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Tales of the Arabian Nights (TOTAN) pinball is one of my “grail” pins… meaning, a machine that I’ve been looking to own for quite some time.   These machines are very hard as most collectors hold on to them forever.   These machines are considered the most beautiful pinball machines ever made due to the machine layout, style, music and theme.

We were lucky enough to actually have 2 machines to restore.   They both were in reasonable shape considering, but suffered horribly from incandescent lamp burn and the resulting heat damage.   The heat from the standard bulbs over time charred the play field and dried out the inserts causing them to lift off the play field.

 THIS GAME IS FOR SALE

Cabinet Restoration

• Original artwork was salvaged.  Color keyed repairs and wood damage repaired.
• clear coat re-applied over entire surface to lock in the repairs and prevent any further sun damage and abrasion wear
• New legs, misc hardware, buttons
• Restored coin door

Circuitry Restoration

The latest release of the WPC series of circuit boards have become more reliable with less parts with one exception, the power driver boards.  Williams did away with separate bridge rectifiers and went with cost effective power diodes to do the same function.   However, these items do not disperse heat well at all.   Ironically, the diodes that drive the general illumination (that did all the damage to the play field) also caused a lot of heat damage on the driver board.    Anyone who says LEDs don’t save pinball machines are crazy because if this machine had been converted earlier, all of these repairs would not have been necessary.

Playfield Restoration

The play field was fully dismantled and cleaned.   All inserts were cut out, cleaned and leveled.  Multiple series of automotive clear coat and water slide graphics were necessary to get the play field flat and ready for paint work repair.   The burned natural wood area was re-colored and hole damage was repaired and painted.   Multiple airbrush layers were locked in with more automotive clear (I can’t even count how many)… and finally the whole play field was final wet sanded and buffed.

The following items were also upgraded

• Wareroom rail was epoxy coated white for a different look as was the skill shot
• Scimitar blade was plated in nickel for an unbelievable look
• New apron
• All new plastics
• All new ramps
• All LED conversion
• New pop bumper assemblies
• New rubber and balls

Before and After

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Robot Girlfriend 1.0

Pretty much since the beginning of pinball time, women have been depicted on pinball machines to allure the typical patrons.  However, none were so popular as Bally Xenon from 1980. This machine was not only futuristic looking, but employed cutting edge technology that still surprises tech-heads today with what the Bally engineers could accomplish.

Xenon was based off the Bally’s recently designed microprocessor based pinball machines, but stepped it up with the following additions:

• Auxiliary processor controlled lamp driver board to accomplish a dramatic light show in the cabinet back-box.   This back-box also housed 2 custom back glasses that gave the game a 3D look and feel.  The animation inside the glass would change style and tempo during the game to give a sense of excitement and urgency.
• Actual sampled audio along with synthesized voice and music.  This machine was known for it’s sexy call-outs during the game and in attract mode.   This was leagues ahead of it’s time.
• 2-ball multi-ball via the acrylic clear tube suspended above the playfield.  This tube was also lit with chase-lights.

Restoration

We purchased this game at least 3 years ago and have been collecting parts for this particular restoration.  This has been a back-burner plan for a while, but finally got around to doing the job as originally intended.

Cabinet and backbox

• sanded down, repaired and sealed
• 4 stage automotive paint (base, 2 colors and clear coat) inside and out
• New stainless / chrome hardware including (coin door, side rails, legs, bolts)
• New speakers, flipper buttons.

Circuitry

• All boards pulled, reflowed and repaired.
• Plasma displays replaced with new LED displays for long life and less heat
• New MPU board for error free play and no battery issues – ever

Playfield Restoration

• Game completely stripped.  Play field sanded down and repaired.  Multiple stage repaint and re-graphics applied (sandwiched between layers of automotive clear)
• All new plastic parts (except original graphic pieces that were in excellent condition)
• Full LED transformation in play field and back box
• New acrylic multi-ball tube
• Blue LED multi-ball tube chase light conversion
• Williams WPC flipper conversion (to make this game play fast and reliable).   Way better design than the old Bally flipper mechanisms.
• New pop bumpers assemblies and caps
• Original glass!!! PERFECT condition.  This was a nice surprise.

Pictures BEFORE and AFTER

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Williams, the top brand pinball maker in the 80’s and 90’s, produced three unique machines showcasing the classic Coney Island amusement park.   The Cyclone was the 2nd machine in the lineup, and arguably the best model of the series.

This machine had many of the elements of the first machine (Comet), but expanded on this machine using better sound, lighting, subway tunnel, drop target, a second ramp, ferris wheel and an animated mystery wheel in the back box.

This machine is also known for it’s fantastic artwork on the play field as well as having Nancy and Ronald Reagan on the back box translite riding in the front seat of the roller coaster.

The Cyclone is a single ball pinball machine – which is odd for this generation as most all machines were created with multi-ball as it’s main attraction.  However, this machine stands on it’s own for it’s fantastic play and is thought of as one of the best single-ball pinball machines ever made.

Restoration

We decided to go all the way with this restoration, as it is such a classic machine.

The back box and cabinet were entirely stripped down to the wood, repaired and returned to perfect square.   The insides and out were primed, blocked, and painted with automotive flat black base coat many times.

The next step was a 2 stage custom orange and yellow automotive stencil paint process.  It was hand touched up and followed up with 2 coats of automotive clear coat.

The play field was pretty worn, so we opted for a NEW play field and then added 3 more coats of clear to give it a thick and lustrous finish.  The play field was repopulated with mostly all new parts and fully converted to LED lighting.

All circuit boards were removed, reflowed and repaired for perfect operation.   The machine was rounded out with new legs, protectors, refinished coin door and under cabinet LED flash lighting.

The result is a better than new classic Cyclone machine that will stand the test of time.

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Pinball machines used to made from a complicated set of relays, motors, wheels and contacts which allowed the games to have basic sets of rules.  Around 1977, solid state machines were being designed which incorporated the latest technology of micro processors, memory and various integrated circuits.  This cutting edge technology wasn’t even available to consumers until IBM and Compaq introduced them years later in the form of large desktop computers – but at ridiculous prices.

The pinball industry was one of the leaders in this new technology in the early 1980’s.  The Bally Company continued to design high tech machines for the gaming industry and soon released one of their most complicated and resulting best selling machines of the decade: Eight Ball Deluxe.

Eight Ball Deluxe was designed to continue the success of the popular Eight Ball pinball machine (with Fonzi on the back glass).  This time, Bally added many more rules, complicated shot combinations, and speech synthesis.   The result was a masterpiece and is still revered today as one of the best pinball machines ever designed.

Our Machine

We picked up a donor Eight Ball Machine about a 18 months ago and started collecting parts for the machine.  It was in reasonable original condition, but did not operate.  As well, much of the plastic parts were brittle and broken.   The playfield was worn a bit and the cabinet was pretty dinged up.  However, it was sound and all the components still existed, so it was an excellent candidate for restoration.  We just had no idea how long it really was going to take…

We started by gutting the entire machine and putting all the parts in various boxes.   We attacked the cabinet first and stripped it down to the wood.  The cabinet was repaired, and went through stenciling and a 4-stage paint process including automotive clear.

The playfield was also stripped, sanded down to the wood, repaired and received new reproduction graphics.  The playfield was also clear coated 4 times and cured over 2 months.   In the meanwhile, we bought all of the remaining Eight Ball Deluxe plastic pieces we could find in order to come up with a single complete set of new parts.

The circuit boards were repaired, including the unique combination sound and speech synth board.   A new MPU and auxiliary lamp driver board were sourced in order to drive all the LED lighting that replaced the old incandescent bulbs.

A new coin door, legs and hardware rounded out the package.

Before And After Pictures

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In my little town growing up, there was an old brick building just under the rail road track bridge.  It had probably served as a dozen things in the past 100+ years, but I always remembered it being an old service garage.   One day, in likely 1982, it was converted into coin-op arcade.  I couldn’t believe it.   Thinking back, even then, I recall it being in a little sketchy of a location for kids, and not really the safest place to ride your bike… but things were different in the 80’s anyway.    I remember this place well.  It had a little hand-made bike rack out front large enough for maybe 3 bikes.  The concrete stairs up to the glass doors were old and crooked.  There were many rooms connected together and the floor was uneven.  The weight of the 50 plus arcade games probably didn’t help that old building much.     In the back, right in front of the counter with the attendant for coins, was the Tron machine.   It was likely their prized machine and it was obviously very different from all the others in the room.    This arcade was probably in operation for only a year or two before it mysteriously closed up.    That was the last time I had even seen this game, until now.

Now that I have restored many pinball and video machines of the era, can I truly appreciate how different this game really was.   Generally, when a machine is designed to go along with a movie, it suffers greatly due to the overhead of licensing and timing.   Of course, this game didn’t get everything that was desired and thus left out the Discs of Tron 5th game. However, there are many items so significant in this machine that it is worth noting.

First and foremost is the cabinet design.   It’s odd diamond shape cabinet was certainly not loved by operators because you cannot get a hand truck on the back very well.   It also had odd shaped wood access panels that I believe probably broke often.   So I imagine it was carted from the side and man-handled through narrow door frames.  However the shape goes very well with the theme and allows the monitor and enclosure to be very dark and roomy.

The control panel and surrounding plastics were very well designed.   Curved clear acrylic panels with fluorescent graphics were mounted above and below the control panel along with ultra-violet lighting to result in a very futuristic look.   The monitor bezel was designed to have a three dimension look and feel and an MCU graphic was mounted behind it to make you feel like you were actually inside the movie.   All of this extra plastic and tooling had to add to the game cost significantly.

Lastly, the circuit design was also very much ahead of anything of the time.   The power supply board also housed a battery backup circuit so that game scores would be saved.  This was a pretty complicated design back in the day.   It also served as a separate analog power supply for the audio circuit – which had 2 separate channels for simulated stereo sound to reduce audio feedback.

The game board itself was so complicated, that it required 3 separate, double sided PC boards and ribbon cables connecting both ends.  Needless to say, finding a working TRON board set is hard to do.     This game in general can be very expensive to build – easily twice as much than a comparable Ms. Pacman or Galaga machine from the same company released the year before.

Restoration

This machine was a trade in for a pinball machine that we had sold earlier in the month.  I took this trade in because I had been looking for a Tron machine for quite some time.   Of course, I was informed that the machine mostly worked and that it already had new side graphics (so that was a plus).

In actuality, the game boards were a complete loss.  They had burned traces and so much rework that they could not be salvaged.  I was pretty disappointed.  However the side graphics were applied pretty well and the cabinet was in excellent shape.

This machine went on to get the following treatment:

• New acrylic control panel surfaces (top and bottom)
• New control panel and spinner graphics
• New joystick
• Rebuilt coin door and all metal hardware
• New monitor
• Like new Tron PCB set
• New power supply adapter board (made to replace the old board with newer battery backup technology)
• New switching power supply
• All Lighting replaced by color controlled LED.   This allowed us to program the color of the MPU, marquee and acrylic pieces.  When set to slow fade mode makes you feel like you are actually inside the game.   It’s very cool.

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The Bride of pinbot (BOP) is a unique machine in all of pinball.  This is the second in the Pinbot series, and arguably the best one of the group.  Only 8100 units were ever created.

This is the only pinball machine that shares the same circuitry as the legendary Williams Funhouse, and if you haven’t noticed, Funhouse has exploded in value by almost 2x in the last year.  We expect the unique nature of this game and lineage to follow the same value trend.

Bride of Pinbot shares much of it’s playfield similarities with Pinbot and Jackbot, where the right side contains the skill shot.  They also share the concept of a translucent mini pachinko style upper playfield on top of the 3 pop bumpers.  The rest is all unique to the BOP.

The main playfield toy takes up a good portion of the back of the game:  the 4 faces of the Bride of Pinbot. This object is a large spinning cube that also doubles as a mini playfield used to lock balls and show the state of metamorphosis.  The object of the game is to guide the Bride through her multiple stages in becoming human, to the dismay of her husband Pinbot.  Only videos can truly show what this is all about.  Add to this one excellent techno-inspired sound track and light show.   The special backglass is created to show lightshow animations as well as point values.

This game is fun and tough because of it’s quick ramps and short playfield area in front of the flippers .  Nothing like this game will ever be reproduced again.

Restoration

We’ve restored a few Bride of Pinbot machines in the past.  Here are a couple restoration photo montages:

Summer 2012

Video

Winter 2012/2013

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Bally actually came out with two versions of the Mata Hari pinball in 1977 and was right in the middle of changing technology from electro-mechanical (relays, contacts and basic operation) to solid state (circuit board with programmable memory and deeper rules).   This of course was their first iteration of solid state pinball, but they basically retained the design through most of the decade, so their initial iteration was a success.  Future machines were enhanced with digital sound and more advanced lighting – as seen on machines such as Xenon.

What makes this game very unique is the fact that it uses chime boxes to generate sound (same as the electro-mechanical versions) – which makes this a bell-ringer solid-state pinball machine !

Bally was at the pinnacle of pinball at this time and made some beautiful machines with thought provoking themes.  The colors and artwork on the Mata Hari is robust and seductive and makes for a wonderful piece of functional art.

Restoration

This machine came to us by way of trade in.  It wasn’t really worth that much as it was worn to the wood all over and had many broken parts.  Because of the theme, it was bumped up to the top of the list for restorations as I just wanted to see how nice we can make it (within reason).

The results are much nicer than I had planned.  Not only is it stunning to look at, but it plays fantastic.  I had no idea these machines could play so fast…

This machine went through:

• Cabinet stripping, sanding, repair and 5 step automotive paint process with clear coat protection
• Playfield stripped and sanded.  All new artwork, custom paint under the plastics and multiple coats of automotive clear coat.
• New plastic posts and rubber
• New plastic artwork
• New drop targets
• New flippers and linkages
• New Pop bumper assemblies and caps
• All metal polished
• Wood rails sanded and painted gloss cherry
• Full LED installation
• New PCB
• Repaired driver, transformer  and lamp boards
• New coin door
• New legs and hardware
• Near mint backglass with the unique dagger inscription

Pictures

Before

After Cabinet

After Playfield

Video

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Bally (Midway / Williams) thankfully had the foresight (or dumb luck) in allowing the designers to bid on their next pinball machine.  Rather than go the simple route of making a product tie-in to some current fad or movie release, the Bally/Midway/Williams company realized that not all great ideas came from top down.

The result is an uncommonly excellent pinball machine – based off a very strange and low budget British mystery-science TV show – Dr. Who.  I wasn’t at all a fan of the show… in fact could only watch it for a couple of minutes before flipping to one of the other 3 available channels at the time.  But, I remember enough of the show and legacy to know about this machine.  Initially, I wasn’t at all interested in even giving this pin a first chance.  Thankfully, I had the option to purchase and restore one.  Being a Bally DMD, it was a simple choice.

Before I started the restoration,  I read the bio on the designer and the background leading up to the production of this machine.  The story is quite fantastic and really helped in understanding the depth of passion that went into it’s design and software programming.  Finally, after turning on the machine for the first time (which I didn’t even do until after the restoration), I was very surprised in it’s game rules, flow and depth.   Actually, had the machine not already sold to a customer, I would easily have kept this machine for myself… and to this day, really wished I had.

Unique Features

Usually, I don’t bother with stating features of a pinaball machine, as it can be easily found in the various wiki sites.  However, as I have played and restored enough machines, I wanted to point out items that stood out for me:

• Custom GI lighting sequences.  Usually the general illumination lighting is On/Off and sometimes level of DIM.  However, this machine (while having the basic features),  also has multiple GI controlled circuits, which allowed the software to apply lighting patterns for different times in the game.  Very noticeable and cool effect (especially with LED lighting).  The backbox also has multiple separate GI circuits for animation.
• Use of pop bumpers.  I enjoyed the around the back path to the top of the pop bumpers – which are used to increase the multiplier bonus.  It becomes one of the many focal features of this machine.
• Different ramp paths.  This machine has a left/right ramp orbit (like many machines), but the left ramp shot has a neat cellar door feature that interrupts the flow.
• Time expander – mini playfield.  Yes of course, the main toy in the game.  Very cool moving platform with 3 levels and integrated perfectly into the game.  Not overdone, not oversized and not the entire purpose of the game.
• Moving Dalek topper.  What a cool feature… makes you want to look up while he is barking at you.

This game is as fun to watch as it is to play.

Restoration

This machine was probably on route for a couple years at best before it was shopped and sold to a home.  There it was played very mildly for the next 15+ years before coming to me.  It was very well preserved, with the obvious impacted dirt and various broken down elements that you would expect on a 20+ year old machine.   The cabinet and backbox were literally blemish free.  The playfield and plastics were without damage.  This machine was a great start, but still needed to be taken down to the wood and rebuilt.

• Flame polished ramps.
• Removed and rebuilt time-expander playfield.  Broken optics and VUKs
• Polished and waxed playfield and plastics
• New pop bumpers.  Originals were in pieces.
• New slingshot assembly
• New flippers and linkages
• Full custom LEDs.
• Under cabinet LED flash light effect.  See the video below!
• New balls, legs, cabinet protectors
• rebuilt sound board and DMD driver
• Moving Dalek topper.  Thankfully, this machine had the original fixed Dalek topper.  It was removed and modified to move and flash along with the game’s original software programming.

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1967 was at the height of the space race and everyone wanted to share in celebrating the United States’ remarkable technical prowess.  The Williams Apollo pinball machine was created to capture and relive these moments for patrons in the back alley bars and bowling alleys.

About This Machine

This machine was produced in limited numbers (3100) and was made as a single player only machine so that more rules could be constructed from the limited number of relays and wheel logic circuits typically available in electro-mechanical machines.  The result was an instant classic, with a clear set of rules to achieve.  Also, this machine had quite a bit of depth, not usually found in machines of this era.

First and foremost was the rocket in the center of the playfield and the countdown rollovers.  The countdown would only decrease by rolling directly over the appropriate digit or hitting an ever changing lit target.  Once the count down reached 1, the launch feature would light, and you could start the count down again.  Each time the count down was achieved, the values of the targets would increase, until you reached the max values (special when lit credit).  Additionally, this machine also had an outlane gate diverter to save your ball and allow you to relaunch if drained on the right hand side.

If the launch was activated during a ball, and then you drained, the backbox feature would be enabled.  This feature is a mini pachinko style vertical pinball game that would reward anywhere from 50, 300 or CREDIT.

This game not only accomplished it’s main mission (to draw people in and want to replay), but captured one of America’s most proud moments in time – the space race and the Apollo missions.

Custom Request

We were contacted via a customer referral to find this special machine.  The request was quite simple, find an Apollo pinball machine and restore it.  After we determined what the availability of this machine was, we determined a value and set it restoration process in motion.  About the time the restoration was complete, we learned the true nature of where this machine was heading, and became very excited.  This was no normal pinball collector.  This was a NASA approved rocket restorer and this machine was going to reside in their main lobby among their other NASA awards and documented accomplishments.  How exciting!

Restoration

Again, we had to maintain a budget for restoration on this machine, but immediately it got a little out of hand as availability of the Apollo pinball machine was virtually nill.  We were lucky to find one within a couple hundred miles of our facility, and since then we haven’t seen another.  So this was it – regardless of it’s original condition – we were in.

The machine was actually in surprisingly good original condition – for it’s age.  The front of the cabinet was worn well past normal use, but the back glass was the feature of the machine.  The prior owner(s) must have known to be careful with this one as it had some clear tape on the back side.  Well, from our experience, whatever is on there – stays there.  We were able to clean it gently and seal the entire back of the glass to preserve the paint.   I’ve seen most mid-80’s back glasses with almost half the paint chipped off, but this one was almost new looking.

The head and cabinet were almost without damage from serious chips, but the paint was worn off and yellowed significantly.  The leg mounts were damaged of course.  The front of the machine had to be rebuilt entirely, which means, the entire cabinet and head had to therefore be sanded down, repaired and repainted by hand.

The playfield was another wonderful surprise.  Only one spot on the entire surface was worn to the wood.  It was a strange location as well and it repaired without much ado.   We skipped clear coating this machine to save on cost as well as it was going to probably be played just occasionally anyway.  Otherwise, it was entirely stripped, cleaned, and deep polished. Followed by multiple applications of wax.  The original plastics were pristine, but we went with new pop bumpers and repainted the upper apron in order to match the cabinet accurately.

At this time, we also decided to completely convert this machine over to LED lighting.  What a difference it made.  We color matched a couple inserts and put whites under all the plastics.  It was a perfect blend of old and new and only made this classic even better.  By just going with slightly more white light, this machine just looked cleaner and fresher without looking electronic at all.

Lastly, the electronics were addressed.  This machine was stated to be in perfect working order.  Of course, the truth be told, at least 5 relay coils were burned right out.  The bell ringer coil had melted in to a pile of goo and half of the rotating mechanisms were nearly frozen solid.  That’s ok.  We repaired them all back to perfect order.

Restoration Summary

• Repair and repaint cabinet and head
• Full tear down of playfield, repair, buff and wax
• New rubbers
• New ball
• LED conversion
• New pop bumpers
• Restore coin door
• New Williams chrome shooter (upgrade from original plastic unit)
• New Williams chrome legs and hardware (upgrade from flat metal)
• New coils, relays misc
• Every switch cleaned and adjusted
• Every mechanical part removed, cleaned and repaired

The whole process took about 4 weeks, with about 2 weeks for the painting and curing process.

In the end, we were very proud of this machine, and even more proud of where it resides.  The owner of this machine is a great individual, hard working entrepreneur and has a wonderful family history in restoring NASA rockets (among other vastly successful ventures) for our great country.

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Many of you my age (ahem) may remember this ominous bar-table size stand up arcade in the corner of the arcade.  The one everyone crowded around as they watched 2 people frantically spinning over-sized trackballs in opposite directions.

This machine was something totally different.  Black and white monitor.  Simple design.  Head to head action football using X’s and O’s like that of how a college football coach would draw up a play.

This is Atari Football – reborn and just as glorious as ever.

The Donor Machine

The donor machine was actually in reasonable physical condition, given the number of years on the clock and knowing how much of a beating these machines took on a daily basis.

The odd part of this machine was that it was equipped with joysticks in place of where the trackballs would reside.  Originally, I just scoffed at the retrofit thinking it was probably the best a route operator could do in order to get the machine back out making money.  But after disassembling the machine, I realized it was no retrofit at all.

Upon flipping open the hood, I saw that this machine had custom PCBs to convert the digital 8-way joystick signals to differential pulsed voltage outputs via multiple astable multivibrator circuits.   Ok, I was showing off there because I actually knew what it was as soon as I saw it (back from when I designed one in my Electrical Engineering lab).  What this means is that, for some reason which I can only imagine is because of lawsuits due customer injury), that Atari had actually changed their design in the latter portion of the manufacturing of this machine to use joysticks.  The circuits, connectors, and joysticks were all period specific items and all factory made.  I have never seen that before, nor have I read about it in any of the forums that cover the restoration of this machine.  Great!  We had a unique discovery!

So, while that is interesting and all, we’re were not going to keep it that way.  This machine needed to be converted back to the way people remembered it…  with those huge trackballs.     After finally sourcing all the components to rebuild the trackballs in new condition, I realized why they went to joysticks.  The balls themselves are almost 5 lbs each (larger and heavier than Bocce balls to give you a reference).   Now I remember the injuries people suffered on this machine (busted fingers, welts on their palms, huge blisters from pinches between the ball and housing.  AWESOME!

Other items:

• The monitor powered up but was pretty sad and had an unstable and horrible picture.
• The cardboard bezel for the monitor (in the shape of a stadium) was deteriorated and had liquid damage from years of drinks spilled into the machine
• The control panels were rusted
• coin door was there but not appealing
• glass was chipped and scratched
• cabinet (wood grain) was damaged and the graphics were poor.

Restoration

This machine went under the full restoration process, and in the end retains 100% of the investment.  Not only that, you will not find another Atari Football in this condition regarding the price.

• Black and White Wells Gardner raster monitor fully rebuilt and calibrated.
• Coin door rebuilt and restored
• Control panels were stripped, sanded down and refinished.  New control panel overlays were sourced.  Football play controls were repaired and circuit board repaired.
• Entire rebuild of both 4.5″ trackball assemblies – new balls, bearings, rollers.  Rebuild optics and cages
• Game PCB and RF cage rebuilt
• Entire cabinet and optional pedestal sanded down and restored in black with new molding and graphics.
• New glass
• New pedestal adjustble feet
• Power supply and cabling updated
• Football stadium bezel custom designed.  This is a Castle Classic Arcade original and cannot be purchased anywhere! We redesigned the stadium with a more modern look and custom made for the new owner (which will be blurred out for privacy).

Pictures

Before

Trackball / Control Panels

After