Well, after years of wondering how people get involved in raids and finding all kinds of hidden treasures when my scouting arcades never really seemed to bear much fruit, I finally got to load up a Luton with a bunch of machines this month.
Last year via ebay I made contact with an operator who had various old machines that he was looking to retire as they broke down. I'de purchased a faulty Sega Outrunners and Sega Rally with glitchy graphics previously and this time round there were more driving games on offer, this time they were mostly working but needed a bit of maintenance.
The machines were not too far away from me, however due to the sheer size of some of the cabs I thought it would be wiser to hire a tail lift Luton rather than use my own van. I hoped I'de get all the machines in one go and the operator was adamant that I could have, in the end I left one machine behind and collected it the next day in my own van. I was pretty thankful I did, driving a loaded Luton down winding country roads with just four machines was fun!
The machines had seen a fair amount of action and were fairly worn, but not battered or broken, and for a seaside location there were no obvious signs of corrosion or rust so they had been kept in good warm dry condition all year round.
First up was a Daytona upright, always a favourite, needing new pots and a monitor recap.
Then, this classic old beast. A Virtua Racing twin unit. Had power supply issues, no force feedback and the base was a bit filthy but otherwise played okay.
And a cab that I hadn't seen since teenage years back in the late 80's, an Electrocoin sitdown driver, complete with - wait for it - Konami GT installed, as I used to play back in Leisure 2000 in Paignton. I certainly haven't seen any of these cabs come up in recent years, god knows where they all went!
And another potential rarity, I'm certainly led to believe there aren't many working ones of these left in the world. An EZ2Dancer dance machine.
Got them back to my workshop, unloaded and ready to be worked on. Some of the side art is in pretty good condition.
Daytona plays!
And the cab I left behind and went to get the next day, an okay condition Club Kart Prize (such a crap game, this will be converted I assure you).
And inside the ZX2000 Konami GT cab, there is of course a nice mint GX400 board:
Now I might be a bit controversial here, but as much as I used to play Konami GT back in the old days, that was mainly because it was there and afterwards came far better racing games, so the GX400 board is likely going to host the original Nemesis roms from my other GX400 board, which unfortunately has a fair amount of issues (but has worked on brief occasions). The cab will be hosting various other opto-wheel steering games with a Unigame marquee.
Other PCBs in the haul included a spare working set for Virtua Racer:
And a faulty Rad Mobile System 32 pcb:
Currently working on renovating the machines and getting them to top condition, I'll be keeping all the the cabs though as I'll be making them available to the public to play at some stage.
So yeah, that was my first raid, I have a couple more planned hopefully soon!
Last year via ebay I made contact with an operator who had various old machines that he was looking to retire as they broke down. I'de purchased a faulty Sega Outrunners and Sega Rally with glitchy graphics previously and this time round there were more driving games on offer, this time they were mostly working but needed a bit of maintenance.
The machines were not too far away from me, however due to the sheer size of some of the cabs I thought it would be wiser to hire a tail lift Luton rather than use my own van. I hoped I'de get all the machines in one go and the operator was adamant that I could have, in the end I left one machine behind and collected it the next day in my own van. I was pretty thankful I did, driving a loaded Luton down winding country roads with just four machines was fun!
The machines had seen a fair amount of action and were fairly worn, but not battered or broken, and for a seaside location there were no obvious signs of corrosion or rust so they had been kept in good warm dry condition all year round.
First up was a Daytona upright, always a favourite, needing new pots and a monitor recap.
Then, this classic old beast. A Virtua Racing twin unit. Had power supply issues, no force feedback and the base was a bit filthy but otherwise played okay.
And a cab that I hadn't seen since teenage years back in the late 80's, an Electrocoin sitdown driver, complete with - wait for it - Konami GT installed, as I used to play back in Leisure 2000 in Paignton. I certainly haven't seen any of these cabs come up in recent years, god knows where they all went!
And another potential rarity, I'm certainly led to believe there aren't many working ones of these left in the world. An EZ2Dancer dance machine.
Got them back to my workshop, unloaded and ready to be worked on. Some of the side art is in pretty good condition.
Daytona plays!
And the cab I left behind and went to get the next day, an okay condition Club Kart Prize (such a crap game, this will be converted I assure you).
And inside the ZX2000 Konami GT cab, there is of course a nice mint GX400 board:
Now I might be a bit controversial here, but as much as I used to play Konami GT back in the old days, that was mainly because it was there and afterwards came far better racing games, so the GX400 board is likely going to host the original Nemesis roms from my other GX400 board, which unfortunately has a fair amount of issues (but has worked on brief occasions). The cab will be hosting various other opto-wheel steering games with a Unigame marquee.
Other PCBs in the haul included a spare working set for Virtua Racer:
And a faulty Rad Mobile System 32 pcb:
Currently working on renovating the machines and getting them to top condition, I'll be keeping all the the cabs though as I'll be making them available to the public to play at some stage.
So yeah, that was my first raid, I have a couple more planned hopefully soon!
