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Restoring vs. Maming a cabinet - The complete rule book
bfauska:
--- Quote ---Scarcity in collections (VAPS.org)
Very Common - There are 167 known instances of this game owned by one of our 900 members. Of these, 104 of them are original dedicated machines, 6 of them are conversions in which game circuit boards have been placed in another game cabinet, and 57 of them are only circuit boards which a collector could put into a generic case if desired.
Of the 40,598 video games (3,114 unique) tracked by the Video Game Preservation Society, this game ranks a 81 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most commonly seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on ownership records.
Wanted - There are 5 VAPS members currently looking for this game
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I bet the 104 owned by the members are in severe threat of disappearing for ever. ALL will be lost and we won't have any idea of what that game used to be. OR maybe the 104 owned by members are just a small portion of the existing cabs in the wild and even a modified classic with some obvious changes gives us an insight into what the cabinet was historically. More of these things have been thrown out than butchered. It's a frickin' game, not a priceless one-of-a-kind painting or 300 year old hand made ship. Just the number of Galaxians restored by members of this forum is enough to maintain the historical preservation of this cabinet.
Hot rods make a connection to the past that many people wouldn't feel from a bone-stock classic. A MAMEd cabinet may very well spark interest in some future restorer or collector that the same cabinet with one game they have no particular interest in could never do.
As an example of how parting something out can be good, lets look at a simplified scenario. Say that there are 10 remaining "ClassicCade" cabinets in the world, all with various forms of wear and tear. If not one of those machines gets parted out then there will be no perfect/complete machines. If the one with a good game board gets parted out and the one with the good monitor gets that part and the CP from one of the others then you have one good machine, for people to praise and put in a shrine for all of eternity. SOME cabinets have to give up their functional original parts for ANY restorations to actually happen.
brandon:
I say Do whatever the hell you want with YOUR cabinet. Anybody who says you should restore it should have their checkbook ready to finance your restoration project. but since its your money, time and effort going into it then tell them to stuff it. I DO understand where people are coming from though.. I would hate to see somebody Mame a Dragon's Lair or something rare like that.. but honestly does anybody know how many Ms Pacman/Galaga cabinets where made? I have four of them myself.. I paid $40 each for them. I wouldnt Mame them though. I think they are a one trick pony not really suitable for Maming. If you can tack on a custom control panel and mount the monitor/PC without drilling a bunch of holes and maiming the thing (pun intended) then have at it. Its your cabinet and if you decide to sell it somebody else can take the time and effort to track down the original PCB, artwork,etc to restore it back. I really dont know why everybody gets so bent out of shape about this. Its quite silly.
IronBuddha:
It's one thing to have an opinion and tell the person you don't agree with his approach, it's another thing though to act like it's the end of the world and make that member look like a complete jackass just because of it. People wouldn't want to post things here because they think they would get insulted to death. People not posting=less traffic.
Here's my point:
Tomorrow I'm picking up a super pacman cab because I don't have the time, money or tools to build a cab my own. It's completely gutted out but has the side art and marquee. So what's wrong if I converted it to a mame cabinet? I'm not painting over it or destroying the marquee so later if I built another cab all I would do is take everything out and it would just be a gutted cab again for someone else to restore or use it. Is that a violation?
And the thing is, this is going to be my very first project and I would love to share the whole thing and get advise etc. But I don't know if I would want to share what I'm doing because honestly I think people would probably just flame me off these boards. It sucks
Fozzy The Bear:
--- Quote from: IronBuddha on February 04, 2008, 05:18:50 am ---Tomorrow I'm picking up a super pacman cab because I don't have the time, money or tools to build a cab my own. It's completely gutted out but has the side art and marquee. So what's wrong if I converted it to a mame cabinet?
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Absolutely nothing's wrong with that...... it's a prime candidate for being Mamed.... and neither would you be flamed for it. But he didn't do that. He gutted and destroyed a more or less complete and working (apart from the monitor) 1980's cab. Then he claimed that having done that, he now had the skills to restore or build a cab from scratch.
If he wanted to learn the skills then he could have done that on a generic or already converted cab or an already destroyed or parted out cab. There are enough of those around for that to be done, not to destroy a complete one.
SavannahLion, by your analogies you're saying it's OK to do it because other people are doing it as well...... Great! so it's ok to walk out into the street with a shotgun and blow a few peoples heads off, because somebody else is doing it. It must therefore be OK.... QED. I'll take bets that in ten to fifteen years time, you'll be looking back at this and saying, why didn't we do something to save them, when we could do. Just because arcade operators throw them out destroy them and leave them to rot, doesn't mean it's OK for us to destroy them.
That's exactly why in less years than you think, the heritage we have will be gone, if we don't take a stand and actively discourage this sort of vandalism now.
The mission statement in relation to cabinets of the Build Your Own Arcade Controls forum, puts it quite clearly: "Please do be mindful that we don't destroy what we're trying to re-create. Many classic arcade machines are rare and worth a heck of a lot more intact than altered." Destroying a more or less complete classic just so you can play games at home is NEVER OK.
Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)
CheffoJeffo:
I've actually written a couple of responses to this thread and didn't bother submitting either ... these threads always end up with the "grumpy old men" against the "it's my cab" folks. I'm tired of being labelled as a grumpy old man and particularly having some noob (who always seems to think he is the rational one) call me silly. Further, many of the "it's my cab" folks seems to be people who eventually end up lamenting the lack of classic cabs available.
[NOTE: Before anybody thinks that I am attributing positions to people in THIS thread, my beliefs come from the myriad threads on the same topic ... but feel free to notice the parallels]
This type of thing is always going to happen.
If the cab is complete and close-to-working, then I would certainly prefer restoration.
Depending on how far the cab is from complete (e.g. if it has been converted), then I don't mind a tasteful MAMEing. mmmPeanutButter (a BYOACer who is local to me) saved a busted-up, badly-converted Centipede and made perhaps the most beautiful MAME cab I have ever seen (and it is better-looking in RealLife(tm) than in pictures). In the process, he did not destroy a single Centipede element and, in fact, restored many Centipede elements (including the artwork). His cab looks better than any Centipede I have ever seen in RealLife(tm).
OTOH, we see too many folks doing stupid things like bolting stuff onto classic cabinets. There is a reason that Hellcade and CrapMAME exist -- people do bad things to classic cabs.
One thing that hasn't been mentionned is that, for those who hang around longer than the first MAME build, people's opinions on the topic change. I can think of at least one BYOACer who is staunchly against MAIMing classics. At one point I implored him not to MAME a classic cocktail citing that he had the skills to resto. Now he's got a much nicer collection than I do.
OTOH, my own personal opinions have softened over the same time period -- I've seen too many classic cabs chopped up for firewood, despite being offered for extended periods of time for free. And the guys doing it aren't evil -- they are typically far more serious than people here are about preservation.
OTOH, anybody who destroys a DeathRace deserves to die a hideous and painful death.
EDIT: It's HellCade, you twit ...