A few weeks back you will have read here on the blog about Pete Davies, the UK-based collector who sadly passed away last year. A group of us travelled up to his house in Scotland and were able to rescue his collection and distribute the cabinets amongst the community. My own pickup from that weekend…
Tag: coinop
Arcade Raid! Old Trafford, UK
Fortune favours the brave they say. I’ve written on this blog here before that the collectors who do the hunting and investigating are the ones who tend to come across large stashes of abandoned arcade cabinets. But sometimes arcade collectors are just plain fortunate and can stumble across amazing opportunities. You make your own luck…
Atari Centipede Upright Restoration 3
So here we go then with part 3 of the restoration of this Centipede Upright cabinet. Some good news to start off with – the monitor is back from the repair guy (thanks again Grant!). You’ll recall we had vertical collapse on the screen. It turned out that all of the High Voltage caps were…
Atari Gravitar: Weekend Pickup!
I’ve been eyeing up these third generation Atari Vector cabinets for some time now. Space Duel is a particular favourite of mine, and I’ve been banging on about wanting a Quantum for years. My issue to date has been twofold: Space. I have very little of it, and these vector cabs are large beasts. These…
Pete Davies: The ‘Invadar’ Arcade Collection
One of the very early committed arcade collectors here in the UK was a guy called Pete Davies. Known on the arcade forums as Invadar, he was by all accounts, very well liked. I can’t say that I knew him on a personal level (I’m not sure that many people did), but was obviously aware…
The Secret History of the Arcade Trackball
The trackball as a method of user interface control has been around for some time. In terms of public consciousness, I would argue that arcade games pioneered their widespread use by getting them literally in the hands of a mainstream consumer audience. The best way to get someone using a new device, is to put…
Pac-Man: A Lesson in Perfection
Couple of things for you to watch this week, rather than something to read for a change. I wrote some time back about Jon Stoodley’s attempts to achieve a perfect game of Pac-Man. If you want to familiarize yourself with the contents of that article, go here. Jon gave a great talk earlier this year at…
Atari Tempest: Time-Lapse Photography
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…
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…
Nibbler: The Billion Point Arcade Game
Last week saw the release of the much anticipated arcade gaming documentary, Man vs Snake. Joining a roster of other similarly themed movies such as The King of Kong, Chasing Ghosts and the excellent High Score, the film tells the story of one man’s efforts to repeat a unique arcade world record achieved some 25…
The Arcade Blogger 