I’m a huge fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Silly, I know.  His movies are pretty campy and most of the products that bare the name seem to be marginal at best.  However, the Terminator series of movies (particularly Judgement Day) aligned well with the peak of pinball in the early 90’s to result in the creation of this timeless classic DMD pin.  Williams made a lot of this machine.  They also got played a lot.  It’s hard to find a T2 now that isn’t worn to pieces.

This particular machine was a good candidate for restoration as the cabinet structure was excellent and the playfield had minor wear around the inserts.  Everything else needed some pretty serious attention.

The circuit boards had been repaired by someone who really didn’t care what it looked like.  The repairs worked fine enough, but there was a lot of extra wiring, re-routing and cut-outs.  All of this had to be replaced back to original condition.  Additionally, the sound board stopped working and the display was malfunctioning when we picked this machine up.

On the playfield, all of the targets were bent, worn and mangled.  The skull was battered (actually looked realistic) and the H/K ship was typically missing.   All repairable, but expensive.  We literally doubled our investment in parts alone on this machine.

Lastly, we converted the entire machine over to carefully selected color matched LEDs and LED flashers.  Additionally, we created custom 3 color LED under cabinet lighting effects  – which will not be available on all restored machines from Castle Classic Arcade.

As a result, this machine came out looking awesome.  Turn the lights down a little, and this machine blows you away with the lighting effects.

Restoration Details

Here’s the breakdown of items that went into this restoration:

• Cabinet and head repair and repaint
• metallic graphite gun launcher
• Playfield strip/touchup/deep polish
• Insert decals
• Wireforms chrome polished
• Ramps flame polished
• New targets (11)
• New pop bumpers (3)
• New chrome skull
• New H/K ship – with microprocessor controlled LED effects (MOD)
• New flippers and hardware
• Rebuild coin door
• New legs and hardware
• New cabinet protectors (red)
• New display
• New ramp entrance plastics
• New lane plastics
• New rubber (white)
• New flipper buttons
• New apron stickers
• Repaired audio board
• Repaired driver board
• Repaired CPU board
• Full LED conversion
• 3 color LED under cabinet lighting flash effects

Pictures and Video

Pacman, Ms. Pacman and Galaga are easily the most identifiable arcade games of the 1980’s.   They were both manufactured using the same cabinet style, however not the exact same cabinet.

Originally, in 1980, Pacman was released in it’s iconic cabinet (and yellow color) and took the world by storm.  Ms. Pacman was it’s successor in 1981, originally marketed to appeal to the female gamer (thus the blue, yellow and pink colors).  It really didnt matter as Ms. Pacman quickly overtook Pacman as the most popular game ever because of it’s changing maze and better game play.

Also in 1981, Galaga was actually an experiment in reusing the same game hardware and appeared to be released in cost reduced form – as the cabinets were actually made from pressed cardboard instead of the original multi-ply wood design.  Over the years, Galaga machines have suffered from age. Most of the time, cardboard cabinet has absorbed so much water that it mushrooms and de-laminates to a point of no-return.  As a result, we typically will use Ms. Pacman cabinets and convert them over to Galaga, or go the route of the “reunion style” and put both Galaga and Ms. Pacman graphics on the cabinet.  This emulates the 20th Anniversary Reunion arcade games that were re-released in the early 2000’s, but at a much reduced cost.

All cabinets of this style hold the 19″ vertically oriented monitor.  This means that the 4×3 monitor i s turned 90 degrees so that it sits taller than wider.  This is the orientation for many games of the early 1980’s such as: Galaga, Pacman, Ms. Pacman, Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, Centipede, Millipede etc.   Also, the monitor in these cabinets are laid down almost flat – like a table.