Thought we’d try something different this week. For the record, I am definitely a ‘point and click’ photographer – my mobile phone has always been my camera of choice. The extent of my photography skills is using an image size optimiser for the pictures I post here on the blog. Manipulating images and setting ISO…
Tag: atari
Tomcat: Atari’s Lost Vector Game
With a total roster of thirteen vector releases, Atari were undoubtedly the kings of wire-frame arcade games. It all began with Lunar Lander and then Asteroids. Released in 1979, these two games heralded the company’s innovative intent, and arguably began the Golden Age of videogames. Whereas traditional raster arcade monitors house an electron gun that…
Atari Centipede Upright Restoration 2
So things are going well with the restoration of the Centipede upright. Everything has been stripped out pretty much. We have a cleaned up marquee, bezel, control panel and monitor. Time to take a look at the inside and outside of the cab itself. Things aren’t pretty there. General grime, dead insects and dirt greet…
Super Rare Atari Centipede Cocktail Surfaces!
Close examination of the original promotional flyer for Atari’s 1981 Centipede arcade cabinet shows three styles of cab; from left to right, a cabaret, upright and cocktail. Nothing particularly unusual there, as most releases around that time looked to house themselves in a similar portfolio of cabinet designs: But further inspection of the cocktail cabinet…
Atari Centipede Upright Restoration 1
I picked this cabinet up a few weeks back (you can read about that adventure here). Upright Centipedes are lovely looking machines; the artwork is arguably the most iconic of Atari’s efforts from the early eighties. Over 45,000 of these units were built, making it one of the great commercial successes of the company’s early 80s…
Tales from the Arcade Factory Floors
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…
Atari Centipede: Weekend Pickup!
You have to move quickly when you get a sniff of acquiring a classic arcade cabinet that’s been stored away somewhere. As a fellow collector/restorer always reminds me, there’s no honour in buying and selling arcade machines. This is particularly true right now, as the supply has dried up. Very few machines are coming to…
Arcade Loft: Video Tour & Interview
The Loft Arcade welcomed my old mate Alex last weekend, to help him record the first in his new video series where he travels the country and documents on video home arcade collections, whilst interviewing their owners. Alex is a good lad, and a hugely enthusiastic arcade collector. Specialising in Nintendo arcade cabinets, he has…
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…
Missile Command: talkin’ loud, sayin’ nothin’
I posted a couple of weeks back a talk I gave about the development and some background of the classic arcade game Missile Command. I thought I’d also share an old interview I gave to Manchester’s now defunct Channel M, back in 2008. Thankfully, some old wag uploaded much of their output for posterity to…
The Arcade Blogger 