Tony's Arcade

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.

Atari Football was the first (by most accounts I’ve read, anyway) trak-ball game produced. The game is made up of “X”s and “O”s, similar to a play chart in those old football movies. This game also has a few interesting highlights:

• A 23″ black and white monitor — huge by arcade standards where monitors were usually 19″
• Cocktail style cabinet where the players stand instead of sit (the base can be removed to the players can sit, but then again, you need every bit of room for the english you have to put on the trak-ball!
• Players don’t move the trackball as a precision device like in Centipede, Crystal Castles, and Marble Madness. Players must slam their hands on the trak-ball to roll it as fast as possible. This, of course, contributed to the memories of bruises, blood blisters, and pinched skin on players hands.

Cleaning Up

As I mentioned before, I began cleaning the game by removing the trak-balls and using Mean Green to clean them up. I had to take apart each trak-ball assembly so I could remove all the nastiness in there.

After cleaning, I lubricated all the bearings with teflon gel (also known as PTFE), which you can find at Radio Shack. I cleaned the trak-balls with Novus #2 plastic cleaner/polisher. After putting the trak-balls back in place, I cleaned the play charts with Novus #2 to make them look as good as new. I replaced the #44 bulbs with #47 bulbs which draw less current and are little less hot as to ensure the play chart plastics will last longer. For the carriage bolts that hold the trak-ball in place on the control panel, I used a $1.99 drill wire brush to get the rust off the bolt heads.

Ahhh, now the Atari Football cabinet is looking much better! Thank goodness noone rested their cigarettes on the plastic play display! If I saw that I would have to spike a big blue capacitor into the cardboard audience. Powering on the game, I hear the audience roaring and I see graphic garbage on the screen. Oh well — now it’s time to start troubleshooting the electronics!


Arcade Stats:
Manufacturer: Atari
Year Released: 1979
Cabinet Date of Manufacture: January 23, 1979
Cabinet: Stand-up Cocktail
Monitor: 23-inch Vertical Black and White Raster
Coin Counter: 8590
Tony's First Quarter: Tony's Arcade
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Atari Football (1978). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.