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    Ace Driver: Victory Lap

    1996 Namco Victory Lap
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    This is starting to look like a video arcade restoration blog rather than a pinball one! However, I am running out of space with too many projects sitting in the queue, so I need to sell some games to make space. Naturally, that means the larger games, particularly the twin driving cabinets, have to go!

    It hasn't been too long since I finished with my Cyber Cycles restoration, and now, I'm onto another Namco game. This time it is Namco's Ace Driver: Victory Lap (1996). It might be a little confusing why I have two game flyers at the top of this page. One for Ace Driver, and another for Victory Lap. That's because Victory Lap was not a complete, standalone game. It was sold as a conversion kit for the original Ace Driver (1994), and used the same cabinet and hardware. This restoration was mainly a cabinet tidy-up and go-over, as the game was mostly working when I first powered it up.
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    Williams WPC CPU Board Battery Corrosion Repairs (Including a Scratch Build)

    Circuit Board Repair Williams
    It seems to be the season for battery corrosion on pinball circuit boards. Over the last few months I have repaired several Williams WPC-era MPU (CPU) boards which have suffered various levels of battery corrosion. Original WPC CPU boards are now at least 33 years old, which is an eternity when it comes to electronics. By this point, a randomly-selected CPU board will have had many issues during its working life which would have necessitated bench-level repair. However, for the most part, these repairs would have consisted of replacement of a couple of defective components; a relatively non-invasive procedure. Battery corrosion repair is a different beast, and is more akin to amputation followed by transplantation. 

    Unfortunately for the boards featured in this blog post, the corrosion was discovered too late, so some extensive repairs had to be carried out. This post deals with three levels of battery corrosion: minor, moderate, and major, and the actions undertaken to get the games back into working condition. There is some great information available regarding how to tackle these kinds of repairs, such as the Alkaline Corrosion Abatement section on Pinwiki, and TerryB's Guide to Repairing Alkaline Battery Damage. I used tips from both guides to carry out these repairs. 
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    Super Mario Bros

    1992 Gottlieb Super Mario Bros
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    You might have read the blog post on Pinfest 2022 with a little confusion. I talked about bringing a Super Mario Bros (Gottlieb, 1992) machine to Pinfest. But I have never mentioned owning a Super Mario Bros machine before, and there certainly hasn't been any restoration blog posts about the machine. What gives?

    ​I had actually purchased this machine a couple of years ago from a young couple who also lived in Sydney. They had bought the machine over a decade ago and it had been sitting in the basement of their house for some time, rarely played because it had various issues. They offered it to me for a reasonable price and as I was looking to get more experience repairing Gottlieb machines, I was keen to take them up on their offer! Below are a few images of the game as provided by the seller. 

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    Pinfest 2022

    Events Pinfest Super Mario Bros
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    Life has been busy over the last few months so it has taken me a while to finally write a report on Pinfest 2022. Better late than never, so here it is! 2022 was the first year since the pandemic that things were back to "normal". Machines were set up so the venue was at capacity and social distancing was no longer mandatory. Ticket sales for each session were capped, but this was more to ensure everyone had a chance to play the machines rather than a limit set due to Covid restrictions. Pinfest 2021 was a great show, but it did feel a little emptier than usual, so Fiona and I were excited to get back into the swing of things properly.
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    Cyber Cycles

    1995 Arcade Cyber Cycles Namco
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    It's not often I work on arcade machines, but after grabbing this Cyber Cylces (Namco, 1995) as a part of a bulk arcade machine deal, I found that it was in need of a fair bit of work. So, I figured this blog post would be a good way to record the journey of learning about this game and board system. The pinball purists will have to forgive me, but even though I am a pinball die hard I still have a soft spot for video arcade games, particularly driving cabs. Cyber Cycles runs on Namco's Super System 22 hardware system, which I would say is a difficult system to repair due to a lack of schematics and general repair information. However, if I decided to sell this game, it would need to be in good working condition for the next owner, so I figure that posting some of my successes (and failures) during this repair may help out other Cyber Cycles owners in the future. Jump on, and let's ride...
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    Jurassic Park (Data East)

    1993 Data East Jurassic Park
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    I haven't had to do a full restoration on a Data East machine in a little while, so it was about time one came around. Enter Jurassic Park! This machine came from a customer who had this machine sitting in their garage. They had just moved house and wanted the machine brought back into playing condition so they could play it in their new house. As expected, the Jurassic Park was much older than the house, and was also in much poorer condition. The game did start up and enter attract mode, but a lot of playfield features did not work and a lot of parts were broken. This was going to be a full-on restoration, and I wanted to add a few little touches to really bring the machine back to its former glory. ​So, if this pinball machine was 65 million years in the making, then I was in it for the long haul with this restoration.