Mr Do conversion takes a leap forward – out with the old, in with the new
In this instalment of our Mr Do dedicated conversion project, we rip out the old wiring on the cabinet, make some interesting discoveries inside, try to figure out what the original constructors were thinking and of course – have some fun doing it.
Having obtained the manual for this machine, i’d had a peek inside before we got started. The loom seemed to have been converted from the original into Electrocoin’s “unigame” pinout, an adaptor was discovered hanging off the end to convert UNIGAME to JAMMA – this is a bit of a find as it meant I wouldn’t have to make one for one of the Goliath machines at some other time.
Most of the wiring was simple to remove, just a few screws held the cable ties down and a lot of it came out. The connector on the low voltage power supply (5v and 12v) was stuck on quite hard and needed a bit of engineering persuasion to part with it.
Along the way we make some observations and Mark finds a bit of humour in one of the parts (see end credits).
The whole teardown took about an hour, in the video it’s been cut to about fifteen.
Coral Island is one of Blackpool’s iconic arcades, it’s been there certainly as long as I can remember. I have very fond memories of spending a big chunk of my pocket money in there during the 1980′s when it was a video arcade game fans paradise.
Fast forward 30 years and I find myself in Blackpool on Friday 4th November 2011 just before Replay 2011, myself, my girlfriend and my brother decide to grab some fish & chips and have a look around the arcade.
While I accept that times have changed, naturally i’m a bit sad. I remember where there used to stand rows of classic arcade games, particularly in Zaccaria cabinets. Games such as Popeye, Konami’s Ping Pong, Hyper Sports all used to be beautifully lined up and seldom were they unoccupied.
Now, all the games that I remember are replaced with newer ones, at one pound a play compared to the ten pence from back then (that’s hyper inflation for you).
It’s not all bad news, to be fair, this was late on a Friday night and yet still there were plenty of people wandering about and it was nice to see the games being played.
Zaccaria Upright Cabinet in RGP Arcade
Coral Island at one point a few years ago had removed most, if not all of their video games. Replacing them with pushers, redemption machines and of course, fruit machines surrounded by ropes and guarded with signs saying “18 only”.
Luckily they’ve seen the light and a few of the newer better games are there such as After Burner Climax and OutRun 2 Special Edition – although why it has dual steering i’m not sure. Some fun games like Guitar Hero and Dancing Games were there as well, however, I only found one real “joystick” game which was Virtua Tennis.
While the place was clean and tidy, the machines could do with some maintenance, a number of dead screens were visible but of course, you don’t know whether they failed that day or 6 weeks ago.
I hope that eventually places like Coral Island, Mr T’s, Funland etc on the Golden Mile in Blackpool grab at least a few multi-game cabinets that will appeal to some of us retro heads.
Even though I have an arcade of my own full of the classics, you can’t beat going on a field trip to the seaside, eating street food and playing some credits on those games.
