Tony's Arcade

Here are my notes for identifying and replacing the electrolytic capacitors and transistors on ALI’s 1971 Sonic Fighter.

As most of these electrolytic capacitors used non-standard values (well, compared to the past decade) it was difficult sometimes to find an equivalent (e.g. 2.2uF) so I tried to find a capacitor that was close in value (e.g. 2.5uF). There are some capacitors that are greater in voltage value or radial instead of axial because they were cheaper than the original part.

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OK, ok, OK ROB! I’ll put up another post! Believe it or not, I have about eight (yes eight) posts that are sitting in the drafts bin. Some of them are about a year old! I have been getting side tracked a lot (and I’m not talking about the vapor cart [Side Trak] that we all waited for on the ColecoVision. Right, Brian?) Since the warehouse raid of 2008, I have made a few return trips to get parts I needed as well as a couple of… arcade games. On a recent trip, I picked up a Chicago Coin Night Bomber and another Atari Football cabinet. I’m not going to talk about those two gems yet. Instead, I am going to talk about another EM game that was lurking in one of the warehouses. The Allied Leisure Industries 1971 Sonic Fighter.

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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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