This past Saturday my wife and I almost bit the big one picking up a Cosmic Avenger in Long Island, NY. I’m not that familiar with the roads there, and we were on 495 heading back home in my rust bucket of a truck. I was a bit nervous driving that far with it (3hrs and 15 mins each way), but couldn’t pass up a good deal ($150). I was in the slow lane, because my truck is not exactly a racing vehicle. The lane was suddenly ending in front of us, and I didn’t see any signs warning about it ahead of time. I looked very quickly to my left and there was a guy jackass behind me in the left lane. I put my blinker on to get over, and he gunned it! The bastard sped up. I must have been a quarter inch from him on the left and the same distance from the guard rail. I swerved and the game rocked all over the place. I don’t know how we didn’t manage to wipe out, but I’m certainly glad we didn’t. I guess it’s true what they say about NY drivers.

Here’s a few pics of it:

It’s not in mint shape, but I’d say it in pretty good condition. It could definitely use new t-molding, and some work here and there to make it look a little nicer.

This is my first Universal cabinet. I love the design of it. The art on the inside back of the cabinet (back splash?) is a cool touch that you don’t see in many other manufactures’ games. Another thing I found very cool is that there are skids on the back of the cabinet so you won’t damage it when transporting it on it’s back:

The game works fine, but the marquee and back splash art lights were out. Here’s what the marquee light looked like when I got it:

and the back splash light:

These fixtures are not standard in the US as far as I can tell. The marquee light fixture had a bulb in it, and it was a standard size (can’t remember at the moment). If you notice in that first picture, they moved the connector for the right side of the bulb way over, and put a C-clamp on it to hold it in place! That adjustment made it fit a standard sized bulb. I’m not too crazy about the C-clamp being there. I think they didn’t have enough room to put a screw there without splitting the wood. It would have made more sense to move both connectors out so they could screw them in place.

I checked both ballasts with my meter and they were fine, but I figured it would be better to just replace both fixtures with newer ones that take standard bulbs. I bought (2) $15 GE 18″ light fixtures for this. Here’s the one for the back splash:

Here’s the one for the marquee:

That one was difficult to fit in the small space. I had to angle it to match the angle of the piece of wood that the old light was mounted on. I drove 2 screws through the case to mount it. It’s not possible to remove the bulb without removing the 2 screws that hold the fixture to the casing. That’s pretty easy to do so I’m not worried about it.

Here it is lit up:

The buttons on the control panel are supposed to light up too, but they don’t. I’ll work on fixing that soon.

Our arcade is getting pretty crazy now (like it wasn’t before)! Here’s a pic showing how it looks in relation to the rest of the room:

If you turn a little bit, you can see the small area that has now become an entrance to this section of the arcade:

Here’s what it looks like from that entrance…you can just barely see it:

Why my wife has not kicked me out of the house yet is a mystery.