Turning Vigilante into a 60 in 1

I began turning my Vigilante machine into a 60 in 1 Multicade. Vigilante is a game I'll never play, but the cabinet is in great shape with a nice monitor. So with very little work, I can turn this into a Multicade and sell it for a decent profit. I rotated the monitor and ordered a 4-way joystick last night. I'll make a generic bezel and leave the marquee and control panel as is. If it won't sell with the Vigilante artwork, I'll buy a Multicade marquee and cpo later. But I think this will go on Craigslist pretty quick for the Holidays. Here's a before shot:

Centipede is working

I received a working AR-II board from a KLOV member this week and had a chance to install it in my Centipede. I fired it up and it had some horizontal sync issues. After about 15 minutes of fine tuning it, Centipede now works! I am a bit concerned about the h-sync not staying as I had to re-adjust it about 2 hours later and it also has lost the color red. I keep troubleshooting it, but I'm guessing the monitor is due for a cap kit...

Traded the Red Tent

With regrets, I traded my Nintendo red tent. I kept hearing from one person in particular that it just took up too much space in the game room. So, instead of selling it outright, I traded it for an upright Nintendo vs. System cabinet. The upright is in nice shape with Excitebike installed. It's also much smaller than any of my other games, so it's a win-win for wifey and I. I'll dig around a bit and see what other chips I can buy to swap onto the board for more games. Here are some quick pics:

Finished my Time Pilot!

I got my new Time Pilot pcb in the mail that I bought from a forum member with his High Score Save Kit installed. I played a few games with the Gyruss control panel that I bought, since it had the correct "Monroe" joystick that Centuri games use. The Monroe stick felt a little "wonky" and wouldn't center correctly. I planned to take it apart and clean it, re-assemble it and re-install it but I became too impatient. I spent some time this past weekend installing the control panel overlay on my cleaned up Time Pilot control panel. It is a bootleg cpo, but I thought it was pretty cool looking, so I gave it a shot. Well, installation went smoothly and I just couldn't wait anymore. I had a yellow ball top Wico joystick handy, so I installed it. WOW- does it look cool! I still plan to clean up the Monroe stick, but this yellow Wico together with the color scheme of the cpo are really growing on me! Now it's a waiting game until the side and kickplate art are reproduced.

I put together a short video on the state of my Game Room as of September 2010:

Crystal Castles is Here!

After a "long" wait, Crystal Castles is finally here! Darryl, a buddy of mine in the arcade hobby, drove 6 hours from Virginia to deliver it. He helped me get it into the game room and I put it in place after a few pics were taken. Wow, is it in nice shape! This game is my "Holy Grail" of arcade games. It was the first game that I remember playing back in the day and it brings back a bunch of fond memories. I played a few games last night and got as high as 2nd place. Of course, I could just erase the High Score table but I want to take the Number 1 spot before doing that! This game was well worth the wait!

Another Data East cab!

I picked up a Data East Vigilante game last night off of Craigslist. I was emailing the seller back and forth last week and we agreed on a price. From the pictures, it was really clean- side art in tact, cpo, marquee and bezel are in great shape. The monitor is crystal clear as well. With a 90 degree monitor rotation, this will make a perfect 60 in 1. Or, depending on availability, I might make it a horizontal 19 in 1. Either way, this is a perfect cabinet for a multigame since this game isn't that sought after.