Arcade Resources
Wizard of Wor Resetting
Wanted to try the game again tonight to see if I had any problems with it resetting. Well, after turning it on, that is all it did, every second it reset and the game just kept flashing, so there is something wrong with it. Some information is turning up on the Google Groups, it may not be too complicated to get working again.
I also spoke with Rick tonight, and he was fairly familiar with the hardware in these Wizard of Wor machines. Made by Midway / Bally, the hardware is very similar (which I already read) to Gorf, and apparently Professor Pac-man. He said it sounded like a Z-80 processor possibly going bad since there is already a switching power supply installed. He said it can never hurt to clean the edge connectors, all sorts of weird problems can happen there. As I had read before, and he suggested again, to use Scotch Brite pads. I have to figure out which ones. I have heard about using the magic eraser ones, but apparently that isn’t what you use for edge connectors.
Picking up the Wizard of Wor
I went today, on what ended up being a hot day, to get the game. I took a look at it briefly when I got there. The previous owner showed me that the game had problems with resetting. He started to play his game, was a minute into it, and the game reset. When I took a look at the back of the game, I noticed that the back door was loose. The top wood had splintered, so it didn’t really sit in place. So my thought is, maybe the movement of the game play moves that door just enough to hit the switch in back and reset the game occasionally.
I played the game when I got home, and it didn’t reset on me at all. I had taken the back door off and pulled out the switch, so I thought my theory seemed to be valid. There are still lines through the screen, and I am having problems locating the monitor model. It is some sort of Wells Gardener with an RCA tube. I have a number, but it doesn’t look right. It will need a cap kit, and that is an easy fix if that is all I need to do. The chassis is just caked with dust, so although whoever restored this game with a brand new control panel didn’t do much to the monitor. He did put in a switching power supply to switch out the linear one in the game.
Snow Bros.
There was an auction on ebay for this game, and we had picked up on it because the game was being sold from Flint. Curious enough to just see what the game was all about, I gave it a whirl and really liked it. Before I get into really detailed information about the game, you could just read what Klov has on the history of it here.
In the Snow Brothers game, you are this snowman type character with beady eyes and this cute peppy music. There are little platforms above your head where there are different monsters, lizards, and feline type creatures that you have to defeat.
You are able to jump up and manuver and your special weapon is a snowball. You can hold down the Fire button and charge and make a huge snowball that you can throw and knock the guys off the board. The main idea is to get on one side of the screen where you can throw the ball and knock multiple if not all of the 5-6 out, which gives you a ton more points.
Pretty simple in concept, infectious music, and a weird enough game (once you compete a level it shoots you up the screen, wiggling to the next screen with new guys.) that I really enjoyed it. I must have played for 2-3 hours once I sat down, trying to figure out how far I could go. There are a number of levels to complete.
On a similar note, there is a Snow Bros. 2, which has a similar idea of throwing snow balls, but you have to go through actual levels. This game is also entitled “With New Elves”, so you have other characters to pick from that you can use to go through the levels, each with their own distinct powers. This one was quite heavy in the Japanese Anime influences, which I didn’t like too much, but the levels were fun, and you could beat this game. You would be able to go through the levels and the game would actually end.
Zoo Keeper
A collector in Chicago that I have emailed back and forth was surprised when I had never played this game, so I thought I would give it a shot. I thought the cabinet looked nice, the sideart kind of interesting with the running lion, very detailed. Being a Taito game it is in my favorite cabinet design, the one with the nice curve on the side that flattens at the top, and bows at the bottom typically with large, bold, thick line designed sideart.
I liked this game like most of the classics, for its simplicity. I played the game for a little bit, you are a zoo keeper, of course. In front of you is a square with a bunch of animal characters contained inside. The characters bounce around and move about and you have to run the perimeter of the square around and around. Behind each step you lay a brick, solidifying the cage and the animals inside.
If the characters get out, they crawl around the outside while you are running, and you have to jump them so they don’t kill you while you continue to wall in the animals. If you hit one of the animals, you die.
I only played for a little while, so there may have been more to this game that I didn’t see. It seemed overly simple, but again, that is the beauty of it. You don’t have a learning curve, you hop in and you go, you understand instantly.
Pooyan
The same collector that recommended Zoo Keeper to me has this game. And just like usual, since I hadn’t hear of it I thought I would try it out.
The idea of the game is that you are a little pig that is trying to prevent foxes from coming in and stealing your babies. When you look at the screen you see a cliff above where the foxes get balloons and float down to the ground. On the ground and to the right there is a house where the pigs are at. Your character is on the right with a blow dart gun, ready to blow and pop the balloons dropping the foxes to their death.
I played this a little more, and the levels and difficulty change, even in the first level, you have to prevent a fair amount of foxes from getting your piglets, and that only increases with the upper levels.
I will say I liked how this played, it was pretty fun, but I wasn’t crazy about the characters. I know there is a story there, but I felt like this game was a really young one, whether it was targeted at an even younger audience at the time or not, it felt like it.
Turkey Shoot
I was exposed to this game for the first time in September of 2006. I was in Chicago, and I visited another collector who had this game. He had mentioned it in email before I left, and I checked it out, but I didn’t think too much of it.
The idea of the game is to shoot the turkey’s that are robbing this town. You are looking forward at some digital buildings, and turkeys with robber masks are running around, and one has a bag with a money sign on it. Which ever turkey is holding this bag of money at the time is the one you must concentrate on. Once you shoot the one with the money, they will pass it to another and so on and so on. If the turkey with the money gets off screen before you get him, your game is over.
Pretty simple, I wasn’t all that interested in a computer format. But then, I played the real game. You have a gun that you have to point and shoot the turkey’s with, but here is the best part. When you get the turkey and win the round, your shot it on the mark, in between the outer glass and an inner plane of glass a gust of air blows of feather in front of your view. It adds a whole new dimension to the game and makes it completely unique. The gameplay is pretty cool, but I just think this is the coolest idea.
The collector I met with says it is a hard to come by game, and when you do find them, usually the blown up feathers don’t work, it is missing that part. Which makes his that much more valuable.
Adjusting Dig Dug Color, now it looks great!
This afternoon I took some time on the Dig Dug outside to see if I could figure out what was going on with the color issues. I took my huge oversize mirror out so I could see what I was doing. I was able to adjust the vertical sync a little bit more to get the picture right, and then I adjusted the color controls, mostly adding more blue into the picture and the game looked great!
I was pumped. I was starting to get nervous that somehow I had did some of the caps wrong. I knew the color caps shouldn’t be on the main chassis, but again, don’t know that much so who knows what all that affected.
I got the paper bezel out, and brought out the glass one with artwork from the basement and put it all back together. Pretty exciting to have the Dig Dug game in a working condition. I also put in a new lightbulb into the marquee and everything lit up just fine. The sound was defening, just like the Pengo, and I couldn’t figure out what to do. I looked at the schematic, and I could tell that there was supposed to be some sort of sound control inside the coin door. Well, turns out, the little control mount inside there that I got off ebay was missing the knob for the sound dial. I only figured that out when I compared it to what I had on the Dig Dug inside the house, which still had the dial. My old control mount from when the game was still a Land Sea and Air didn’t have the dial either. It seemed like it was well mounted on the machine it was on, so I don’t know why the other two mounts had lost it.
So, I got the metal peg to turn and make the game playable sound wise. So, for now, the game is done. I listed the one in the house on ebay, so now I have to figure out what to do with this one. I have to work on the cone one and two player buttons on the Dig Dug outside a little bit, but that is the last piece to finish.
