Cocktail table i've got rusting away.

[neorichieb1971]

The story so far -

About 20 years ago my step father worked on occasion at an American airbase here in the UK. A person had this cocktail table and wanted rid of it. My step father brought it home. At first it got randomly played from time to time but now my mother has just put it under the stairs and surrounded it by crap (my opinion hehe).


Condition -

There are some blemishes, paint and a little wear. But structural damage is non existant. The only missing piece is the coin box as far as I can tell. P2 joystick is broken or the wiring has gone naff. The chrome legs could do with some touching up, the glass on the top (not shown because of all the crap) just needs cleaning over.

Entering credits is done by lifting the glass and pressing a red button. The internal PCB is just dusty as is most of the stuff in there. The monitor works wonderfully as does the sound. The coin mechanism I believe is a little broken, but only takes YEN anyway.


The GAME -

The game is an asteroid clone called "VORTEX". The only difference being the asteroids are colored in and the master spaceship is Star Trek's Enterprise.

The controls -

As you can see from one picture, its just a 2 way joystick with one fire button. Depressing it thrusts, multiple presses causes bullets to be fired. Again, player 2 joystick does not work and it would take some wiring diagrams for this game to come to light (or random playing about) to figure out how to fix it.


So, the point of this thread is. I have no idea what to do with it, if its worth anything. So just wanting advice. I've taken the best pics I can considering where its at. If there is much interest in it I will take it out for further examination. Personally I was going to do it up as a jamma cab and put Galaga 88 in it.


To the pics -








Vortex is the RAREZ man, I've only found one website which has it listed. It was born from Taito's USA R+D which died quite soon after it was established apparently. Making this possibly one of the few survivors of the cold war.

So what do I do with it?

[rtw]

It would be good getting a dump of this

rtw

[Mr-Megalo]

richie, the cabinet itself is probably worth a fair few quid if it works
I remember the owner of KC sold a very similar cabinet for a fair whack a few years ago, might be worth asking around.

[Ed Oscuro]

Another vote for "omg get this dumped" if it doesn't damage anything. I'd guess that this game has the ICs socketed on one or two PCBs, same as Stratovox.

This won't be a gigantic surprise to anybody, but this is the same exact type of cocktail Taito used for Stratovox (which I have) and I'm certain Space Invaders and everything else.

On mine, somebody installed a free play button (above the CP, out of sight thankfully) and I think the lock on the coin mechanism is missing.

On these units, if you have scratches on the top of the glass you can pretty much just get it sandblasted (which I never bothered doing).

[neorichieb1971]

We had another cocktail years ago, it had space invaders on that one. Unfortunately an iron was dropped on the screen and BOOM! It died.

We have family over at the moment, once they are gone i'll continue to get it out and take more pics.

As for dumping it. Who's going to play it? It was made in the late 70's or early 80's. I'll look for dates.

[rtw]

As for dumping it. Who's going to play it? It was made in the late 70's or early 80's.

The same people who play Space Invaders, Galaxian and Deathsmiles

rtw

[Ed Oscuro]

I'd play it.

Probably more than f***ing SI too.

p.s. If it were possible I'd also trade you my Stratovox for it, lolers

[bostongeorge]

My grand parents have a Ms. PacMan cocktail cab that they never use anymore. It's in good shape but something is wrong with it, I'm not sure what. I think the board is just fried. I wonder what I could do with it?

[brokenhalo]

My grand parents have a Ms. PacMan cocktail cab that they never use anymore. It's in good shape but something is wrong with it, I'm not sure what. I think the board is just fried. I wonder what I could do with it?

well, the guys on the klov forums would kill you, but you could always mame it or put an xx-in-one jamma board in it. first thing is to figure whats wrong with it though. does it power-up at all?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

For neorichieb1971,

I'd get that Taito produced Vortex cocktail restored to it's full glory and resell it for top dollar/pound. ^_~

Is it a vector-based game or is it a raster-based game to begin with?

Your cocktail game would be equally at home inside an arcade game museum for others to admire/play. It is part of Taito's arcade game history...what an interesting find you've got there.

At the California Extreme 2008 show, there were some cool cocktail arcade games setup on freeplay including: Space Duel, Warlords, a rare Crystal Castles cocktail version, etc. Was great to see them in action at this year's CAX show. ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[cools]

Get ROMs dumped, restore to mint, sell. The guys on JAMMA+ will be able to help with both.

[bostongeorge]

This is the one I have. I wonder what I could do with it?

It powers on and all but I just get a blank screen. I'd love to make it into a MAME machine for vertical SHMUPS.

[Ed Oscuro]

You'd really probably be best off having a new Ms. Pac-Man board put in and sell it, if it's in good shape cosmetically. Somebody will pay for that.

Modding it into a two-button shmups cab would be a lot of work and a lot of the process would be irreversible, like drilling out new buttons

[it290]

I can't believe you guys talking about gutting these pieces of history and turning them into fucking MAME boxes. Build your own cab for that -- rarities such as the Vortex cab above are best kept as close to original as possible.

[brokenhalo]

I can't believe you guys talking about gutting these pieces of history and turning them into fucking MAME boxes. Build your own cab for that -- rarities such as the Vortex cab above are best kept as close to original as possible.

i was waiting for a reply like this. i understand the logic, it's cool to see a cab in original condition. but honestly, it's a small minority who care, and the majority would enjoy this cab alot more if they were able to play a bunch of games on it as opposed to just vortex or ms. pac-man.

[Ed Oscuro]

Value of MAME cab to the human race = VERY HIGH INDEED

Take out "to the human race" and the answer still applies. MAME cabs, worthless.

In any case if you don't want to be a good steward of gaming history (and I admit the Vortex era stuff isn't really my favorite) then find somebody who will pay the four figures and make yourself a room full of MAME shit. Problem solved, everybody's happy!

[fuko]

it's a small minority who care, and the majority would enjoy this cab alot more if they were able to play a bunch of games on it as opposed to just vortex or ms. pac-man.

I completely disagree. I am guessing there is way more interest in seeing a beautifully restored videogame classic that most ppl remember playing as a kid, than a Jamma conversion cab so you can play your favorite shmups. Dood, my _mother_ played Ms. Pac-Man, and my wife could probably school us all, you can't get more popular culture than that.

It's your cabinet, and you can do what you want with it. Fortunately Namco made tons of Ms. Pac cocktails, so one more off the street won't set the world back too much. But once these games are gone they are gone, forever! The rest are being bought up by private collectors never to be seen again. Think of it as saving an old sports car, like a '67 Corvette. Noble work. I'm not a huge cocktail fan myself, but that Vortex is super rare and should be restored to former glory. If you can't be arsed to do it yourself, that's completely understandable, it's a lot of work, but put it up for sale on KLOV so some nutter like me can make it shine again (no I'm not interested in buying it, but someone is)

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, there were tons of Ms. Pac-Man cocktails made, but fewer and fewer are left every year (partially due to addle-brained players drilling extra holes in them). There's also likely to be a steady demand for them forever and ever given how important the series (and this individual game in it) is, so once again I bet you could sell it for a good amount of money and get a more modern setup that's easier to mod to your liking.

[sven666]

man atleast get something thats already been gutted if youre gonna put MAME in it

i have a cocktail like the one in teh 1st post, turned it into a jamma cab, the insides were a rats nest with a poker-PCB in the middle when i got it so no gripes with that.

but please.. dont turn a beautiful cab like that into one of those BYOAC monstrosities

[cools]

I bet you could sell it for a good amount of money and get a more modern setup that's easier to mod to your liking.

This is why it should not be gutted for MAME. Hell, if it has to be a similar cocktail there are plenty around with fubar innards, rusted chrome and shonky glass that could be restored with all new parts and end up better than this one. I'd be willing to bet someone will happily trade you a mint JAMMA cocktail for it simply as it's so rare.

Keep it original.

[neorichieb1971]

And finally the game working -

[bestofthebunch]

I am interested in any cocktail cabs for sale, especially old Taito ones, but love nichibutsu and the more modern ones as well..... let me know if you want to sell it....


cheers
Brian

[rtw]

It's official this is now listed at system16.com

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id ... 8670#18670

Are there no people with EPROM readers willing to dump this game in the UK ? There must be someone with an EPROM reader close to Bedford ?

neorichieb1971, could you please try to get more pictures of the PCB's ?

rtw

[neorichieb1971]

When I go in the dark realm of the garage again I will

[neorichieb1971]

[cools]

Are there no people with EPROM readers willing to dump this game in the UK ? There must be someone with an EPROM reader close to Bedford ?

I'll ask about.

[Ed Oscuro]

This game looks 10000x better than Stratovox / Speak 'n' Rescue.

[Octopod]

Nice looking cocktail man. I love those things. Id restore it personally.

[Ed Oscuro]

Come to think of it, that yellowed instructions paper stapled to the inside of the cabinet is a standard for these Taito cocktail cabinets.

[P-man]

FYI :

Vortex was made by Zilec Electronics in the UK,

http://www.andysarcade.net/store/index. ... ductId=322

I have the instruction cards, but have never come across the game.

What you have is a regular SI part 2 cocktail, but the pcb will have been romswapped/hacked to play Vortex, this is how Zilec worked...

I am in Luton, about 20 miles away from Bedford and i would love to be able to see the game running, and have equipment to dump the roms and the know-how to document the hacks (if any) no problem.. please get in touch.