Arcade Operator Raid in the Back of Beyond

This was a pretty unexpected Raid as the Op phoned me out of the blue.  He gave me a vague description of what he had and a date was made for a visit.

An open road, blue skies and helicopters!?  This journey was more Cruis ‘n Blast than OutRun!

The destination was a remote location off the beaten track, west of the M25.  We drove through woodland and saw birds of prey circling overhead as we approached.

We arrived early.  Picture the Evil Dead cabin, but with some dilapidated fruit and casino machines outside and you won’t be too far off.

I had a quick scan of the skip, but there didn’t appear to be anything video game related.

We had a bit of time to wait and so we ventured to a nearby garden centre for a bite to eat.

The parsnip and carrot soup was excellent.

They also had a nice range of cakes, chutneys, beers and wines.

Cactus.  Or should it be cacti?

However there was no time to hang around looking at cactus (or cacti?), we had a Raid to go on!  We made our way back to the Evil Dead cabin.

The workshop was mostly filled with fruit machines.  The Op had taken over the business from his father.  He said that they used to supply a lot of video games to neighbouring pubs, universities and colleges.

I climbed over the fruit machines at the back of the cabin to find a Nintendo PlayChoice-10.  It had obviously been sat there for a long time.

There was also a generic cocktail cab.

Checking the shelves for video game parts.

At the back there were a couple of boxes of boards and random parts, which included various buttons, joysticks and guns.

I also picked up some monitor chassis and a Sega driver dashboard.

They also had a couple of old jukeboxes.

Today’s pick ups.

The boot loaded up.

Raid Highlights

These Capcom CP System II titles all came complete with motherboards, which was a nice bonus.  It was also the first time I’ve come across the grey Asian type. 

As I was carrying Marvel Super Heroes I heard something rattling round inside the case.  Further investigation revealed that the battery had disintegrated, spewing corrosive fluid across the board.

Unfortunately the PCB’s had been stored badly and there were a lot of sports titles, including six Tecmo World Cup ’90 boards no less!  However there were a couple of interesting games, including Sega’s obscure Dark Edge and the Konami classic Juno First.

Dark Edge is a game I hadn’t come across before. 

Released in 1993 on System 32 hardware, Dark Edge is Sega’s first attempt at a 3D fighter, using sprite scaling to simulate a 3D playfield.  Unusually for this type of game, it has a sc-fi setting.  It’s definitely one I’m looking forward to playing.