Arcade Boneyard Road Trip

The other day I was looking through some old posts on the KLOV forum.  I found a long rant about how a guy was trashing old games and selling off the parts.  After reading several posts I realized they were talking about The Arcade Boneyard.   I had visited the website, and seen several of his posts on Craigslist, and knew that he lived somewhere north of me, in Ocala or Gainesville.  One of the rants on KLOV was that the guy had a "kill list", really it's just a list of stuff that he plans to take apart and sell, and that certain members found that to be offensive.

Next thing you know I'm on his website, examining the "kill list".  On the list are a few odd ball games that would likely be of interest to collectors.  There was a cockpit Red Baron, and a Tail Gunner 2!!  In spite of there being a notation that he doesn't sell these as projects, I dropped him an email asking.  He responds almost immediately and explains that the cabinets are in very bad shape.  Actually the back half of each cabinet is missing, the previous owner sawed them in half to save space.  He sends me some pics, and I'm already planning on grabbing the Tail Gunner.

We work out a price, me going low, and he angles for a take-two for one price strategy.  So wow, I was totally on the fence about getting this as a project and now he wants me to take both the Tail Gunner AND the Red Baron.  Luckily I find out from Mick that a local collector had an eye on the Red Baron, and later that night confirmed that he wanted it.  I was clear to make the haul.  So with everything in place, My daughter and I set off early Saturday morning for Ocala.

Not knowing what to expect, the Arcade Boneyard was a very pleasant surprise.  The owner Rob was a super nice guy, and his place was very clean, organized, and professional.  He loaded up both games and showed us around his shop.  He has a very large collection of parts and manuals, as well as complete machines.  Many of his games had been restored and looked like new.  And there were a number of cabinets there also, ready to have parts installed, because they were just too nice to be destroyed.  I would recommend this place to anyone looking for projects or hard to find parts.

So now I have this sweet rare game, Tail Gunner 2.  It's one of the early vector games made by Cinematronics and Vectorbeam, a gem indeed.  I'll not only have to repair the game, but research and build a replica of the cabinet.  It's sure to be an epic restore, let's hope it's not an epic fail.