We woke up Saturday morning to some wet snow, but still decided to take Jeff’s mini van instead of my SUV, it had more space. My youngest would stay with Jeff’s family and visit the Indy zoo, while I took my oldest along for the ride. Never too early to infect him with the collecting bug and I hoped he would enjoy the experience. The ride was easy and the school wasn’t that hard to find. It was huge and it was red.

The building had seen better days and was a little dangerous, but that just makes it more interesting. My son thought it was spooky and wanted to know if we’d see any ghosts. Ghosts of classics long past perhaps, but not much more. The hallways were dark and strewn with all types of debris. The place had definitely been picked over and according to one of the locals, collectors have been pulling games from this place for over 20 years. At one point it was packed solid, now all that remained were a few dozen conversions, cranes, EM games, and a small mix of more recent titles. Regardless of the selection, it was still fun to poke around. How often do you get such an opportunity?

The building had some amazing old woodwork, with gorgeous banisters and wainscoting on almost every wall. A matrix style phone could be seen in each classroom, with child height and wall length chalkboards everywhere. The place must have been amazing back in the day. Strewn about in the various rooms were remnants of a once thriving coin operated business. Empty boxes for long gone NIB games, conversions galore, bootleg artwork, and even custom made cabinets for some unknown bootleg game. The place was saturated with arcade history, it was awesome.

Weird poker games, burned out pinball shells, collapsing walls, broken SAMI EM glass, and plenty of dust. This place had it all. You could just taste the lead in the air from all that flaking paint. While games on the second floor would have to be hauled down the massive flight of stairs, at least there was a loading ramp off the back of the school to make it easy to pack up the vehicles. All purchases would be wheeled out the back after payment and quick inspection by the operator. People were orderly and Brent kept things moving along smoothly. We were lucky enough to get a short tour by Elutz who also knew the operator and had permission to wander freely. He showed me the “bootleg” room where they used to strip non-earning games and turn them into something else. It was an awful mess but it told an interesting story. How many games met their fate in this room? The piles of power supplies, kit boxes, and stacks of bootleg artwork speak volumes. This was all that remained after decades of collectors coming in and pulling the best parts.

There were a bunch of pong clone type games to be found, worthless really, unless you like that kind of stuff. A funky Allied Paddle Battle and a converted Paddle Battle stood prominently on the second floor. The shell of a Kee tank, a converted bi-plane and a more-or-less complete bi-plane could be seen. A few EM games missing parts, a row of EM pins, a pretty nice looking Bally Road Runner, more flaking paint and a couple of cute little DECO Astro Fighters rounded out the second floor. The DECO’s were the reason we made the trip in the first place. Three of the DECO’s were located on the second floor, one on the first. My Magliner with stair climbers made the descent down the massive flight of stairs quick and easy.

If the main structure wasn’t enough, there was also another building across the street that housed many of the pinball machines that were for sale. Not only did it have pins and more games, it also had a giant hole in the roof! Ugh, never good to see that as you know the games would be trashed. I know a few guys got some deals, including a sweet Taxi pinball that went for a great price. Jeff and I were out of space for the ride back so I didn’t spend much time in this space, plus Edward wanted to show me the cabinet building room and I was eager to get back on the road. The cabinet room was where they used to build and assemble cabinets for the conversion kits, bootleg or otherwise. There was still a nice pile of woodgrain laminate on one table, lots of wood debris, old tools, including a nice press brake. It reminded me a little of dptwiz’s old work space We wandered around in a few of the rooms snapping photos, what a crazy place. I could spend a ton of time here, but it was time to get moving. We still had to load up the Deco minis.

So how many DECO mini cabinets can you fit in a mini van? The answer is four. With the easily removable bases we were able to tetris the cabs into place with ease. The original three fit so well we decided to take the fourth one too! We weren’t sure if any of them would work and it would be better to have the whole bunch to mess with at once. One of the cabs had a bad base and it was left behind, I may go back for it one day. You can see the games packed in the van and then nicely cleaned up sitting in Jeff’s garage. Pretty cool little machines, much better than their tall, boxy cousin.

I loaded up one of the nice machines and the part machine into my 4 runner, packed up our gear, grabbed the kids and headed back home. Got back Saturday evening in plenty of time to unload our junk and move the game into the basement for cleaning. It was a great trip and I’m glad I got to experience the school house raid.

The first thing that grabs you is the blatant Star Wars X-Wing imagery plastered all over the control panel, bezel and marquee. Why not? If you’re going to make a bootleg game you might as well slap some artwork on it that people recognize. It would get a few tokens for the art at least, while the gamer attempts to figure out what, if anything, Astro Attack has to do with the iconic franchise we all know and love.

John was able to get the game working pretty fast, “I actually got it going late last night. One of the circuit boards wasn’t seated in the edge connector properly and then the vertical hold needed adjusting but then it popped right in. Not a game I’ve ever seen before. The marquee is interesting. Each letter has a separate bulb and they alternate turning on and off randomly making a kinda cool effect. I’ll try to get some video or something later today if I have time.” He did have some time and shared this video with the collecting community. Pretty interesting how the marquee lights flash on and off, probably with the use of “blinker” bulbs. Might be a little distracting during game play, but still cool. (refresh the page if you don’t see the video)

John determined that the game play is identical to Astro Fighter by Sega/Gremlin/DECO. Interesting to note that the SEGA/Gremlin version of the Astro Fighter flyer has some blatant rip-off going on as well, beam me up Scotty! The game was released by a bunch of sources, perhaps that made it ripe for bootlegging, who knows? The cabinet has a simple design with an odd upright coin box and single slot coin mechanism. Done cheaply to keep costs down I’d imagine. Maybe it’s the Star Wars artwork, but I like the cabinet and would have dropped in a token or two to give it a try.

The printed circuit board mounts on the side of the cabinet, in a cage that doesn’t look like it was meant to go there. You can see slots in the wood that would fit a larger pcb. So is this pcb a bootleg or an actual Astro Fighter pcb? Tough to tell, as Astro Fighter pcb images from the internet vary. The monitor is nicely mounted with the chassis positioned on the side of the cab for easy maintenance. Everything inside the cab looks original and the overall clean, unhacked look of the cabinet got me thinking. Maybe this generic cab would accept a number of different bootleg games. Just mount a new pcb and connect the harness to the existing cab harness with those molex connectors. No hacking or rewiring necessary, just a new control panel and some new artwork. That would make this a pretty sophisticated bootleg cab, as it was made specifically for that purpose, with multiple games in mind. A multi-bootleg? I suppose the millions of dollars being made in the 1980′s on coin-op would have brought out all the scammers!

Of course I’m just speculating about this cabinet and its origins. If you know any facts about this cabinet or have seen other games in this style of cabinet, I’d love to know about it or see some pictures. Use the contact joystick and drop me a line.

According to KLOV the game sounds identical to moon patrol in every way, they even stole graphics from the Williams game for the instruction card. Bootleg games were a big problem for manufacturers back in the 80′s when arcades were booming. Why pay top dollar for a Moon Patrol when you could get a cheaper conversion kit for Moon Ranger? I also found this sticker inside the folder, just another instruction card with some hints of Engrish, perhaps for a cocktail table version of the game. Pretty fun stuff.

Unfortunately a bunch of other bidders liked it too! My meager bid of just under $23 wasn’t nearly enough to win this cpo that almost hit $60. Pretty crazy IMHO since it is just a bootleg piece and not original. Perhaps someone is just adding it to their artwork collection.

Besides lacking all of the usual clues that identify a Willis overlay (can you name them all yet?), it is one flimsy piece of art. Cheaply made and probably one of the thinnest overlays I have in the archive. It is really just a stiff piece of paper with adhesive on the back. This overlay is also excessively large and while I’m OK with the simple geometric pattern, something more creative than a mirror image could have been done. Doing a quick test fit on the control panel of a similar Atari cabinet reveals that much of the artwork would be lost under the bottom of the panel, or trimmed away for proper fit. Perhaps it was made this large to accommodate a variety of cabinets. Regardless, it’s a bootleg whose origins will probably never be known. If you have any pictures of this installed on a cabinet or if you know any additional history, drop me a line!

I’m not sure why so much effort was put into this bootleg, perhaps it was for one of the foreign made knock-off pcb kits that were so popular with some operators. Maybe it was just for a local group of operators that had a half dozen or more Williams Moon Patrols needing fresh overlays. Whatever the reason, it is no excuse for such shoddy art work. Lots of color is nice and the font is pretty good, but that’s about it. I would like to see a picture of this overlay on a cab in your collection or in the wild. Drop me a line if you have any pictures or more information about this particular overlay.

How do I know? There are lots of reasons, the first one is that Willis never copied existing work. I can only assume that because of licensing agreements they were forced to create new art for each piece they reproduced. Take a look at my artwork page if you want more proof. Similarities exist in some cases, but not direct copies. Another reason is the quality. This cpo is printed on some cheaply backed material, not the industry standard 3M stuff. It is also missing the manufacturers text, copyright info and die cuts which were standard on Willis reproductions.

While I was disappointed that this wasn’t a Willis overlay, it is still a unique piece. The one thing that struck me in particular are the odd, ragged black borders. Now the original Elevator Action cpo had rough borders, as you can see in the last image, however they weren’t as bad as this. It almost looks as if an original cpo was pulled from a control panel, ripping it on the edges. Then a photo was taken with one of those giant bellow cameras. Cutting edge back in the 80′s, this piece of equipment would allow a silk screen company to make screens directly from a giant photograph. A little touch up and removal of the Taito logo and bingo, you’ve got an unauthorized copy! Seems like a lot of work just to make an overlay. This one gets added to the archive. (Taito control panel image courtesy of KLOV)

While the artwork leaves something to be desired, at least the production quality of the overlay is good. 3M adhesive backed paper and clean die cuts for the buttons and joysticks. There are no markings anywhere on the overlay, so this gets filed under bootleg in the archive. If anyone has more information or has seen one in the wild, drop me a line! Happy gaming.

After some more investigating, it appears as if the overlay is a bootleg for Elevator Action. The first picture is an overlay I found available at QuarterArcade and the second a copy I own. The QA copy has some text on the middle right that I can’t quite make out, unfortunately, as it might shed some light on the true manufacturer of the kit. The cabinet picture is from KLOV and shows the overlay installed on a Taito cabinet control panel. According to KLOV, Spy Agent made by Taito, is a bootleg of Elevator Action. Huh? Elevator Action was made by Taito. Why would you bootleg your own game? Since Spy Agent was a bootleg and seems to have been a conversion kit, I’m guessing Willis had nothing to do with it. The overlay is missing all the tell tale signs. If you have any more information, post a comment.