Arcade Stuff I've Collected     (back to page 1) Defender was the first arcade video game I owned. I purchased it while in college for $175. It has always been my favorite. Later, after I graduated, I picked up Stargate from a Space Port arcade somewhere in Pennsylvania for $250 when my wife and I were living in a tiny, tiny studio apartment.  She vividly remembers I convinced her to let me buy it because it was "always my dream" to have Defender and Stargate side-by-side.  Unfortunately, both are currently in non-working condition. In October of 2009 I was contacted about my Stargate and asked if the two red/yellow stripes below the control panel flanking the coin door were original. They are actually stickers. Turns out that the cover of the Stargate manual shows the cabinet with these stripes but the production units did not have them - at least not that anybody has seen. As far as I know my Stargate was purchased new for the Space Port and the stripes are original! One of my closest high school friends purchased this Berzerk some 20 years ago and it spent 10 years sitting in his parents garage. Getting it operational was not easy, as with many Berzerks, it had extensive acid damage from the back-up battery. But it lives again and for now resides in my arcade/basement. Jungle King... turns out it's not as much fun as I remembered. But I only paid $50 for it, and it was in good condition and fully functional! After a few years I started having problems with the power supply and sold it on eBay for well more than I paid.  Actually, Defender was not the first arcade video game I owned, this Pong was. I traded a pinball machine for it back in 1979, and it was brand new. It even has a second circuit board to convert to Hockey. For many years it sat in the waiting room of my father's dental practice. Now it's an end table in our basement - but it still plays! For a time I collected marquees from some of my favorite games. Most were purchased for around $15. Here's a pachinko machine my uncle found at a garage sale. In late 2007 the BYOAC Pinball Forum hooked me up with this pin - Four Million B.C. The game was located in South Carolina, but the current owner was kind enough to deliver it to family living in Aiken. It's another Bally multi-ball from the early 70's (1970 to be exact) so I bought it site unseen and picked it up many months later when my wife and I had time to drive south. This was the first pin I've bought since I closed down my pinball restoration business in 1984! A gift from my Uncle Barry, this is now the oldest pin in my collection. Big Broadcast was manufactured in 1933. The playfield on this one is mostly original although a few pieces have been repainted. Functionally it's perfect! In September of 2009 I picked up this Space Tactics off craigslist.com for $150. The game was completely working and in very good condition - so the deal was too good to pass up even if we really didn't have any room for the beast. As for the game play - let's just say this game was more of a novelty than a game you'd come back to again and again. It's basically a combination of Space Invaders, Missile Command, and Gorf in 3D. But that doesn't come close to explaining how the game plays - it is by far the most over engineered system I've ever seen or heard of. The monitor is mounted in a frame with the screen facing up. Above the monitor in the same frame is an angled, semi-transparent mirror. The mirror is hinged on the bottom and the top edge is attached to a worm gear and motor - so the angle can be changed up or down. Then the entire frame, monitor and mirror, is on a vertical axle with a motor/gear/chain at the bottom so it can be rotated left or right. Behind the mirror there's two strips of yellow LEDs in a "V" shape. The LEDs are fixed (they don't move with the monitor and mirror) and they provide the 3D laser shots towards the enemies. A red LED at the convergence of the "V" is your targeting cursor. Add in some spacey backdrops and a couple of black lights and you've got a combo mechanical/video 3D shooter. You might be thinking - how fast can all this stuff move around. Not very. When you move the yoke (left/right and in/out), there's a distinct lag with the actual movement of the parts. So your targeting cursor is not all that accurate. It really feels like you're driving an actual spaceship - be it a slow sluggish and noisy one! Here's a video I made with the game open so you can see the guts in action. Page 1