Here it is, the final installment of our “Road Trip to Arcade Nirvana 2010″, documenting the amazing road trip I made with Jeff Rothe back in the summer of 2010. If you aren’t familiar with our exploits from that summer, refresh your memory by checking out the first two legs of our trip here: Part 1 and Part 2. After all the fun we had at the Freecade, and the awe we felt viewing so many rare laser titles at Morgan’s house, I wasn’t sure we could top it. Jeff had told me very little about our next stop, or perhaps I just didn’t remember the details, but we were on our way to see long time collector James Marous in South Vienna Ohio. I didn’t know much about James or his collection, but Jeff told me that he liked vector games and was also a big fan of Showbiz Pizza…hmm, this should be interesting. Here is a map of the final leg of our trip.

On the drive out to visit James’ place, Jeff filled me in on some of the details. Not only did James like vector games, but he has a bunch of super rare titles in his lineup. Some of them I had never seen or played before. The kind of games that just can’t be played in MAME. Rather than ramble on about his stuff, I’ll just let the game list speak for itself:

Armor Attack, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Aztarac, Battlezone, Berzerk, Black Widow, Blaster, Bubbles, Computer Space (yellow), Crazy Climber (deluxe), Cyberball, Death Race, Defender, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Dragon’s Lair, Food Fight, Frogger, Galaga, Gravitar, Gyruss, I,Robot, Joust, Lunar Lander, Major Havoc, Missile Command, Moon Patrol, Quantum, Reactor, Robotron, Space Duel, Spy Hunter, Star Castle, Star Wars, Tempest, Tron, Wacko, Warrior, and Zookeeper. That is 40 amazing games in one space, including every Atari vector (right? I’m not missing any?). I was truly going to be in Arcade Nirvana. Insert coin to continue…

The Willis replacement control panel overlay for Atari Centipede is arguably one of the best CPO’s made by Willis. I not talking about finished product quality, as all Willis products had high production standards, I’m talking about the aesthetics. All too often Willis gets bashed for their “crappy” artwork, well this one does the game justice. Perhaps that’s why it’s so hard to find a Willis Centipede overlay that hasn’t already been applied to a control panel. The partnership breakup between Wico and Willis might also be a reason, check out the Wico Centipede overlay here.

The artist that worked on this one made an effort to do some color and design matching for the layout so the cpo wouldn’t look out of place on the game. He(?) even worked up a cool looking Centipede to add to the CPO, an element that was missing from the original design. Good color, cool Centipede, mushrooms and horizontal stripes. What else could you possibly need? I’ve only been able to find a couple of hacked up versions of this overlay and I’m on the lookout for a nice example. Check out my Willis artwork page for more information about Willis and their history.

I would like to add one of these overlays to the Willis artwork archive. If you have a nice example of this control panel overlay for sale or trade, drop me a line!

I’ve added another Willis overlay to the growing archive, this time the 4 player version of Atari Football. A big thanks to Jeff of rotheblog for this one. Now Atari is famous among the collecting community for fabulous cabinet artwork and the Atari Football cocktail cabinets were no exception. I had a chance to see and play a HUO example at a party not so long ago and it was amazing.

The artwork and color scheme on that game exude 70′s funk and I love it. The cp artwork was originally screened right onto the metal panels, just like on Asteroids and Missile Command. Unfortunately that means when it wears off, its gone forever. So besides being a replacement overlay and not a metal panel, the Willis piece just doesn’t fit well with the Atari cabinet artwork. Sure, the big “football” and a bunch of football players make it obvious what game its for, but so boring. Still has all the earmarks of a quality Willis piece and makes a nice addition.

I purchased this one from a fellow collector along with a handful of other Willis overlays. I’ve seen it in pictures on other sites but have never had a chance to examine it closely. It is supposedly for crystal castles by Atari and I have no reason to doubt that. One thing is certain though, it’s not a Willis product.

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. (more…)

Willis made a few different overlays for Atari games, the Asteroids cocktail table being one of them. This overlay has very simple styling, partly taken from the very understated original control panel overlay. The artist added some color and shapes to create an overlay that works well with the cocktail table, in my opinion.

Now I’m not saying that it’s super fantastic or anything, it just works well and looks better than the original in this case. Quality materials, die-cut button holes, part numbers and copyright info all in place. Another piece for the archive.

If you’re into arcade game repair, or have been in the hobby for awhile, you’re probably familiar with the Programmable Atari Test Station, or PAT-9000. This elusive piece of test equipment was sold by Atari to operators and would assist them in troubleshooting and repairing both raster and vector Atari circuit boards. It wasn’t a cheap item back in the 80′s and if you can find one now it would likely cost a small fortune. Oddly enough, I spotted these two gentleman moving one into the back of a Volvo.

This unit was purchased by a Chicago local and while it had been badly hacked by the former owner, Bill K was able to repair it and get it 95% of the way to full working operation. Imagine that, repairing the repair equipment. The proud new owner will be making the final adjustments and repairs which includes building a housing for a vector and raster monitor to complete the package. A pretty amazing find and a great piece of history.