As you’ll no doubt be aware, I’ve been pretty quiet here for a while now. As is always the way, life gets in the way and hobbies take a back seat. I’ve not really had chance to do anything with my arcades since the end of the Summer last year. I haven’t stopped buying though!

This last weekend I spent a day driving around in a van moving cocktails from my garage into storage to make room for incoming cabs that I collected. I collected the last of my imported games and now officially have all of my arcades in my possession. I picked up a Donkey Kong cocktail that arrived in one container:

I also picked up a .Vs Unisystem that came over in another container. The rest of the pickups were from my friend Paul’s garage where he’s kindly been storing a couple of games for me (an incomplete cocktail that we collected last year and a very sad looking hacked red tent). After setting off at 8:30am, I got home at 10:20pm with a van full of goodies:

The hacked red tent was a purchase from eBay. It had been “converted” into a multigame cocktail, but appeared to be still using an original red tent monitor:
The listing stated it didn’t work and would need all internals replacing. I took a gamble and won the auction in the hope that the monitor worked. Worse case, it appeared to have a nice set of legs (ooo err missus!) and some original Nintendo controls.

My friend Paul kindly offered to pick up the cab for me and brought the monitor to a meet at ArcadeClub. I brought the monitor home and set about assessing the situation:


A lovely burn free screen and all looked intact. There was only one thing for it. Hook up some power and try it:


It works!! I was so happy to see this picture. I needed this monitor to complete my Popeye cocktail (after it arrived sans monitor and PCB!). I’d already found a suitable monitor in the US and had it shipped to me, but unfortunately it was necked in transit:


Badly packaged and badly handled. Lessons learned and you just have to move on. I will admit, this arriving like this really knocked me. It wasn’t just the money (although this monitor cost me nearly £400…) but the continued disappointment over one arcade.

Anyway, a quick summary of the things I’ve bought since my last update:

Donkey Kong Cocktail:
Space Fever B&W Cocktail:
Mario Bros Upright Kit:
Space Launcher Upright Control Panel:
Box of random Nintendo parts:
A lot of artwork:
An Electrocoin Midi Unigame system with a Nintendo Unisystem kit (very rare European kit):
8080 Nintendo Multikit:
A spare Sheriff dial controller:
And some nice flyers and manuals:
So as you can see, I’ve been quiet, but haven’t slowed down! Looking at everything listed above shows me why I need to break the purchase posts into smaller timeframes!

Anyway, I’m hoping to start adding some more updates here very soon as the weather is starting to improve and I’ve managed to sort out my working space in the garage. I’ve got a Donkey Kong restoration to finish, my upright Radarscope, Popeye cocktail (finally!) and my Sheriff cocktail to assemble. I’ve also got a couple more uprights to restore and decide what game to put in them.

I’ll do my best now to keep this blog updated (especially with purchases!) if only to ensure I keep ontop of all of my arcade work.