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Arcade cabinets very rarely come up for sale around where I live, but a couple old beat up games have come up on a classifieds site and I was wondering if anyone could help identify what games these cabinets would have had in them originally. The one on the left currently has Tetris in it and the one on the right has Arkanoid. I'm just interested in seeing if these would be worth my time to restore.

This is the only pic I have:

The Tetris one looks to just be a generic styled wooden cabinet. Not quite a Dynamo (not big enough to be a Dynamo), but one from the late 80s. However it has two buttons for each stick so it was not originally a Tetris cab.

The Ark is a Stern cab, maybe Scramble:


The Tetris cab does not jog any memories. The coin door makes me think it's a 90's cabinet. Maybe on the rear panel(s) there is a sticker or some manufacturing details.

That Arkanoid cab has a nice Spinner, an obscurity when finding used cabs on the cheap. Unless you have a lot of room for multiple cabinets or really like just one game, might be better to Mame it? You could easily integrate that Spinner with an Arcade Stick panel. Omega Race, Puzz Loop (The first Zuma), Tac Scan and Warlords come to mind.

Majors wrote:The Ark is a Stern cab, maybe Scramble:

Aren't STERN cabinets generic cabs like the Dynamos?

CRTGAMER wrote:That Arkanoid cab has a nice Spinner, an obscurity when finding used cabs on the cheap. Unless you have a lot of room for multiple cabinets or really like just one game, might be better to Mame it? You could easily integrate that Spinner with an Arcade Stick panel.

Personally, I'd be strongly against MAME'ing any original cab. If these are actually just generic cabs though, I suppose it might be worth considering I guess. I probably wouldn't MAME it personally, but maybe use it for multiple JAMMA boards?

AppleQueso wrote:Aren't STERN cabinets generic cabs like the Dynamos?

Nothing back then was generic. I'm sure other Stern games could work in it, but it's has odd power and wiring, by todays standards. Only after JAMMA took off did we get true generic cabs such as the ever present Dynamo. Of course an operator can always convert anything.

Majors wrote:

AppleQueso wrote:Aren't STERN cabinets generic cabs like the Dynamos?

Nothing back then was generic. I'm sure other Stern games could work in it, but it's has odd power and wiring, by todays standards. Only after JAMMA took off did we get true generic cabs such as the ever present Dynamo. Of course an operator can always convert anything.

Ah, okay.

In that case, I definitely wouldn't try to MAME that thing.

AppleQueso wrote:In that case, I definitely wouldn't try to MAME that thing.

I'm not one for MAME-ing anything, but you wouldn't be using the power supply from it anyways. I doubt it's JAMMA, so JPAC will not help you unless you re-do the wiring. Might even be a good idea to throw a LCD in place of the CRT (it MUST have burn in by now). The CP would have to be completely overhauled and you do not have a lot of space for 2l12b plus a spinner. The cab would be just a shell, but I think that is the same with most cabs that get violated(aka MAME conversion).

Now, saying that...bringing Scramble back to it's former glory would be fun (it's no Super Cobra, mind you) and the side art seems to still be there. I've heard that these Stern PCB's are finicky, prolly b/c they are so old.

Look for a old Golden Tee for MAME. Nice big CP and VGA monitor...plus it rids the world of one trash game

AppleQueso wrote:Aren't STERN cabinets generic cabs like the Dynamos?

As far as I've seen, those Stern cabs housed Stern games. It was a cabinet design that you'd see in other Stern games if you go to arcadeflyers.com.

For example, Amidar (and many of the Konami imports they licensed)



Games created by Stern had a later design that had a panel on the left bottom of the cabinet for easy access to the PCBs. For example, Frenzy:



That was a good eye on identifying that.

Wow! Thanks for the help guys. Now that I know it's a Stern cab, I'm really thinking about making it into a Berzerk machine...

I'm not particularly interested in MAMEing a cabinet myself.

The Tetris cabinet is $150 but has issues with control apparently and the Arkanoid one is $125 but has board issues.