Gottlieb's Q*Bert - 1982

Q*Bert was manufactured by Gottlieb which was released in 1982. Gottlieb was predominately a pinball company but made a few video games . The Gottlieb staff had difficulty naming the game, and, aside from the project name "Cubes", it was untitled for most of the development process. The staff agreed the game should be named after the main character, but disagreed on the name. During it's development Q*bert was under the project name Cubes, but was briefly named Snots And Boogers and @!#?@! during development. The game was conceived by Warren Davis and Jeff Lee. Lee designed the titular character based on childhood influences and gave Q*bert a large nose that shoots projectiles. His original idea involved traversing a pyramid to shoot enemies, but Davis removed the shooting game mechanic to simplify game play. A few early test models, however, were produced with @!#?@! as the title on the units' artwork. During a meeting, "Hubert" was suggested, and a staff member thought of combining "Cubes" and "Hubert" into "Cubert". Art director Richard Tracy changed the name to "Q-bert", and the dash was later changed to an asterisk. The game play consists of the levels are designed as pyramids with various colors that you need to change them to in order to advance to the next level. The game also consists of other characters which is known on the back of the flyer as "Who's who, and what's what". You have a green character with glasses known as "Slick", he is no threat to Q*Bert if you touch him you earn points but he changes the cubes he hops on back to their original color. Another character like his brother slick, "Sam" makes Q*Bert's job harder by changing the colors of the cubes he touches. You also have a green dot / ball when Q*Bert touches it the magic ball will freeze the board for a short time enabling Q*Bert to freely hop around to try and complete his task. When a purple ball reaches the bottom it becomes "Coily". This snake villain chases Q*Bert trying to smash him. Other enemies include a "Wrong way" character that travels sideways and will stop Q*Bert if they touch. Another enemy just like wrong way is "Ugg" he travels sideways and is dangerous to touch. Lastly you will notice floating discs around the level, you want to lour the snake / coily to the edge of the pyramid and than hop on a disc this will yield you 500pts as well as trigger the solenoid.

Q*Bert Merchandise

Q*Bert was outside of probably Pac-Man & Donkey Kong one of the most merchandised arcade games. It had it's own short cartoon, lunch boxes, toys, board games, puzzles, books, pencils, watches, house ware items etc.. Q*Bert was a pop culture icon. Soon Q*Bert along with many other gaming icons will be resurrected back to the public in Disney's new movie "Wreck It Ralph". As a side note I'm a big fan of Disney and visit Disney World every so often, I wasn't allowed to check out "Disney Quest" which I was told is essentially my basement. I really wish Disney would drop off a "Fix It Felix Jr" to my house !

Disney's Wreck It Ralph

Disney's Wreck It Ralph

Now for a fairly incredible craigslist story on how I obtained my Q*Bert. This guy for a while posted a Q*Bert on craigslist at $950.00 obo, out of no where dropped it down to 300.00, I spoke with him on the phone he claims it's not his game it's his friends game and his friend had 2 Q*bert's and was moving to I think he said Carolina..The reason the price was dropped according to the seller was because when someone went to look at the game which when they did; they fiddled with it and offered him a low balling 150.00 for it or so he claimed. Since they left he claims the games not working, but was working a few days prior. The picture he posted I said to him, that photo looks like an ebay listing photo in IL, and he's in NY. After I called him out on that he began to become frazzled even though the guy claims he posted the photos, he seemed to rush me off the phone.. I asked him for an address of where the game is located, he said it's a new road and wanted to meet me at a Chinese restaurant ? I'm thinking maybe he has a conversion game or whatever and doesn't want to post photos of the actual machine if one even exists. The guy also said he had other stuff for sale but I've been there done that drove to CT once and the guy tried to bait and switch me and some friends and we didn't bite.  And to add to all of this he gave the "I'm going to burn it and get more satisfaction speech" on the phone. Guy seemed very shady on the phone, I've been in sales for a long time and if I'm selling something I treat the buyer correctly. Supposedly the game was located in Armonk Westchester NY. I didn't really want to drive 2-3hrs for no reason. Being that the photo was wrong, he wanted to meet me at some random Chinese restaurant, and it wasn't exactly around the block from my house. At this point I'm thinking this is a scam and a waste of time, but It was my day off so I figured I would entertain the possibility of it actually being legit.

Well... Several @!#?@! hours later after sitting in traffic... Turns out he was telling the TRUTH!! I finally scored a @!#?@! Q*BERT!

The game looks as though it was HUO (Home Use Only) for what it's worth the game had slightly over 100 total plays. The inside of this thing is pretty immaculate to me considering it's age Id be willing to bet he had to be the original owner, if not it was hardly used and well maintained.

Inside of Q*Bert

Coin Counter, Service Switch, Volume Controls

The game has the raised Gottlieb coin door, even saw the Gottlieb card inside to be mailed away, the knocker all boards even the monitor looks fresh, all the boards are present and still protected by a large cardboard.This thing looks like it was in a time capsule. It does have CPO ware, minor chipping on the bottom from being moved around which are the only issues IMO. The raised Gottlieb coin door is a fairly sought after part that sometimes is not present on the cabinet. Some alternative Q*Bert's had blank doors used mainly with the "Mellow Yellow Q*Berts" which often found their way into 7-11's.

The owners friend made all of these arrangements, so the dude rolls up in a white dealer plate cargo van.

And I'm like man I'm either getting kidnapped, rapped, killed all three.. but I decided to follow him to this house that apparently had an 8 car garage.. I don't even think on MTV cribs have I witnessed that. So sure enough we pull up to huge mechanical iron gates with a security pad... and sure enough one of the biggest houses I've ever seen, dude wasn't lying two 4 car garages across from each other, guy had a legitimate lift that you would see in a service bay in one of the garage spots and trust me when I tell you it wasn't a standard size garage it was massive!!.. in the back left corner of the 4th bay of this mansion garage lol was low and behold this sparkling Q*Bert.

Clean Original Q*Bert Monitor Chassis

Q*Bert Rom Chips

Q*Bert Power Supply

I plugged it in, fired it up..nothing it was dead. I didn't even care considering the condition I was ready to take this thing at 3 beans regardless, especially after traveling blah blah. I plugged in some Christmas lights he had laying around in the garage and told him that likely the people that came prior flipped both the interlock switch as well as the test switch on the outlet. And wouldn't you know it the Q*Bert fired up like a champ! The monitor was out of synch after making the adjustments it looked great. The PCB's were all incredibly clean.

So was this ad a scam, NOPE! Sometimes you just gotta @!#?@! go for it!  I got really @!#?@!ing lucky. I have been looking on and off for about 6+ years sometimes if your adventurous and patient or perhaps lucky enough you will find the game in the condition and price you want.

While I generally for the most part like to fully restore games this Q*Bert did not really require that much time money or effort to get it working 100% again. Q*Bert wasn't moving on the levels, but I wasn't able to look under the control panel until I got the game home. Most control panels have 2-3 latches, Q*Bert actually has 1 latch slightly off center to the right, and 2 wing nuts holding down the control panel which slides forward / away instead of lifting up or down. Once I was able to take the control panel off I noticed why Q*Bert wasn't moving, a rubber sleeve wasn't touching the micro switches. Being that the inside of the cabinet was clean sure enough I spotted the part that had fallen down on the inside of the cabinet.

 

I actually ordered a joystick rebuild kit which I didn't install but wanted to have one on hand from www.twistywristarcade.com as well as a new knocker solenoid. The Knocker / Solenoid is a nifty little feature where if you hop on a disc and Coily falls off the pyramid or if Q*Bert falls off you would hear a "Knock" on the inside of the cabinet, As if the character fell on the inside. Gottlieb was a pinball company who dealt with solenoids so they must of had the idea to incorporate it into a video game which really does add a nice novelty element to the game. My original knocker wasn't working so I replaced it, and now it's working great. The knocker requires 30v and can be turned on or off via a dip switch on the PCB.

New Solenoid / Knocker

One problem that Q*Bert's have is the original battery that's installed to the PCB could potentially have a tendency to leak / create battery acid damage. I took an early precaution and just de-soldered it from my board entirely. They battery is used for saving high scores but other methods have been implemented in creating safer ways to do so, for now I just removed my battery.

The marquee light wasn't illuminating so I had some spare FS-2 starters laying around, popped one in, and sure enough the marquee light turned on.

Q*Bert Marquee

The control panel overlay isn't perfect but I don't think I'll be replacing it anytime soon as I believe the CPO still has plenty of years left, I might change my mind though. You will also notice that the joystick is mounted for a diagonal use set up for controlling Q*Bert. After I used a magic eraser the control panel pops a little bit more. Below are pictures before cleaning the control panel.

Article from Computer & Video Games Magazine April 83' Review:

Below is a video of the power up and game play. During power up you will hear the solenoid knock, along with Q*Bert saying "Hello I'm Turned On". Throughout the game play you can hear the solenoid knock as coily falls off the pyramid.

Namco / Atari's Dig Dug - 1982

Dig Dug was produced by Namco, and was distributed by Atari in the US. Dig Dug is essentially a maze game where you can dig your own path. Your characters name is Dig Dug and you battle Pooka's and Fygar's. The enemy characters have the capability to float through the maze and Fygar's can breathe fire. Dig Dug can destroy the enemies by "pumping" them up until they explode. Also a way to earn a massive amount of points is by using a boulder or a rock and having it fall down on multiple enemies. On the levels you are also given a bonus item which also results in points. You can partially pump an enemy and than walk through them, this helps build up chances of  combining enemies and flattening them with a rock for multiple points. Each round gets completed once all the enemies are destroyed or if they escape.

Not really much to say about my game other than I bought it at an auction locally at the same time I bought my Circus Charlie. I bought it because the price was right and the monitor was bright and crisp and had a cap kit recently done to it. It was however missing the glass bezel when I bought the machine. A member on BYOAC was looking to MAME a Dig Dug cabinet the guy was in TX and was hesitant about sending the glass bezel because he didn't want it to break during shipping, but I received it with no problems. I went onto mikesarcade website http://www.mikesarcade.com/arcade/artwork/ataricoin.pdf and printed out Atari Coin Door Inserts which look pretty neat. Below is a picture of my Dig Dug cabinet. In terms of restoration I really didn't do much with this game, I think to date it's likely the least amount of money I've ever put into a game. But it still plays and looks fantastic. Dig Dug certainly has it's fan base, many ports throughout various consoles along with mobile versions of the game still exist today even after 30+ years It's still a very popular game today.

Here is the review for Dig Dug, from the June issue of Computer+Video Games from the year 1982.

Atari's Centipede - 1980

Centipede was and still is a great Atari classic that utilized a 2 1/4'' track ball with one button to fire. It also had Atari's cone buttons also known as volcano player one and player two start buttons. The game has a centipede that makes it's way down the screen your goal is to destroy it completely to move to the next round which is essentially the same thing with increased difficulty and the background colors change. You have mushrooms that you need to destroy that get in your way along with a spider, and other various bugs. When I first got the cabinet it was converted to a "Twin Cobra". Romstar's Twin Cobra was a kit game so it found it's way into various dedicated cabinets, I decided to convert this back to it's original glory which was a centipede.

Here you can see the Centipede that was converted to a Twin Cobra. The good news is that I paid next to nothing for the cabinet, and luckily had a working CRT, and Twin Cobra PCB that I would later sell to get money for this project. I ended up selling all of the Twin Cobra Parts the marquee, bezel, pcb etc.. Unfortunately the control panel needed to be replaced since it was drilled too many times. Other parts that needed to be required to convert this back was the Centipede PCB, Marquee,Bezel, Cardboard Blue Bezel, Control Panel, Control Panel CPO, a Track Ball Rebuild Kit, and lastly Side Art. The game was already wired for JAMMA so I decided to keep it that way since I heard many problems existed with the original Atari Linear Power Supply.  While waiting for the parts to come I decided to strip the black paint off the sides of the cabinet sure enough I was right this was at some point in it's life certainly a centipede. The art on the other side was completely missing so I decided to completely go down to the bare I think It's particle board or pressed wood it's not plywood that's for sure. Once I got it down to that point I sanded, primed, and painted it white.

The parts came in and looked great. It was looking more and more like a Centipede. Since I was keeping it JAMMA I needed to obtain a JAMMA Adapter, I remember it was tough matching up the p1 up,down,left,right to correspond to the track ball movements properly but eventually all was working. Once the controls were working the track ball still needed to be rebuilt. Basically 6 new bearings and 3 new rollers, in addition to a new 2 1/4'' snow white track ball made it rolling smooth again. I can't emphasize enough how installing a new rebuild kit for the track ball has such a massive impact.

I was testing the monitor outside of the game to make sure it was working properly before installing. As a side note I find that the best way to get these machines into a basement is to reduce the weight as much as possible. You want to pull the monitor, glass bezel, back door, sometimes even the control panel, and not a bad idea to remove the PCB for protection. After everything was installed it's really hard to tell this game was ever a Twin Cobra. I'm glad I was able to restore this game to it's original glory. Below is a photo of the end result.

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.

Konami / Centuri's Circus Charlie - 1984

Circus Charlie was produced by Konami in Japan, which was distributed by Centuri locally. The game had it's own dedicated cabinet with a 2-way monroe joystick. The game features 6 stages that you are able to choose to earn points. The first stage Charlie is riding a lion jumping through rings of fire. The 2nd stage you walk a tight rope jumping over monkeys. The 3rd stage you hop on trampolines avoiding knives and flaming breath coming from the other circus performers as you make your way to the goal. On this stage if you hop too many times on the same trampoline you will burst through the top of the circus tent causing you to lose a life. Also if you beat this stage twice you will be placed on a similar trampoline board only this time dolphins will be the main obstacle. Stage 4 which is considered "hard" Charlie balances on a ball and hops to other balls to the goal. On stage 5 which is considered "harder" Charlie is riding on a horse where you can have the horse speed up or slow down jumping on spring boards or sometimes going under them to make it to the goal. On this stage when you hold back on the joystick while on the spring board you can accumulate multiple jumps on the same spring board yielding you a considerable amount of points. Stage 6 is considered "hardest". On stage 6 you swing from the trapeze, sometimes grabbing onto other clowns other times bouncing off of trampolines on the ground.

Below is a picture of the stage select screen, another thing to note that is obviously done on purpose is that the game was made in 1983, distributed in 1984 at the time the Japanese game designers thought it would be cleaver to place the high score "19830" as the default when they were producing the game. They added a zero to the 1983 because they wanted it to be some what of a challenge to get the high score.


The game will let you complete the same stage a few times before giving you a "no more" message forcing you to move on to a different challenge. You have various secrets throughout Circus Charlie arcade game. On level one for instance if you jump backwards through a ring of fire on your lion and back through the same ring you will see another clown appear jump and grab him for an extra life. The stage I believe only allows you to earn 1 free player using this trick each time. The same level although considered easy if you keep repeating it will get progressively harder. Other places to jump backwards on level one is over the fire pits on the ground. Sometimes you will be rewarded with a coin that will pop up. If you collect all of the money bags on the level you will get a bonus at the end. The game allocates you a bonus timer you can take as long as you want on a stage but it's ideal to make it to the end the quicker the more points you will yield from the bonus timer up to 10,000 points.This game to me is the game that actually got me into this hobby all together. It's an obscure game that does have a cult following but those who know it seem to love it. When I was younger I went to sleep away camp and this was one of the games that was in the rec room that we were able to play. This was one of the games that I was actually good at on location and liked the fact that you can choose various stages to get more of a variety in game play. So I really wanted to play this game again it was roughly 20 years since I was able to. Down the road I discovered M.A.M.E. Those who don't know M.A.M.E. Stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. MAME allows you to simulate the older arcade games. The only problem was that I was playing circus charlie on a key board. After research I eventually ended up building a MAME cabinet which has thousands of games that it emulates. I discovered other titles in MAME such as Gun.smoke which landed me the world record, so I set out to buy / build a dedicated Gun.smoke cabinet. The thing is MAME is great in terms of testing a game out but it's not perfect and just not the same as having a dedicated cabinet. The sounds / video aren't perfect the controls aren't always the same and of course you don't have the artwork that sometimes makes the games.

I tracked down a Circus Charlie at a local arcade auction and payed a very fair price for it, but was pretty beat up condition. However the game was working which is all I cared about, being that this game was the one that got me into this hobby I had to have it. Maybe one day down the road I'll find a better condition cabinet for this game but I do also have a spare PCB for Circus Charlie. In terms of any restoration I didn't really do much to the game being that the side art is not being reproduced. It never had any bezel art work which makes it slightly boring. The game does have stenciled stars on the front of the cabinet and sticks out like a soar thumb in an arcade lineup. The control panel overlay cleaned up very nicely after using a magic eraser. I put grease in the two-way monroe joystick which helped drastically. Replaced the buttons. Touched up the inside blue part along with the stars on the front of the cabinet. The cabinet also does have the original lettering "centuri" logo on the coin door. I also replaced the power supply with a brand new one.

The game made it's way to several home consoles as well including Famicom, C64, MSX Playstation (Konami's greatest hits), and eventually made it's way full circle again back on the arcade in Konami's 80's AC Special (known as Konami's 80's Gallery in Japan) which actually used a hard drive. The arcade version had superior graphics to any of the home console ports.