The rarity of an arcade cabinet is very subjective. Just because a game is old, doesn’t necessarily mean it should be regarded as rare. After 1984, when the video arcade market pretty much crashed, the production numbers went down from tens of thousands, to single digit thousand production runs. So in many cases, you are…
Tag: arcade pictures
Abandoned Arcades: The Long Goodbye
It’s hard to put a figure on the number of classic arcade machines that are still around. As you will have read on this blog, those cabinets not in the safe hands of restorers and collectors today, are likely to have met a grim fate at some point. When machines came to the end of…
The Arcade House of Horrors
This week, we take a look at some examples of what are known in the trade as “Conversions”. But I’m talking bad ones. Real bad arcade conversions. The purists of the video arcade collecting community tend to collect dedicated cabs. These are totally original, unmolested arcade cabinets from the 70s and 80s. A level of…
Classic Arcade Games: Sex Sells But Who’s Buying?
In the 70s and 80s, the notion of “sex sells” had a lot of traction from what I can remember. It seemed that the lowest common denominator of advertising was to stick a scantily clad young lady in front of a product, photograph it, and it would fly off the shelf. Jeans, aftershave, cars, you…
Atari Arcade Concept Art: A glimpse of the future
Some interesting early concept artwork from Atari has surfaced in recent years. These brightly coloured, hand drawn sketches are really “of their time”. Atari’s arcade division employed several artists, who would create everything from Industrial cabinet designs, to the final artwork to adorn the various arcade cabinet designs. In the 70’s, Atari clearly had a…
Robotron: Enter the Time Machine
There’s nothing quite like a 35 year old restored arcade machine. Especially so when the restorer has sympathetically made the machine look brand new again. Many restorers have examples of cabs that are arguably better than new in terms of the parts, paints and artwork used. Let’s not forget, whilst today we look at these…
The Arcade Blogger 