Arcade Collecting > Restorations & repair

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Spyridon:
Picked this one up last year but finally got some time to work on it.  Actually, I was forced to work on it because the joystick stopped working.




Overall in excellent shape.  Stencils are available if I wanted to repaint this, but really, it's too nice to bother.  Some scratches here and there but not enough to justify a full repaint.

It looks good next to the green one:


Believe it or not, this was the game that I considered my Grail.  It was the game that took the most quarters from me back in the day.  Probably out of location mostly as this and Super Cobra were in the motel lobby right near my house.  Actually, they were outside under a covered roof.  Not a game I see come up for sale often.  When this one was advertised locally at an auction for a place that was going out of business, I was all over it.

Overlay is the only real problem.  It's been torn up and someone tried to touch it up with some paint but it doesn't look too good.  I was able to track down a new overlay.

It's an inkjet overlay, but it was done by Archer Maclean and the quality is top notch.  Not your typical inkjet work.

There are a few of these still available, so if anyone needs one I'll pass on the contact to you



I also picked up a NOS fire button decal as the one on the game was completely faded.  It's an important piece as you need to know what direction you are firing. 

Spyridon:
Now back to the issue I mentioned with the joystick.  Acutally, it's really the aim/fire button contraption that was the problem.  It's a unique controller in which you turn it 360 degrees to choose your firing direction and then you puch it in to fire.  Takes some getting used too to be efficient with it.  It turned fine for me, but would stick when pushed in.  You had to manually pull it up to release it.  Made rapid fireing an impossibility.

I pulled the control panel to see what was going on.  Here is what the unit looks like:


and once removed from the control panel


I think it just needs a good cleaning and some lubrication.  Time to disassemble it.


I found out the hard way that there are two ballbearings in the shaft shown in this picture. One on each side of the spring mechanisum

Unless you need to replace them, don't turn the spinner with all the screws out as these pop out and are a PITA to get back in place.

I used some white lithium grease to lube this thing up



Put it back together and tested it out.  It returned back to the correct position when pushed in.  Now that it seemed to be working correctly, I installed it back into the control panel.

Played a game and it is working great!

TOK:
Looks great! This is one of my favorite games as well. We used to play it in the lobby of a diner near where I grew up.
I've tried a couple of times to get a decent control compromise working in MAME, but never did anything I was happy with. Maybe someday I'll get a push spinner so I can play it right.

Spyridon:

--- Quote from: TOK on March 30, 2009, 12:04:45 pm ---Looks great! This is one of my favorite games as well. We used to play it in the lobby of a diner near where I grew up.
I've tried a couple of times to get a decent control compromise working in MAME, but never did anything I was happy with. Maybe someday I'll get a push spinner so I can play it right.


--- End quote ---

Yeah, I tried this one in MAME as well.  Totally unplayable.  Let me know when you want to make the 2 hour drive (maybe a little less) to come up and play it.

cw:
Loved this game as a kid.... loads of fun and the replay value is very high in my book.   

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