This is again another 2017 purchase that I started work on, but haven’t got round to posting about (I will try to do better!).

I picked up this Space Fever cocktail from a guy in North Yorkshire after a frantic eBay purchase. The cabinet was advertised as “complete and working with a small glitch”, so I hit the ‘Buy It Now’ button and made my way up North to collect it. There weren’t many pictures on the eBay auction, but the main one showed it to be in not too bad condition and “working”:

After collecting the cocktail and bringing it home, I started my initial accessment of areas of concern. Most obvious was the control panels, which had clearly suffered the normal ‘wear and tear’ we see on these screen printed panels:

Also, for some reason, the main fire buttons had been replaced with these hideous, oversized green buttons (I’m hoping the control panels weren’t ‘altered’ to accommodate these…). One redeeming feature is the complete set of square buttons with minimal wear or damage. Normally you see these buttons either missing or heavily damaged through cigarette burns. You’ll also notice that the veneer around the edge of the cabinet is in really nice condition considering. I’m presuming it’s been replaced at somepoint in its life.

Now this cabinet was clearly originally a Japanese import and included all the original Japanese artwork aside from the main instruction sheet. I was hoping that the original sheet was under the horrible red, photocopied sheet that was on the top, but after removing the glass and the offending sheet, I was met with disappointment:

I’m also hoping that the “10p Play” sticker will easily remove from the original yen sticker it is partially covering:

This was pretty much the outside of the cab covered, so it was time to move inside. When I picked up the cocktail, the guy I bought it from stated that he’d drilled the locks to try and rectify the ‘glitch’ on the game. Knowing how expensive the Takigen locks are to replaced my heart sank when he told me this, but I do have some spare lock parts, so I thought I may be able to salvage the locks. How wrong I was:

The locks were completely shot (they literally look like they’ve been shot with a 12-gauge  shotgun!). Both locks had suffered the same fate so both would need replacing. Oddly, the lock on the coin box door hadn’t suffered the same treatment, possibly because it was locked open. This did reveal another bonus for this purchase (with another hidden bonus!);

The original coin box was still there, and filled with a good number of old 10p coins! I pulled the coin box out to check the play counter:

Not a massively high number, but nearly double the plays my HeliFire has seen, which goes far to explain the difference in the control panel condition.

After consoling myself with the fact I had a spare couple of locks to replace the horribly damaged ones, I opened the lid of the cabinet and had a quick peek:

You can see the remains of the locks in both bottom corners of the cabinet. That will all have to come out as I’m sure metal shavings floating around inside the cabinet isn’t a great idea. You can also see the additional transformer in the first picture. This is stepping down the good old UK voltage down to the required 110v. This will all probably have to come out as the first point of failure in these cabs are the power supplies.

The second picture also gives you a glimpse of the burn on the monitor:

It looks bad, but luckily not visible once the lid is shut thanks to the tinted plexiglass sheet located above the monitor.

Also inside are the original instruction sheets on the lid in really nice condition:

Well that’s the initial assessment done, time to start cleaning the inside of the tub out so we can fire up the game safely.