Namco Atari Cab

[CMYKhazi-Dan]

My Atari Area 51: Site 4 cab has a Namco sticker on the back. Seemed weird, thought it may be a conversion? So looked it up. Found an interesting blog thing...

Atari Ireland: Tipperary’s Arcade Connection

Atari’s massive success in the late 70s presented many challenges, not least of which was one of logistics: How were they going to get arcade product shipped globally to meet the huge demand …

arcadeblogger.com

You guys probably all know the history, but I did not!

So is it a legit Atari Cab? 🤪

 

[digweed]

Very interesting article - you learn something new every day. I would say yes it is an Atari cab lol

 

[patloz]

Namco produced a fair few games which were licenced by Atari and built in Ireland ( and the US ).

I can think of :

Dig Dug
Pac Mania
Pole Position I & II
Galaga'88
Rolling Thunder
Xevious.

Atari also used a different PCB designed by Namco in some games I would imagine to increase production back in the early 80s hay day, sure there's lots more but I lose interest in anything newer than 86 ish.

Rumour has it the Irish cabs got more Namco PCB than the US ones ( the US was paranoid about electrical interference and insisted all PCB were housed in metal "faraday style" cages which were sized for the Atari sized PCB ). I have an Irish Xevious which has a Namco PCB but also an Irish PPII but this has the Atari PCB so who knows.

The Namco PCB are ( in my experience ) rarer to find and aren't interchangeable between cabs as the wiring is different, think they use a Galaga style pinout, they are allegedly more reliable as they don't use an ARII and its shaky sense circuit in the same way Atari PCB did