Taito's Arkanoid - 1986

"THE TIME AND ERA OF THIS STORY IS UNKNOWN. AFTER THE MOTHERSHIP "ARKANOID" WAS DESTROYED, A SPACECRAFT "VAUS" SCRAMBLED AWAY FROM IT. BUT ONLY TO BE TRAPPED IN SPACE WARPED BY SOMEONE........"

 Arkanoid was produced by Taito which was mainly distributed by Romstar in the US. The game sadly never had a dedicated upright cabinet with perhaps the exception of a bartop cabinet that merit industries made. The kit game was very popular in cocktail cabinets, also a kit for uprights and found it's way usually into Midway / Atari cabinets. Arkanoid had various marquees the correct one should have the Romstar logo on it with the bricks. Various bootleg PCB's of the game exist and the actual PCB should be a small white board not green. Arkanoid uses a unique Taito classic pinout which is also shared by many other Taito games. Arkanoid borrows aspects from both Atari's Pong & Midways Super Breakout. In the game you essentially are the vaus aka the paddle on the bottom. You need to not let that ball go past you or you will be obliterated. The game play is simple hit all of the colored bricks, and move onto the next stage once it's cleared. Certain power-ups can be acquired hidden inside the bricks. The power-ups are as follows:

Certain items can be doubled up, for instance if you get a few "S" capsules it will drastically slow the ball down. They are pretty random some games you might get more of one particular capsule. Ideally the "B" is great but before warping into the next level it's best to try to milk as many points as you can before moving on. Generally speaking when you get a capsule it usually overrides your existing power up so sometimes it's best to avoid collecting them depending on the level. The "D" capsule when you have 2 or 3 balls on the screen you won't be able to collect any more capsules, so it's best to always have 1 ball on the screen. Each capsule I believe is worth 1,000pts. Certain gold bricks on the levels can't be destroyed not even by the laser. Certain grey / silver bricks require several hits to destroy them. You also have random things that circle the board which I suppose can be construed as the enemies but they are worth points and sometimes even helps the trajectory of the ball. You can kill them with sliding the paddle into them when they come close to the bottom. Also the ball destroys them, as well as the laser. You want to try to avoid hitting the top of the screen when playing this only increases the ball speed.

I picked up my cabinet from another local collector. It was inside a classic Stern cabinet. I'm not positive but I think it was a Stern "Turtles". When I bought the cab it was painted over black which was fine because I was planning on keeping it an Arkanoid. I still wanted to sand down the cabinet to the bare wood and repaint it

 

Next was the control panel, the game uses a spinner to control the vaus mine was not spinning that great so I actually decided to take it apart clean thoroughly & lube (Teflon gel) the plastic gears on the inside and now it's running much smoother. Sadly the top of the spinner was scratched badly it's a thin purple metal sticker I decided to pull it off and underneath was nice and shinny. Below you can see pictures of the spinner parts and also before I removed the metalic sticker on top of the spinner all scratched up:
                                                               

                  

  Working on the control panel I drilled a new sheet of plexi to place over the NOS Romstar artwork along with button stickers:

 

The button / instruction card sticker sheet that came with the Romstar kits:

When I purchased the game it had the wrong marquee on it, the game had "Arkanoid revenge of doh!" marquee. Arkanoid Revenge of Doh is really a follow up to arkanoid. In the Arcade world you had Arkanoid, Tournament Arkanoid, Revenge of Doh, Arkanoid Returns. The game was such a hit that several ports to literally every console existed. I was lucky enough to track down a NOS marquee. Here is my correct marquee installed:

 

The game just had generic Romstar artwork which looked like this: 

Many people along the way have since created various artwork for the Control Panel, as well as the bezel as opposed to just an instruction card. While I think they look alright it's not original and I prefer to keep the game as original to the kit from 1986 as possible. Many collectors shy away from this game based on the fact that it was a "kit game" but personally I think this is a must have for any arcade collection. It's funny when I see this game come up for sale parts or the entire game some people think it's called "Arkanow" I can see how the text on the marquee the "I" and "D" form a "W" to some eyes.

I ended up using white T-Molding and couldn't be happier with the way that the game turned out. I just really wish I was able to break 1,000,000 points I can hit 900k. When you complete the game, a total of  33 levels on the high score screen it will say "ALL". The last round you face doh who basically looks like a "Moai" one of the Easter Island heads. A tip that I can give is instead of killing him right away try to hit him and have him turn red and purposely die. By doing so your able to milk more points if I recall I think each hit on him is worth 1,000pts? When you beat the game you are left with this message:

DIMENSION-CONTROLLING FORT "DOH" HAS NOW BEEN DEMOLISHED, AND TIME STARTED FLOWING REVERSELY. "VAUS" MANAGED TO ESCAPE FROM THE DISTORTED SPACE. BUT THE REAL VOYAGE OF "ARKANOID" IN THE GALAXY HAS ONLY STARTED......

Below is a video of me just after beating the game, you can see it says "ALL". While not my best score it shows the completion of the game.

Capcom / Taito's Ghosts 'N Goblins- 1985

Just in time for fall 2011 with Halloween right around the bend, comes another ghoulishly great platformer from Capcom - Ghosts 'N Goblins. The game was distributed by Taito America, as well as Romstar. The game was distributed in two ways; sold as a kit with a generic romstar overlay, button stickers, pcb, marquee... However some did come in dedicated purple Taito cabinets. The one I was able to track down was in the original dedicated purple cabinet which was in great shape. It's one of the heaviest cabinets in my entire collection. The game is pretty simple you play as "Sir Michael" according to my bezel, I always thought it was "Sir Arthur" trying to rescue the princess from the devil. Throughout the game you battle ghosts, goblins, birds, zombies, plants, just to name a few. You have a spear to start out with and are allowed to get hit once while you have your armor on, if you get struck you are reduced to running around in your underwear. Throughout the game you can pick up other weapons; a knife, shield, fire, axe etc.. Although only 6 stages exist in the game it's HELLishly difficult.

This particular cabinet eluded me for a long time. Despite the fact that I think the game is extremely difficult something about it keeps pulling me in. Maybe the catchy music, possibly the cool art or perhaps the fact that it's so impossible leaves me reaching for more quarters in my pocket. I saw an ad posted on craigslist for one out of state in CT, I drove with another local collector friend from NY to see it. When we got to the guys house he said he made a mistake and didn't have the game ?! Another one I saw was posted for sale in Florida but the shipping killed the deal, and I once again couldn't justify paying for the high shipping costs. Finally the same local collector who I went to CT with had one in his collection that he was willing to part with. I had helped him move his 32 games into storage locally and he said I can have it whenever I wanted to pick it up, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity.

The game was also ported onto many other home consoles that you might remember playing those versions. It made it's way to the following systems ; Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC 464/6128, Atari ST, IBM PC, Commodore 16, Sharp X68000, Nintendo Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and the NES, PSP, as well as the Apple Iphone. The game 3 years later had what some to consider a sequel that rivals the original and that's called "Ghouls N Ghosts". The sequel Ghouls n Ghosts had majorly improved graphics, you could fire up and down with your weapons and had a golden armor suit that had a special weapon to name a few. I might down the road purchase a JAMMA switcher and have both PCB's inside the cabinet. But one things for sure I'm happy that I finally found and added Ghosts 'n Goblins into my collection. The game is in great original condition. Bezel looks near perfect, marquee looks great, control panel looks great with the exception of the joystick needs to go into the chuck of my drill for cleaning. I'm not sure if they originally planned this but I like how the instructions on the bezel are just illuminated enough from the light from the marquee coming through the speaker grill for you to read when the lights are all off.

Taito's Bubble Bobble - 1986

"Now it is the beginning of a fantastic story! Let's make a journey to the cave of monsters! Good Luck!"

Most people remember the game Bubble Bobble from the port on the Nintendo console, however the arcade version of this classic game has improved graphics and that same annoying theme music that you can't get out of your head. I bought this cabinet off craigslist in MA, long road trip, but well worth it for this gem in my collection. The cabinet was originally a Williams Robotron 2084, and then was at some point converted into a Bubble Bobble. The cabinet was in very rough shape when I snatched it, the wood on the bottom was splintering, and amoung other things was in dire need of a paint job.

Pictures of the cabinet when I picked it up:


The wooden control panel was cracked, and also had microswitches installed instead of leafs. I first took the control panel off, and disconnected all of the wiring. The original 2-way restricted wico leaf joysticks were still intact, but I ended up replacing the shafts.

Top View of the damaged control panel:

The marquee for this game has two different variations, This is the marquee that was distributed in the US by Romstar. This game just like Gun.Smoke, was also a kit-only game and never existed as a dedicated cabinet in the US. The marquee was in nice shape, and only needed to be cleaned.

I used a scrapper to peel off the old Romstar generic art, which revealed more of the Robotron 2084 artwork underneath. I then used paint thinner to melt away the old black paint, and then a Dewalt palm sander to smooth out the surface of the bare wood.

I added wood filler to the bottom of the cabinet. Also to help protect it from any furthur damage I attached 2 1/2'' casters. I did not want to add any unnecessary height to the cabinet, so I made sure that the casters were short.

The majority of the Williams control panels are wood, and alot thicker then metal control panels. At first I cleaned the original Wico shafts tossing them into my chuck of my drill. Although I brought back the shine to the used shafts, they were too short on the wood panel. I ordered brand new baby blue shafts from Bob Roberts which were 4'' in height and matched the marquee rather well. (Below is before and after cleaning shafts)

During the painting process I applied several coats. I needed to also order new T-Molding which was then later applied.

I ended up ordering a used williams control panel from a KLOV member but it was in very rough shape, at least it wasn't cracked. The control panel was a combination of both wood and metal, however the metal sheet was recut locally because it was too hacked. Below you can see the generic overlay being peeled off and revealing the original williams art, and the paint thinner hard at work.

Finally the new T-Molding, and control panel overlay, and this restoration is just about finished. The only thing currently missing from this project is the button stickers. The button stickers are supposidly going to be reproduced by Rich @ This_Old_Game . Bubble Bobble is certainly a favorite in "Guscade" and is a blast to play and of course extremely addicting.