Tony's Arcade

In my quest for a 1950s – 1960s bowling ball game (where I always find shuffle alleys a dime a dozen it seems), I stumbled upon this gem. A Williams Diamond Score Pool game. I have never seen an electro-mechanical (EM) bumper pool game. I did some quick research and I discovered this game was produced in the 1950s by Williams (as in “Defender”, “Stargate”, and “Robotron” for you vid geeks), possibly 1956, according to a trade newspaper mentioned in ipdb.org. Also, I don’t have room for a regulation size pool table, so this game would definitely work in Tony’s Arcade!

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Since I can’t find any documentation of Allied Leisure’s F-114 anywhere on the Internet (well, except for the marketing flyer), and I was lucky to find schematics and instructions with my F-114, here they are. Hopefully they’ll help you with your restoration of a F-114. I only have the Theory of Operation, Assembly Instructions, and Schematics. If you have any other F-114 documentation, please let me know and I’ll add it here.

Allied Leisure Theory of Operation and Assembly Instructions (5MB)

Allied Leisure F-114 Schematics (2.3MB)

Each time I visited the arcade warehouse, I noticed a behemoth of a game lurking from under the boxes of 45s, NOS (New Old Stock) joysticks, and pinball score displays. It had this huge, half-circle wraparound projection screen and a black padded vinyl chair. The side of the game was stenciled with “F-114″ in white. I was curious. What was this game? Some kind of jet fighter? It sat among a few Sonic Fighters, which are electro-mechanical (EM) projection games. “It must be some kind of projection EM game on steroids,” I thought. I decided to do some searching on the Internet, since I never heard about this game before…

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The Chicago Coin Rodeo Shooting Gallery is finally finished!

This has probably been the most time consuming game I’ve worked on and yet the easiest. Rodeo was my first electro-mechanical (EM) game that I restored and was a lot of fun. Don’t get me wrong — the restoration process had the requisite headaches that come with restoring any classic arcade game. Compared to solid state games, repairing an EM game was like looking at giant logic chips that you could see working. Watching the score reels reset to zero was like watching electrons moving along at five volts, except at 110 volts with solenoids ker-chunking circuits through different states! I’ve been told that most arcade hobbyists like restoring EM games because all the workings are “there”. I know what they mean — you can see what is stuck, what is dirty, and what is gummed up. No logic probe or oscilloscope needed — it’s great.

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TRACK-BALL! (Or is it “trackball” or “trak-ball”?)

From what I’ve read in various sources, Atari Football was the first arcade game to use a track-ball. At least it was the first Atari video game to use one. (A side note — Atari Football uses the same trackball that was used in Missile Command so this article applies to you Missle Commanders, too.) On my Atari Football, when rolling the Player 1 track-ball, there were problems. Putting the game into test mode, player 1 could move horizontally left and right but vertical movement was a problem. Rolling the track-ball forward and backward would only move the player (”X”) in one direction (backward).

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Now that I had the Atari Football all cleaned up, it was time to install the Bob Roberts capacitor kit for a Wells Gardner V1000. Football has a huge 23″ black and white picture tube and I wanted to make sure those Xs and Os looked their best. The monitor can be removed in one of two ways. The monitor is bolted to a piece of plywood that can slide out of the cabinet. You just open the control panels, loosen some wingnuts, and the monitor and plywood monitor mount slides out. I opted for removing the glass and cardboard “stadium” bezel, then unbolting the monitor from the plywood mount and lifting the monitor out of the top. What a pain. I did this because I didn’t realize you could easily slide out the monitor from the side until later… That’s what I get for not bothering to read the manual.

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This has got to be the nastiest game I have ever cleaned.

I can only imagine how many Pabst Blue Ribbons and Rheingolds were accidentally knocked over and poured into Football’s trak-balls and offense/defense play charts. What makes me say this, you might ask? Well, my first tip off was the grime on the play charts as they were coated in some kind of yellowy film. Upon removing the monitor bezel, the back of the cardboard audience shroud had liquid stains. Once I opened the control panels and removed the trak-balls, I could see what these machines endured 25-30 years ago. Each trak-ball had a generous amount of black plastic chaff (from the trak-ball), hand grease, and beer residue on the bottom of the trak-ball harness. Fantastic! I broke out the Mean Green de-greaser and went to work.

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OK, ok, ok… I have been asked to provide some updates on the Warehouse Raid. Here we go…

As part of the warehouse raid, I was able to get my hands on a game I first saw back in 2001. The Pole Position cockpit! In the last (and first) warehouse raid I participated in 2001, I saw the fabled cockpit which I never saw as a kid. Cockpit style arcade games were stuff of legend in my part of the state because of cost and probably weight and coins per game (50 cents)! I, living in an apartment in 2001, had no room and there was no way I was going to get that thing up two flights of stairs! Instead, I settled on a Pole Position II upright which has been in my arcade until recently. When I saw the Pole Position cockpit in the 2008 warehouse raid, it was time to get my grubby hands on it and sell the upright!

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Every arcade collector has read about or been lucky enough to participate in one of the best experiences in gaming geekdom — the arcade warehouse raid. I was fortunate enough to hear about a friend of a friend of a friend (of course) that was getting out of “the business” and had “some games to get rid of at a good price”. So, what do you do when you have no room in your basement arcade for more games? Why, you get more!

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1972. Back when 15 cents got you one credit and a quarter got you two! Ever since I got Future Spa up and running and hooked on pinballs, I began to get the itch for EM — electro-mechanical games. Before games that were completely solid state burst on the scene around 1976, arcade games were mostly if not all electro-mechanical. Instead of bit shifters and adders, the brains of a game were coils, steppers, and bakelite contact boards. It’s amazing to think (nowadays, anyway) that a whole game could operate on different states of machinery.

I decided to be on the lookout for an EM rifle game. I remember playing those as a kid and (since I was 5 years old) not knowing what I was doing. Two Guys department store in New London had Haunted House, which I would have my dad help me play. That was an eerie game, with an 8-track player for sound effects!

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