had a really nice, magnetically shielded speaker from an old television I used to own. This speaker sounds MUCH better and more in line with what the game should sound like. It was an amazing difference.

You can see the old speaker laying above. Big difference!

As with most Atari games, the volume control was a tiny potentiometer with no knob. I don’t know if Atari was cost cutting or if these were just easier to turn 30 years ago. Now it’s really hard to turn without a knob. Thankfully I bought a couple about a year ago when I was working on my Centipede, so I put my extra knob on this volume control. Looks great!

They should have shipped with these knobs

Perhaps the dirtiest part in this cabinet, besides the control buttons, was the AC power transformer assembly. These are in all classic Atari cabinets and they always seem to collect all the dirt. This one was in the best shape of any I’ve ever had. I usually have to disassemble them and repaint the main frame, but for this one I only had to clean it up. I ended up disassembling it to better clean it up. I love how these look when cleaned up!

Before…

After!

By the time I finished working on the inside of the cabinet, I received my rebuild parts. Since I knew the monitor was not working, I started there. I installed a new cap kit which also included new transistors. This was an easy kit to install. The monitor was not very complicated so the parts were easy to get to. Once I was done I replaced the bad fuses and fired it up. The fuses held and the picture came on! I was very excited that it was such and easy fix.

Nice new caps on the monitor

Picture looks great!

I knew the game board worked but I wanted to make sure I rebuilt the power board and even replaced some parts on the PCB. Bob Roberts sells cap kits for both boards. They were also easy to install and now everything works great. I can also feel confident that this will work for years to come!

AR board with new caps and transistors

Once I was done with all the board work I decided to do one more repair that is recommended for most Atari games from that era. I wired up secondary power lines directly to the PCB so the wiring harness edge connector wasn’t the only power connection point. Atari games have a history of overheating these connections as the connectors start to get dirty. By bypassing this connection the game will be much more reliable. I also replaced the entire edge connector on the wiring harness to ensure all of the contacts were like new. Lots of crimping but just like new!

I ran the lines from the back of the AR board to the PCB with connectors so the PCB can be removed in the future if necessary

Nice shiny connector!

Now that I have the game working perfectly, it’s time to start working on the look of the game. The game was in solid shape but dirty. The glass had several scratches in it and the paint under the glass was peeling. I will need to replace the glass and purchase a new underlay to get this looking new. That will be my next parts order. Arcadeshop.com has a nice reproducion underlay.
The metal legs and glass clips were dirty and rusted. I had a friend at work that has his own powder coating line, and he was able to powder coat them. They came out GREAT! I bought new leg levelers for the legs but the threads don’t seem to match properly. I need to try another set or tap the legs to match the threads on the new levelers.

The powder coating looks great!

Glass clip with new powder coating

The next step was to work on the control panels. The painted graphics on the control panel were great and no wear whatsoever. The buttons looked horrible so I swapped them out with new ones. I didn’t like the look or feel of the new buttons, so I decided to clean up the original ones. They turned out pretty good!

Original, dirty buttons

New buttons. Notice how high they sit above the panel

The originals look much better and “fit” the panel better

This thing is really coming together. All I need to do is get the new glass and underlay, and this will look brand new! I can’t wait!

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.

I’ve had a busy summer this year. I was able to wrap up three projects before the weather turned cold. I already reported on the Time Pilot restoration, and shopping my Earthshaker pinball. The last game I finished up this summer was my Centipede that I’ve had in the garage for a few years. I was never able to get this into the house to work on because it was soaked in mouse urine and smelled really bad. Last year I picked up a replacement cabinet but had not had the time to transplant the working parts from the first cabinet. I finally got this done and now have a nice working Centipede in my gameroom!

All kinds of cabinets around this project! The front one is a friend’s who just happened to store his in my garage for a few weeks. Cool photo opp!

When I last checked in on this game, I had just purchased the replacement cabinet and stripped all the parts out of the original cabinet. I also already rebuilt the control panel and had it ready to install on the new cabinet. I stopped at this point because the new cabinet had its sides covered in white laminate. I needed to take some time to decide if I was going to remove the laminate and buy reproduction side art for the cabinet. Well, the more I thought about doing this, the more I realized that I should just keep the laminate. The white laminate looked great, and I would not even see the sides anyway due to how tight my gameroom is. There just is no space between games to show off the artwork. With that decision out of the way the rest of the project would be easy!

The last step done to the “mouse urine” cabinet. I hate to destroy original cabinets!

Since I had the cabinet gutted and cleaned out, the first step was to put the original Centipede power block back in the bottom of the cabinet. I actually took this apart and repainted the metal framework from this assembly. I then cleaned all the remaining parts and reassembled it. I also put a new fuse holder block in it because the other one was pretty old. This assembly needed to go in first because there were several harness connectors that needed to be plugged into it. This would allow me to align the harness to it. Once the harness was aligned it was easy to lay out to all the other areas of the cabinet.

All cleaned out and ready for some parts.

As I mentioned before I had a special harness that was modified to play both Centipede and Millipede boards. They have different wiring connections so they weren’t interchangeable in the original harness. I added another PCB track above the normal Centipede location so I could install the Millipede above. It fit like a glove! After the PCB was installed, I finished the rest of the internal components and harness installation. Everything looked great when I was done.

Starting to look like an arcade game.

After the internals were all reassembled, I reinstalled the control panel. I rebuilt the trackball and put a new fire button in the panel, but I hadn’t fixed the LED lights in the start buttons. They weren’t working so I was hoping the LEDs were burned out. I picked up a set at Radio Shack and replaced them in the button. I had to drill out the rivets holding the button assemblies together. The LEDs were a little tricky to replace because the they were soldered to the button contacts. It was worth all the effort to rebuild because the buttons are really bright now!

Switch disassembled awaiting a new LED

Nice and bright!

The panel looks great in the new cabinet!

Once I finished reassembling the game it worked great! The Millipede board isn’t working right so I need to do some work to it to get it to run. The Centipede works GREAT and is a lot of fun to play. I had one spot left in the gameroom to squeeze this in. Now the gameroom is done for the year. I have several more projects coming up but with the weather change there won’t be any new games for a while.

All assembled ready to go.

Looks great along my other Atari cabinets.

I have it to the right of my Crystal Castles, but I think I will move it soon because the Crystal Castles looks hidden between the large Centipede and Pole Position cabinets.

Centipede has a great marquee!

Check out all the Centipede restoration pictures in my Centipede Photo Album

When I last updated this project, I had just started cleaning all of the parts that were removed from the playfield. I also just finished cleaning off the playfield itself. Now I just needed to reassemble everything and give it a try. There are a ton of pieces to this game, including a bunch of bulbs that needed replaced. I really didn’t think there is a safe way to test things as I put it back together, so I was hoping that everything would work perfectly after it was all reassembled.

I slowly worked off of my list of assemblies I removed one at a time. I worked backwards replacing the last ones removed first. Everything went pretty smoothly. I replaced several old broken posts with new ones, and put all new lock nuts on each post to make sure they stayed tight. I put new plastic in several places, including over the slingshots. The right slingshot was really bad and was repaired with a drywall screw. Luckily the hole from the screw was hidden inside the assembly and didn’t damage the actual play area. While I had everything removed it was a good change to change ALL of the lamps. That way I also replaced all of the “rubber” in the game from my rubber replacement kit from The Pinball Source. I had several left over pieces, but since I installed many new ones I expected that. The playfield really looked great when I was done assembling it!

Here’s the lower section all back together.

Looks great lit up!

Here’s the middle section.

The upper section is really cool. The building looks much better.

After the playfield was assembled and put back into the cabinet, I worked on finishing up the backbox. I labeled all of the connectors to make it easy to reconnect the playfield to the boards. I also replaced all of the bulbs in the backbox. I had to buy some “flasher” bulbs for several positions. These were really cool because they make the translight flash over the different “damage areas” depicted in the graphics.

There were a ton of bulbs in the backbox.

After everything was put together, I had several small problems to work through. First, there were some flasher lamps not flashing. I found two where the bulb sockets were not connecting well, even tough they were new sockets. I was able to twist them on better to make a better connection. Two other flashers did not work at all. I spent a couple hours testing the power to the flashers and tracing the wiring. Finally after examining the schematics I thought it would be worth replacing the transistor controlling the circuit for the flashers (Q22). Thankfully, that’s all it took! All the lamps and flasher were working great. When I started with the game none of the flashers had bulbs. Now with all of them working the light show was amazing! This by far was the most noticeable improvement.

I then turned my attention to the pop bumpers. My pop bumpers were NOT working. I replaced several parts to them and thought maybe I messed something up. Turned out to just be a fuse. The wrong fuse was installed in the game for that circuit. It didn’t look blown but was not passing any current. I replaced it with the right fuse and it held just fine. At this point everything was working. However, after about five games one of the flipper coils burned up. I think it was really bad before I reassembled it. I picked up a new coil and it worked great!

Here it is in the gameroom getting some extensive play testing!

It’s now been a few months living with this machine and everything is still going great. The game plays much better now, and is really fast! It’s amazing the difference that it makes shopping out a old worn out playfield. I’m really happy with this game, and can’t wait to get another pinball machine for the gameroom someday!

Check out all the Earthshaker pinball pictures in my Earthshaker Photo Album