I got my Nintendo coin stickers today from Rich at ThisOldGame.com.

I ordered one white set for my Popeye, and one yellow for my future Donkey Kong should I ever get one. Here are the coin mech stickers, complete with dirty coin door:

I haven’t stuck the larger sticker below the control panel yet, because I plan on restoring the cabinet someday.

If you have a Popeye or a Donkey Kong, you need to go buy these now!

Since I picked up Popeye, I’ve done a little bit of work on it. The marquee light was out, and it was an odd size fixture that is supposedly very difficult to get bulbs for. I removed it and replaced it with one of these $15 lights from Home Depot:

The wiring in Nintendo cabinets was designed for 100 VAC, which is what they use in Japan instead of 120 VAC. In cabinets that were sold in the US, they used a step down transformer (more than meets the eye) to drop the 120 down to 100. They then use that 100 VAC to power the marquee light and monitor. Because I’m replacing the light (and because I’m not Japanese), I had to tap into the 120 VAC at a distribution block in the bottom of the cabinet before it goes to the transformer.

Let there be light!

As you probably saw in my last post about this, the control panel was a little beat up.

The control panel plexiglass had a big crack in the bottom left. Crack kills, so we had to fix this. I was (and still am) on the lookout for a NOS control panel overlay for this. I posted in the RGVAC newsgroup looking for one, and someone replied saying they had an original used one in decent shape. I got it cheap, and it looks a lot better than what was there. The joystick was completely shot, and one of the buttons was the wrong color. I put in an order at MikesArcade.com for a replacement joystick and buttons a few days ago. That order and the replacement CPO came in today. I printed out a new instruction card, and slapped it all together.

OK…I mentioned in another post that I would be picking up another game. I can mention it now because it’s safely in the arcade.

For those of you that are blind (or visually impaired like the sailor above), that game is non other than:

.
If anyone knows the deal with Popeye’s left eye, please share. Is it missing? Does he have a stray piece of spinach stuck in it? WHAT is the deal?

On a sidenote, I saw these forearm lifting straps the other day - “The Forearm Forklift“. I wonder if Popeye was a fervent user of those? That would certainly explain his enormous, disproportionately sized forearms. That company should definitely look into using Popeye in their ads.

I traded the web design of this site to get this game, so other than a lot of time it didn’t cost me any actual green stuff (money…not spinach).
Here it is in all its glory:

As you can see, it’s going to need some work. The side art is almost gone. It should look like this:

The control panel is a bit worn out, and will need a new joystick, overlay, and plexiglass.

The previous owner had a control panel overlay for it, so that’s a plus. The screen is pretty poor. It’s very faded, and scrunched together at the top. I’ll have to do a cap kit on it. I have yet to do one, and am not too good with a soldering iron yet, so we’ll see how that goes!

There was a Cracker Barrel right down the street from where we got this, so we stopped there for breakfast before doing the pickup. While browsing through the store, I found these:

If you observe closely, you’ll notice he’s closing his RIGHT eye in the figure above! I’m seriously starting to think he’s faking an eye injury to pick up chicks. Skinny, skinny chicks. Kate Moss has NOTHING on Olive Oyl.