This post is being written as a tutorial, as some may find this helpful. Some may also find it very unhelpful, but at least I tried. Maybe you will come crawling back here the next time you get zapped with 20,000 volts while tweaking your pots (damn, that sounds bad!).

I went out today to a few stores, trying unsuccessfully to find a mirror that I could clip on the front of a game and position it so I could easily adjust the monitor from around back. I saw a post somewhere (KLOV.com?) with a picture of one that someone rigged. I don’t remember what post it was in…it was quite a while ago when I saw it. Thanks to whomever posted that as it got me started with this.

Everything I got for this came from Walmart. I know Walmart sucks, and they have that whole slave labor thing going, but I’m cheap and I bet you are too. Here is a parts list:

1 Mirror – $4.37
SKU: 36826-00092

This hand held mirror was in the aisle with hair accessories…elastics, brushes, stuff like that. There were 2 that were similiar, this being the larger of those 2. It’s a rounded rectangle, with a handle that has a whole in the end. Scroll down further to see a pic.

1 Clip on Desk Lamp – $7.97
SKU: Too lazy to move from my chair to look

This was in the aisle with regular lamps, and looks like this:

Assemby Instructions:

1. First you need to ruin this lamp. Remove the nut around the switch with some pliers:

2. After you do that, the socket for the bulb will have some slack and hang down a bit inside the reflector. Cut the two wires and pull the bulb holder out. You’ll see the wires sticking through on the inside, tied in a knot.

3. Untie the knot, and pull the cord out through the other end of the tube.

4. You have to get that nut off that’s holding the reflector shade on. I ended up using visegrips to grab hold of it on the inside, and then I turned it and the shade until it was lose enough to remove by hand.

Now, you should have a bare end like this:

I thought I was going to need that nut later, but didn’t end up using it.

5. This is the cool part. Take the mirror, and put the threaded end of the rod through the hole in the handle. If you push on it a bit, it will go about half way in. Then just spin the mirror to the right and it will self thread onto the end. It worked great for me, and ended up very tight. Be careful though…if you go all hogwild on it, you may strip it.

It should now look like this, minus the dirty rug:

Here it is in action:

The clamp has a little bit of foam on the inside of the jaws to protect whatever you clamp it to. It’s working fine now, but the foam seems a bit thin. It may be a good idea to buy some thicker foam to stick in there at some point.

Do not show this to your wife. She will probably steal it from you. If she does spot it, tell her you need it to put your face on in the morning.

For those who haven’t read everything on this site (AKA “losers” ), everything was working great on my Defender except for the joystick, which was slow and sloppy. I ordered a repro replacement from MantisAmusements.com.

These parts are an exact replica of NOS Defender joystick parts. Here is the old one before I took it apart:

If you look closely at the round hole between the 2 screws in the bottom of the picture, you’ll see the pin that sits in it. See how much room it has to move in there? That is all wear from years of people Defendering like there’s no tomorrow. That hole should be tight around that pin, so it has just enough room to move and no more. I changed these parts, and the joystick is like brand new!

I played a few rounds, and the game is awesome now that you can actually control the ship better. However….Defender totally kicks my ass! I never played it in the arcade, but I was pretty good at the Atari 2600 version. I am dying to get this in the game room now, but there isn’t room until we move everything around.

and the only cure is more cowbell arcade games!.

In 1981, when leg warmers were just starting to get popular, long before Richard Dean Anderson was running around shooting laser beams all over the place, Defender’s baby brother was born. Ladies and gentleman, children of all ages….I give you….

STARGATE

This game was released one year after Defender as its sequel. As if Defender wasn’t hard enough, they supposedly made this one even harder. Those dirty rat bastards.

I got this game from the same location I picked up the skill crane that started all this madness back in October of ‘06. The building was supposed to be demolished to make way for a hotel. I was driving by to get some starbucks, and noticed the building was still there with a “indoor flea market sign” up. I went in to see what was left, and spotted this way way in the back. I almost missed it. The back room was pitch black. I wasn’t going to go back there but I ended up just barely spotting the back of it. This was 2 days ago, and I had no cash. The nice guy that owns the building wanted $50 for it. The game wasn’t working, but $50 is a great deal. I just couldn’t swing it. I told him I would probably come back in a few days after I pay my bills and he said if it was still there I could get it for $35.

So…I swung by this morning after getting more caffeine and picked it up.

It took me forever to drill the lock out of the bottom coin door. I heard change rattling around in there! When I finally wrecked a few drill bits, this is what I found:

$1.50 and an old bottle of white out. Now, $1.50 might actually buy a coffee, as long as I don’t get it from starbucks.

I looked the boards over. No corrosion from the batteries. The original style AA battery holder is in place, with batteries and all, so I got lucky the boards weren’t ruined. I’ll swap them for a lithium battery per Bob Roberts article. I fired it up, and it’s making game sounds. I can’t coin it up, but I don’t know if its just sitting in setup mode or not. The monitor has high voltage, but the screen is all screwy. That’s were I left it. I’ll do a cap kit on it and see what happens.

Nothing new in arcade land to report today. I just spotted a link to this video on BoingBoing.net…haven’t seen it in ages. It may be time to signup for this.

Making more progress:

I have the black raster portion to do, along with some halftones in red in that second rainbow strip from the top. Without all the black/blue stuff I keep wanting to see this with a palm tree for some reason.

This guy should have just said no.

…provided you have a time machine:

Click the pic to see it in larger sizes.

I got this on eBay. I had a frame that I bought for something else and it fit well in it, but was missing something so I stuck some Pac-Man Colorforms on the glass. I think this ad came from a comic book. It has a Bubble Yum ad on the backside. Mmmmm…..Bubble Yum rocks!

I’m getting very close to finishing my Moon Patrol restoration. I got the cabinet back in December of 2006. Since then I have been looking for a decent bezel on eBay, and was having a hard time finding one. They just don’t seem to turn up for some reason. I finally found one recently, which was in horrible condition:

I contacted Rich from ThisOldGame.com. He makes great repro art for Space Invaders, Burgertime, and other games. He said he would reproduce these if I can get him a good vector drawing of it! So, I’m now in the process of working on the redraw/cleanup for this using Photoshop and Illustrator. It’s coming along good so far. Here is a closeup of the original scan so you can see what I’m up against:

You can see all the cracks throughout the paint…it looks a bit like Bea Arthur after she’s been in the sun too long.

Are you done vomiting? OK…let’s continue….

This pic shows what I’ve got done so far:

Here is a closer view:

It looks a little fuzzy in that image, but it should look perfect when done. The fuzz is just due to the way it appears on screen and the level of zoom, etc…

Checkout the 2 Mad Magazines I got to add to our arcade walls:

The issue numbers are 233 and 230 if you want to track them down for yourself. I bought them from this website:

MadMack.com 

Hey there, hi there, ho there. I haven’t done much of anything in quite a while on Pac-Man. I’ve been busy with other projects, and have been holding off on it a bit to figure out what I’m going to do about the sideart.

I was planning on buying a new control panel from Arcadeshop.com for $125 (ouch!). I recently saw a used one on eBay and ended up winning it for $2.25.

I’ll need to strip it, fill the extra holes, refinish it, and put a new CPO on it. I’m on the lookout for a good deal on a CPO, so if you see one let me know.

While grabbing the pic for this from my Pac-Man pictures folder, I spotted the pics of the cabinet after I stripped the black paint off it and before I got it down to bare wood. It really made me miss seeing the cabinet with art on it…I may need to get moving on this one soon!