Arcade Game Pickups: Container Load of Arcades!

Happy as a pig in shit!

​Last week, I was browsing Facebook marketplace for more projects to buy that I don't have time for (as you do). Most of the time this is an innocent way to waste some time in between meetings or during my lunch break. But last week was not so innocent. I actually found an interesting listing. It was a listing for a bulk lot of arcade cabinets which were in a storage container. The description didn't say much more than that, and there were no photos. The listing was local to me, so I contacted the seller, got his phone number, and gave him a call to get the down-low

The story went like this. The seller works at a go-kart track. The track has been operating for decades, and has always had an arcade area with a number of games in it. I had actually visited the venue for another event last year, and saw a few of these games including a Time Crisis II (Namco, 1992), and air hockey machine, Hankin cocktail arcade cabinet, and a Getaway HS2 pinball machine (Williams, 1992). More importantly, they also had three twin Daytonas (Sega, 1994) linked together, for a total of six seats! This was really cool, as there aren't many places with more than a twin cabinet linked together anymore. It goes perfectly with the go-karting theme! 

But these were not the games that the guy was selling. In fact, they had a bunch of other cabinets in their arcade originally. They did a new fit-out at the venue several years ago, at which point the games went into a storage container at the rear of the property. The plan was to get them out again and put them back into operation, but for whatever reason, this  never happened. So the games sat there for about seven years until now, when the owner of the place decided to get rid of the container to make some more space. This meant that the arcade games had to go.

Fiona and I went around to check out the situation. We were led to the back of the property where the container was sitting. It didn't look so bad, but it was definitely an aged, weathered container. The seller cracked it open, and this is what we saw when we got inside...

View showing some of the junk in front of most of the arcade cabinets.

View towards the rear of the container.

It's hard to see everything that was in the container from that photo, so here's the list:

• Ace Driver: Victory Lap twin driver (Namco, 1994)
• Sega Rally Championship twin driver (Sega, 1995)
• Cyber Cycles twin motorbikes (Namco, 1995)
• LAI Skilltester (Leisure & Allied Industries, c. 1980s)
• LAI Lighthouse redemption machine (LAI Games, 2002)
• Saeco coffee vending machine (unknown age)
• Random rubbish and other miscellanea.

The only issue I noted was that there was some evidence of water ingress towards the rear of the container. The Victory Lap cabinet had gotten a little wet on the rear and side panels as a result of this. Otherwise, the games looked to be complete and mostly intact, but had obviously lived a bit of a tough life in operation. Nothing we can't fix!​

The seller wanted the games gone, and he offered us a good price if we could move them out soon (this meant TODAY). We made an offer, he accepted, and I got on the phone to my buddy to see if I could borrow his  truck for the afternoon. He said yes, so I picked it up and we started loading the games up. Before long, they were sitting in the garage, under the pergola, in the spare bedroom, and everywhere else we had spare space at home. Below are some photos of the cabinets when they finally got moved into the garage for repairs. 

Ace Driver: Victory Lap.

LAI Skilltester.

Cyber Cycles.

Sega Rally Championship.

Lighthouse redemption game.

Saeco coffee machine.

I'll be posting restoration blogs on each of these games as I get to them. It will take us a few years to get through them all, but I'll have to find the time for them somehow!