preface:to further my tiny collection of classic b/w arcade games, i had bought a boot hill cabinet in england about 1 1/2 years ago. unfortunately, the seller and i couldn't find a common pickup date (he was sick, i had to postpone for personal reasons, ...), so the months went by. finally, the time seemed to be right, but when i contacted the seller again, he told me that he had split up with his girl-friend and moved out of the house. because he wasn't able to take his arcade games with him immediately, his girl-friend had "invited" an eviction squad who brought the games to the dumpster. i got my money back, but beautiful boot hill was no more!
flash forward to today ... just recently, colin from belgium had picked up not one, not two, but
three gun fight cabinets! for those of you who aren't family with those games, gun fight is the predecessor to boot hill. the gameplay is a little bit weaker and the monitor doesn't have the wonderful colourful back-lit plastic background, but hey, it is the original game! remembering that i had been on the lookout for the cab since my boot hill got destroyed, colin contacted me and asked me if i was still interested ...
here's my answer
school holidays were just around the corner, so we set a pickup date and nothing was going to stop me this time!
the weather forecast for the day was ok and a first view through the window supported this
statistics, statistics, statistics
watch your head near frankfurt airport - planes are flying low!!!
wonderful autumn colors with dramatic skies
green energy? i don't give a sh**
just before the belgium border, i had to stop for gas, but what is that? where? how? WTF?
open roads in belgium
getting closer to the (gun fight) finish line
after having to pass through brussels in midday traffic (puh
), i reach colin's home in a quiet by-road
inside his apartment, colin shows me his gameroom. at the moment, most of his machines are under repair (well, who's aren't?)
that omega race is one rare game and an absolutely stunning cabinet - just WOW
also in his room, a galaxy ranger laser disk game, which had been sold to some italian guy who got banned from this forum
but never picked it up! so it's still there (up for grabs?)
after this quick tour, we hop into my car and head over to colin's storage - a garage he rented for his games! a lot of b/w games in there, but also a gorf and a tron - unfortunately invisible on this picture.
just a few steps away, one of colin's friends (sorry, i forgot his name
) has also rented a garage which gives us more space, because i'm not just here to grab one of the gun fights and be gone - i'm here on a mission
! but first, we have to transport the three gun fight cabs over to his friend's garage!
you might have been wondering about the title of this roadtrip report: BYOAGFC - Build Your Own Arcade Gun Fight Cabinet! i guess i will have to elaborate a little bit: colin's initial plan was to build one perfect gun fight cabinet out of the three available. so when colin contacted me about the games, i thought i'd get to pick the second-best cab. however, because of time and space issues, colin decided to let go of all three cabinets and i would be the one to get first choice
! even better, after colin had collected the games, he told me that one of the cabinets was in a bad state - it was literally falling apart. so not only did i get to choose my personal favorite amongst the three gun fights, i would also get all the spare parts from the crumbling cabinet. the catch: i could not just grab the innards, i would also have to take the damaged wooden parts and bring them to the dumpster. no problem, i thought, i have a huge car - "raumwunder" as we say in german! so i'm basically going to have two gun fight cabinets to build one nice version for me!
enough said, let's disassemble gun fight #3!!!
i've lost a lot of weight in the last few months, but where's my hair gone? erik & andré - are you experiencing the same kind of problem?
colin's friend helping us out
brute force
this is me with gun fight cab #1 in full armament
in case you're wondering what i'm holding there in my left hand just have a look at the following picture. we had been talking about that item in another thread and colin was kind enough to fetch one of those for me - THX COLIN!!! can't wait to try that on some fries
unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures of the loading process and i forgot to take pictures of my stuffed car, but believe me:
IT WAS FULL!!!however, this is not the end of the story as some might think. i had another appointment further north in another country, but in order to get there, i had to pass by antwerpen in rush hour traffic!!!
of course it had to come to this: traffic jam!!!
impressions from the side of the road while waiting and waiting and waiting and ...
the root of all evil
after sitting in the car for another three hours (instead of 1 1/2), i decided it was time to sit in something else for a change
what is that? wait a minute, is that a ... ?
of course it is: a star wars cockpit!!! and in case you haven't guessed it yet: i'm at andre's place for a round of fun in his gameroom and to pick up some more stuff (as if my car wasn't already filled to the top). i'm not 100% sure, but i think this was the first time i've played star wars in a cockpit and believe me: THIS GAME ROCKZZZZZZ!!! i was afraid this was going to happen, but i can't help it: i need to have one myself
i didn't take any more pictures from the trip home, so here's a quick writeup of what happened: i left andre's place at around 10 pm and because i was starting to get really tired, i took two naps on some autobahn rest stop. i arrived in lauda at around 4 o'clock am, but couldn't go to bed at once, because i had to unload all the stuff from the car into
The Storage™. "why?", you might ask and "why didn't you sleep at andre's place?"? the answer is simple: (a) my car had to be in a garage for a winter checkup early in the morning and (b) i had an appointment at my new school with the principal - something you don't want to miss!
so here are the final statistics
the next day, i found some time for an inventory! let's start with the gun fight cab i picked: as you can see, it is in pretty good shape!
sideart almost entirely intact!
the sides from the smashed cabinet - i'm going to keep those of course. wouldn't it be a great idea to use them as swinging doors in a bar or something?
no use for the rest of the wood - this is going to the dumpster!
a spare control panel with the original joysticks
i'm sure this is going to look great once it has been cleaned
a spare 23'' b/w monitor - anyone wanna guess the game where it came from?
a spare coin door
a spare power block with wiring harness and speakers
the game pcb - this time not a spare, but the only one i have! of the three cabinets, unfortunately only one had a pcb inside - but better one than none, right?
looking nice and clean
i love details like that - this is old!!!
two cabinets had a plastic bezel, one came with a glass bezel which is pictured here
not gun fight, but cat fight ...
from andre's place i picked up a lot of artwork for some resto projects to come (in 2019
): galaga sideart, galaga kickplate, galaga cpo and ms pac-man cpo - all rolled up here!
almost two months ago, andre had collected a letterboard for me on his
unexpected roadtrip which i'm eventually going to use as a highscore board in my future gameroom!
along with the board came three boxes of letters
to add up on those letters, i had stumbled upon an auction on ebay also a few weeks ago which i won! this auction included thousands and thousands of letters in three different sizes
it also came with four nice & small letterboards which are good for hanging them on doors or for short messages. i call them the predecessors to text messaging on mobile phones!
the tiny letters
the medium ones - everything sorted nicely
and finally the largest ones - they are the same size as the ones i got from andre by the way. they look a little bit different, but that's what's so cool about a letterboard anyway, the somewhat chaotic look!
just a small selection of the two hundred As i now have! i can now easily write the longest place name in the world and would still not run out of As
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu
and yes, andre also picked up a small letterboard on that roadtrip which had some strange writing on it
one continent, three countries, 1263 kilometers, 20 hours 45 minutes on the road - this roadtrip is OFFICIALLY OVER!
