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Got my first arcade machine.


DustyCartridges

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Nice find! My first was a cocktail as well - a bootleg Scramble. Congrats, and welcome to the addicition icon_mrgreen.gif

 

cocktail machines are cool to look at,

 

but horrible to play on, doubly so, when the controls are on the side.

 

i knew someone with a popeye cocktail machine, the controls were on the

side, and it was unplayable because you had to bend your wrists at a

weird angle to play it.

 

I know exactly what you mean by the control mounting. For some reason that was really common on Japanese cocktails, but not so much in the rest of the world. Of course, a good number of Japanese cocktails were exported, built, or copied outside of Japan using the Japanese control mounting scheme. It always drove me nuts when I'd run across a game I really wanted to play only to find out that the controls were sprouting straight out from the side like exposed plumbing.

 

That said, there are some cocktails that are very playable - Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Gyruss, Dig Dug, and Crystal Castles all spring to mind. The experience is definitely very different to the uprights, though.

 

Looking at that Astro Wars, though, I'm inclined to agree that as it's pretty much just left / right and fire for controls, it's probably not much of an issue. Bonus points for having the original Japanese control panel in unmolested original condition, too.

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Nice find! My first was a cocktail as well - a bootleg Scramble. Congrats, and welcome to the addicition icon_mrgreen.gif

 

 

I know exactly what you mean by the control mounting. For some reason that was really common on Japanese cocktails, but not so much in the rest of the world. Of course, a good number of Japanese cocktails were exported, built, or copied outside of Japan using the Japanese control mounting scheme. It always drove me nuts when I'd run across a game I really wanted to play only to find out that the controls were sprouting straight out from the side like exposed plumbing.

 

That said, there are some cocktails that are very playable - Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Gyruss, Dig Dug, and Crystal Castles all spring to mind. The experience is definitely very different to the uprights, though.

 

Looking at that Astro Wars, though, I'm inclined to agree that as it's pretty much just left / right and fire for controls, it's probably not much of an issue. Bonus points for having the original Japanese control panel in unmolested original condition, too.

Yeah the stick is awkwardish but being for just left right movement its fine. I think popeye and others had stciks like mine and would be crampy to use for 4 or 8 directions games. And yeah i like the Japanese on the panels too altho the cards under the glass with the scoring table and the game its self is all in english. But i think Japanese stuff usualy has a mixture of english and japanese on it. My famicom box has some english among the japanese text. But i think we all can agree that the woodgrain finish is rad to the max.

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i thought all cocktail machines were wood grained.

 

i had two broken ones, ms pac man and gyruss, that were.

 

there, the controls were parallel to the top, so they would have been playable.

 

when it's perpindicular to the top, your wrists are a weird angle, and in this case, shooting is going to be troublesome.

 

later

-1

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To me the cocktails with the side mounted controls are pretty much the DE FACTO arcade games I grew up with.. with most arcades that I knew filled wall to wall with them. So I'm super used to playing that way, hunched over looking down with my hands below my chin.. yeah in retrospect it probably wasn't the most ideal. :P It wasn't until I went to Hawaii where I saw a Midway Space Invaders cocktail with level controls.. except it used a weird lever to move left/right. I didn't like it.

 

Astro Wars I think is the same game as Astro Fighter .. kind of the post-Space Invaders/Galaxian wave of games that included stuff like Uniwars, Cosmic Guerrilla, The End, etc. I remember I thought the game was very UNFAIR since the ship would move up the screen whenever you didn't kill all the ships. However when you died it didn't reset back to the bottom! You'd stay where you were the rest of the game as far as I could tell. Also once you lost your fuel I think it was game over.. Since I wasn't very skilled at the game I would always end up in the center where the game became almost impossible to me. :lol: Oh good times

Edited by NE146
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I had an original Zaxxon and still have a Mr. Do! (converted Scramble). The control panel pods come out and the controls are on a perfect horizontal plane. I had to scroll back up and view the pic to see what you guys were talking about. Definitely an odd design and I don't think I've ever played a cocktail table like that.

 

Cocktail tables are cool, we all probably played them at places like Pizza Hut back in the day and that's why I wanted one for my game room. The biggest downside is they are real estate hogs. My Mr. Do! is very compact, but when you factor in 2 short bar stools on each side, it takes up the same amount of space as 3 full size coin-ops.

 

The Zaxxon was a very similar layout to Astro Wars and I couldn't make it fit or look good anywhere. If you placed the narrow side against the wall, the cabinet stuck out a mile. If you faced it the other way, you had to leave enough space between it and wall for a player to sit down and it stuck out even further.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Great find! Funny that you mention Astro Wars, as I have been going through the No Quarter podcast backlog (when Carrington Vanston was still on it), and someone sent them feedback regarding Astro Wars in reference to their Quasar episode. I just listened to it yesterday, in fact.

 

Supposedly, Astro Wars was never officially released in North America. It is a Zaccaria game from Italy. The way the listener feedback went was that some company ripped off Astro Wars from Zaccaria and released it as a bootleg to the North American market. So yes, I would say if it is a North American version, it would be rare. You can hear the feedback about Astro Wars on the Karate Champ episode at the beginning (in regards to the prior episode, Quasar).

Edited by SumerNivek
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even this miniature one has the controls on the side:

'Course they do. Controls on the side was the norm for cocktails early on. It's not even up for debate. :)

 

The Space Invaders Anniversary for the PS2 had a pretty cool miniature replica of the Space Invader cocktail. 'Course it was more or less a fancy shell to shove in a PS2 controller.. but it looked great :lol:

post-6095-1240768436.jpg

 

That said.. here's my kid when he was a baby goofing off on my SI Part 2. Just looking at it now I guess it's kind of angled-ish?

post-31-0-30368600-1538487084.jpg

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  • 4 years later...

So glad you posted this pic.  I've been trying confirm that I'm not dreaming when I think I played that game obsessively in the 80's.  Now when I go on line to see if I can find a machine or play an online emulation all I can find is the Granstand version which was utter cr*p.  Wish I could find one in the UK

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On 9/15/2018 at 9:10 AM, DustyCartridges said:

I got an Astro Wars cocktail cabnet for 250$ Canadian yesterday Its a clone of Galaxian , a very good clone. Never heard of this game might be rare i dont know. Im just excited to have my first arcade machine.

post-52825-0-46357900-1537027786_thumb.jpg

NiiiiCE!

On 9/15/2018 at 12:22 PM, negative1 said:

cocktail machines are cool to look at,

 

but horrible to play on, doubly so, when the controls are on the side.

 

i knew someone with a popeye cocktail machine, the controls were on the

side, and it was unplayable because you had to bend your wrists at a

weird angle to play it.

 

ughh.

 

 

later

-1

Oh, I have to disagree. if the controls were simple, one button games with a horizontal joystick, they were very ergonomic. You fired with your thumb. I'm gonna build one some day.

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