Arcade Video Game
 

Sitting on the curb a block away, missing some trim. Any reason to drag it home? Some sort of wrestling game.

Most of those games can be easily changed to something else by swapping out the EPROMs. If the cabinet is in good shape, and it looks like the electronics are intact, I'd drag it home.

They do have a value, but that one looks like it's missing some cabinet parts. Personally I wouldn't bother with it, but if you are up for a project, it could be interesting... Usually a run-of-the-mill game goes for $150 on CL in decent shape, but a 1st generation early 70s Atari Table Tennis or 1980 full-size PacMan might be up near $1000 in nice shape.

Costco selles a new all-function game like that for about $2000, with just about every arcade game known to man built-in. Even has a real coin mechanism!

Charles

I agree with Sam. I have a friend with more money than he knows what to do with, and he restores these.

I don't know the process (it seems simple) but he turns the cabinets into multi game consoles. Check online for the process.

My friend was originally buying every vintage game that he found online. After about 60 of the consoles you have pictured, he discovered the new retro fit. Now he has 6 consoles that play all the games of the original 60 (and many more) Of course now he has 60 of those boxes taking up space.
It should be noted that those consoles have 2 different monitors. Some games require a vertical monitor and some require a horizontal.

It's at least worth dragging it home to strip and eBay the parts if the cabinet is unsalvagable. It looks like most of the operating bits are there, even the coin boxes.

The friend I just mentioned had one machine delivered to him that had $90 of quarters STILL IN IT! :yes:

Drag it home Bryan, you know you want to..... I would:) And hey, you never know, like Bstable said, it might have quarters still in it like his friends' did.

Biggest trouble is that right now my truck is full of stuff-it will be empty tomorrow so if the game is still there I'll grab it.

Be aware that the CRT may have phosphor burn in, from the same image on it for hundreds of hours.

old arcade games are a good source of nice 4x8" speakers :D

I'd take it if I had the room. I love arcade machines, and the price is right. Who knows, it might be a good game.

The phosphor burn is a real problem though. Long after the crt is dead and buried your high score will still be shining brightly on the tube!

Drag it home, and turn it into a MAME console. Now that flat panels are all the rage, you can get a decent condition 21" monitor for $50 or less. Mount this in the case, put in an old PC running MAME, get some decent joysticks from someone like Happ controls, and you have all you need. If you put a big hard disc in it, you can use it to play MP3s in your bar, dining room, or wherever you use it.

yea but LCD is yuck on something like this. it just doesnt fit "nostalgia"

The way i did mine was use a 21" CRT monitor plugged into a PC, with X-arcade controller boards for the buttons and coin mech.

Most games after say 1987ish used a common card edge connector called "Jamma". This allows you to change the game by just swapping out a PCB that contains the actual hardware.

Some enterprising company in china builds a "60-in-1" board that has the games anyone from the 80's will recognize.

I think the cardboard on the front marked FREE makes it look like its missing parts, but the cabinet looks reasonably all there.

I did stop by this afternoon and get a close look. I knew the cover around the crt was missing. The back is scary-a pile of pcb's just laying in the bottom; the chassis is scroungy. And, of course, it's big and heavy. I left it there...it's still calling my name, just not sure if I'll answer! I could see just a little burn on the crt.