With this hobby, it's always good to mix things up every now and then. I recently tracked down a couple of nearby classics. First up was a Black Widow (in a Gravitar cab):
I bought this one working, which is amazing, given that it clearly hadn't had any maintenance for a while. The first thing I did was clean the power block and replace the big blue capacitor with a new one. Next up, I replaced the rubber grommets in the Wico joysticks. They had turned to powder, and the joysticks handles were just 'floating' in their sockets--not very playable. As it turned out, there was a 4 way Wico knockoff installed in the left (motion) stick; it's tough playing an 8 way game when you can only move in 4 directions! I replaced the stick with a spare 8 way. This game will need a new overlay (there is only a small amount of the original overplay present near the player 1/2 buttons. I also have a cap kit for the monitor that I will be installing soon. In addition to the black widow, I also picked up this:
You may not remember 8 Ball Action--I didn't either. I got this game because it used to be a Donkey Kong Junior. If you look carefully, you can see that the bezel is simply the original bezel installed backwards. The monitor has a bit of vertical fold over, so it will need a cap kit as well. I'm amazed at how clean this machine is!
I bought this one working, which is amazing, given that it clearly hadn't had any maintenance for a while. The first thing I did was clean the power block and replace the big blue capacitor with a new one. Next up, I replaced the rubber grommets in the Wico joysticks. They had turned to powder, and the joysticks handles were just 'floating' in their sockets--not very playable. As it turned out, there was a 4 way Wico knockoff installed in the left (motion) stick; it's tough playing an 8 way game when you can only move in 4 directions! I replaced the stick with a spare 8 way. This game will need a new overlay (there is only a small amount of the original overplay present near the player 1/2 buttons. I also have a cap kit for the monitor that I will be installing soon. In addition to the black widow, I also picked up this:
You may not remember 8 Ball Action--I didn't either. I got this game because it used to be a Donkey Kong Junior. If you look carefully, you can see that the bezel is simply the original bezel installed backwards. The monitor has a bit of vertical fold over, so it will need a cap kit as well. I'm amazed at how clean this machine is!
