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Restoring vs. Maming a cabinet - The complete rule book

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TOK:

Here are my guidelines...

1 First off, its yours, so you could do whatever you want with it. My feeling is if you saved it from the dumpster and MAME it, at least its loved. The Asteroids burning in my avatar is real. I didn't burn it, but it was destroyed because it was parted out and needed a monitor. In my opinion, It's better that a classic get MAME'd than that.

2 Certain cabs are typically considered holy and shouldn't be MAME'd. few quick examples of this are Star Wars, Tron, Tempest, Dragons Lair and Major Havoc (Ironically, three of the games on this list are usually gutted because the monitors suck and cost a lot to repair).

3 If you do modify a cab that is considered classic, doing so in a way that it could be converted back won't meet with too much resistance... Don't hack 20 inch holes in the sides to install neon MAMECADE logos.

4 A game that has already been messed up by a prior conversion is pretty much fair game. There were thousands of Pac Man's made, and half of them were converted to Rush N Attack or some crappy wresting game. If the art and control panel are hacked already, you're not hurting anything by hacking them again.


RetroACTIVE:


--- Quote from: TOK on February 04, 2008, 09:54:29 am ---Here are my guidelines...

1 First off, its yours, so you could do whatever you want with it. My feeling is if you saved it from the dumpster and MAME it, at least its loved. The Asteroids burning in my avatar is real. I didn't burn it, but it was destroyed because it was parted out and needed a monitor. In my opinion, It's better that a classic get MAME'd than that.

2 Certain cabs are typically considered holy and shouldn't be MAME'd. few quick examples of this are Star Wars, Tron, Tempest, Dragons Lair and Major Havoc (Ironically, three of the games on this list are usually gutted because the monitors suck and cost a lot to repair).

3 If you do modify a cab that is considered classic, doing so in a way that it could be converted back won't meet with too much resistance... Don't hack 20 inch holes in the sides to install neon MAMECADE logos.

4 A game that has already been messed up by a prior conversion is pretty much fair game. There were thousands of Pac Man's made, and half of them were converted to Rush N Attack or some crappy wresting game. If the art and control panel are hacked already, you're not hurting anything by hacking them again.


--- End quote ---

Pretty much in line with my thoughts as well... I don't believe all machines are classics... there was a lot of crap built just for JAMMA conversions and such that don't have the significance as most of the late 70's early 80's machines.

shardian:

My thoughts on old cabinets:

*If the cabinet is in passable shape, but with bad hardware: Restore, or MAME in a recoverable fashion. I prefer the continued use of the arcade monitor if possible.

*If the cabinet is is bad shape, but with good hardware: By all means, restore or try to pass on to someone who wants it and will restore it. For instance, I personally would not want a restored Galaxian -- the game bores me. I do know two collectors local that would either trade me, or buy it from me to restore themselves. Now if the cabinet is in horrible, horrible shape, then offer up all of the internals to someone who has a decent empty cabinet.  restoring a cabinet with full artwork can be a VERY expensive outing, and odds are quite high that your investment will outweigh any possible returns. If the game doesn't have a sentimental value, don't waste your money on a full restore, but clean it up as good as possible.

My personal philosophy is that the main attraction to old arcade games were the cabinets. I prefer machines to look stock, but don't really care what is on the inside. I also think restored classics with a cleverly built CP can be very pretty. Building a custom CP that can be taken off and replaced with stock is brilliant in my book.


Now as to your personal case of the Galaxian, with your obvious woodworking skills with the CP, you should have definitely just built a Midway from scratch. I think that is the biggest beef people have here.

javeryh:

My thoughts are first and foremost do what you want because it's yours BUT if I were to come across a classic cab that I basically wanted only for the cabinet I would definitely try and part everything out that is salvageable like the artwork, boards, buttons, joysticks, coin door, etc.  It's kind of like how I feel about abortion - it's definitely not for me and something I don't personally believe in but I would never in a million years want it to be illegal or judge someone for going through with it because it's really none of my business.

At the end of the day, I'm just happy that someone is actually building an arcade machine - MAME or not - because this "hobby" certainly won't be around forever.  The classic arcade scene lasted about 15 years total and is really only nostalgic/meaningful to a very very very small portion of the world and one day we will all be dead and gone and it's not like today's teenager is going to seriously be playing Pac-man in an arcade cabinet in the year 2085. 

patrickl:

I would say that there is a line between destroying a classic and only mildly damaging the enterior. Isn't it better that an arcade fan saves the cab and stores the parts rather than that the thing ends up as landfill?

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