Tony’s Arcade

1972. Back when 15 cents got you one credit and a quarter got you two! Ever since I got Future Spa up and running and hooked on pinballs, I began to get the itch for EM — electro-mechanical games. Before games that were completely solid state burst on the scene around 1976, arcade games were mostly if not all electro-mechanical. Instead of bit shifters and adders, the brains of a game were coils, steppers, and bakelite contact boards. It’s amazing to think (nowadays, anyway) that a whole game could operate on different states of machinery.

I decided to be on the lookout for an EM rifle game. I remember playing those as a kid and (since I was 5 years old) not knowing what I was doing. Two Guys department store in New London had Haunted House, which I would have my dad help me play. That was an eerie game, with an 8-track player for sound effects!

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Thanks to Bill, a fellow collector and the “Trainmaster”, I was able to bring one of the more interesting games from the Golden Age into Tony’s Arcade. He picked up the game and brought it to his garage in 1998, where it waited to be worked on among Bill’s other numerous arcade projects. Bill was willing to part with such a unique game only because it was going to a good home. Space Encounters is one of those games I don’t remember seeing in the Arcades back in the day. Looking at it in person and seeing how well thought out the game as a whole makes me wonder why. Timothy at the Outerworld Arcade has some thoughts on why he thinks this game wasn’t around in many arcades. One of his ideas is that it was one of the last games to have a black and white raster display and this probably contributed to its lack of popularity. I speculate that in late 1979, Midway probably had a huge inventory of black and white monitors as well as the “L shaped” 8080 motherboard/sound boards. It’s possible company execs asked programmers to “do something with our inventory” since their crowning champion, Space Invaders, had been around for almost 2 years. Enter Space Invaders Deluxe and Space Encounters — both black and white games that used the 8080 boardset. (Space Invaders Deluxe was actually Taito’s Space Invaders II, just converted from color to black and white!)

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This Donkey Kong is in great shape — the only thing that’s unfortunate is it’s missing the side art. Not a problem as my games are mostly sandwiched together in the limited space of my arcade. When I first plugged in the Donkey Kong, it played and the image on the monitor was dim and “blooming”. It looked like someone had done an extreme zoom on the monitor’s image. I figured the monitor needed its electrolytic capacitors replaced. I ordered the Deluxe Cap Kit for the Sanyo 20EZ (the Deluxe kit includes components for the audio board) from Bob Roberts.

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I was there.

Towards the end of the 2007 Summer, I went to Lake George again. I decided I’d make sure to find Gaslight Village this time around. I dug deep into my childhood memories of where Gaslight Village was. I have memories of seeing Gaslight from the back seat of the car, looking out the window. I remembered blurred, colorful images of families walking outside the black wrought iron fences that surrounded Gaslight. I also remembered seeing amusement rides towering above everyone in full motion, loaded with laughing and screaming people. If Gaslight was near the road, then in the present day I should see something if I looked hard enough. As I drove down Rte. 9 towards the Lake George Village, I looked to my right… and there it was.

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After restoring my first Pac-Man in Tony’s Arcade, I wished I had the side and front (aka “kick”) art. The stencils for reproducing the Pac-Man art are usually around US$300, if you can find them. That is too expensive for me — some collectors want their arcade games to be in almost-pristine condition. Other collectors, like yours truly, don’t weigh too much on the “mint” condition — just as long as it’s original and fixable. In a previous post, I was able to get a Donkey Kong and another Pac-Man for a great deal. That particular Pac-Man’s cabinet was a bit rough from being moved around a lot… but it had all the artwork. I decided it was time to sell my restored Pac-Man and fix this Pac-Man up!

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After many years of looking for the elusive Donkey Kong, one practically fell in my lap. Figuratively, anyway. A friend was out doing some heating work, and came upon a Pac-Man and Donkey Kong in good shape. Both machines appeared to work but had monitor troubles. After he told me about them, I called the owner who made me a deal I couldn’t refuse. Not only did the owner give me a great price, but the machines were only 15 minutes away! Also, the owner offered to drop them off at my house. It’s nice when you’re reminded that there are a lot of good people in the world.

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It’s about time I put online some pictures of my basement arcade! There’s the neon sign that Doug gave me as a “housewarming gift”. What an excellent gift indeed! In my arcade, I have a green chalkboard hanging from the ceiling titled, “Tony’s Arcade All-Time High Scores”. Granted, “all-time” is relatively short in the existence of my arcade but I had to add some prestige. After all, Tony’s Arcade is a place where you flex your arcade skills to once again reclaim that high score you had a long time ago (and possibly in a galaxy far, far away…)

When people walk down the stairs they feel transported back into the Golden Age of Videogames. As you walk in, the arcade games are laid out in a U-shape and are silhouetted by the blue and red neon glow of the “Tony’s Arcade” sign. There’s a TV hanging from the ceiling that’s playing non-stop 80s Pop and New Wave videos. Above everything, the sound effects from all the games fill the room and transport you back to being that nerdy kid again. The nerdy kid who could attain superstar status when holding the high score of Pac-Man, Star Wars, or Tempest.

Now for the all-time high scores and some photos of Tony’s Arcade…

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The Seeburg High Power Amplifier, or SHP, is the audio amplifier found in Digital Seeburg jukeboxes from 1972 to 1978. This amplifier is capable of a maximum of 100 watts per chanal for a total of 200 watts. (The jukebox’s 12″ woofers and horns are usually connected to the 50 watt terminal for each channel. The extra power is to drive remote speakers and consolettes.) There are two main versions of this amplifier, the SHP1 and SHP3; both are interchangeable with each other. My Sunstar STD3 has the SHP1 — probably not the factory installed amplifier as the Sunstar usually came with the SHP3. Since the SHP1 and SHP3 are interchangeable, service technicians would usually swap out the SHP with another one to make speedy service calls. My Sunstar was having a few audio issues when playing. There was a lot of static (even when there wasn’t a record playing!), the volume would lower in the right channel, and there were chirps when sounds with a high amplitude (”punchy” sounds) occurred. This is how I fixed all the problems. The SHP1 and SHP3 driver boards are the same; the pre-amp boards are different. If you have a SHP3, be sure to double check your schematics before proceeding!

My repair notes may help you in your SHP troubleshooting and they may not. For a more comprehensive troubleshooting guide with the SHP amplifiers, purchase “The Seeburg SHP Amplifiers” available from Tony Miller’s website.

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My GCE Vectrex is on the fritz… a video game console from 1982 that took me 20 years to play. Back in the 1980s, it was the only way we could play vector games like Star Castle at home. Vectrex is one of those games many of us wanted as a kid but was just too expensive for our parents. A couple of years ago I received a surprise Christmas present in the form of Vectrex. Yes! Finally after all these years my inner child could reminisce in vector goodness. Vectrex had been happily playing Minestorm until about a year ago. The screen went very dim — I could hear all the sound effects, but no matter how I adjusted the brightness, I could barely see anything. This was probably due to aging electrolytic capacitors, which dry out over time and can cause symptoms like this in older vector monitors. I searched the Internet in vain for a Vectrex capacitor (cap) list to no avail. I decided to crack open my Vectrex and list all the electrolytic capacitors in there. Hopefully this list will help other Vectrex owners out there that need to do some cap maintenance! As I have a GCE Vectrex, Milton Bradley Vectrex owners may have a different set of capacitors and should verify their capacitors before ordering.

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This year’s highly anticipated arcade party finally arrived. The guys and gals who grew up in the Golden Age of Videogames were ready to transport back to the early eighties. They were ready to to duke it out hand, button, and joystick while slurping down Hosmer Mountain grape sodas and chewing Willy Wonka’s Bottlecaps. New to the Tony’s Arcade scene were Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, and the first ever pinball game — Future Spa. The glow stick awards were back with high scorers wearing them like glowing medals of coin-op honor. I rarely had a chance to compete against my comrades as I played host crediting machines, keeping score, and passing the glow sticks around. Another new addition, the 1976 Seeburg Sunstar, was blasting and thumping along with the games as people selected 70s, Disco, and 80s music. The most played song of the night? “The Hustle” by Van McCoy. A close second was “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond. I think we had one too many Boston Red Sox fans hopped up on Willy Wonka’s Nerds. If you want, you can skip right to the video of the event on YouTube.

Special thanks go to my brother, Brian, who supplied me with TONS of reissued, mint 45s for the Jukebox. Thanks to Doug and Snacky who also gave up some precious 45s for everyone’s enjoyment. Another special thanks goes to John O. who donated a Wells Gardner K4600 monitor to the cause. My “new” Pac-Man had a bad picture tube where the green gun was shorted. Christine wouldn’t have been racking up the Pac-Points if John didn’t give us the WG monitor!

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