[jazz music jazzing away]
Greetings, and welcome to
an LGR thing about Missile Command!
And in particular it is my version
of Missile Command that I have here:
the Cabaret Cabinet Edition by Atari in 1980.
Now, this was my first arcade machine
that I have ever bought.
And as of now, it's still the only one
that I own, but yeah, it's awesome.
It's an all-time classic,
one of my favorites,
and it's the Cabaret Cabinet Edition.
You know, it's a little bit shorter
but still, you know, more or less full-sized.
Totally playable, and it has these
really cool wood grain on the sides,
and dude, it's just a really awesome cabinet.
I did a video about it when I bought it
in the summer of 2019, so you can see that
if you'd like to see a little bit more
of just my overview of the cabinet,
how I got it, and what had been done to it to fix it up.
The trackball problems
and some of the board and monitor issues that I had.
It was pretty much all sorted when I got it
but there were still some things
about this particular cabinet that
I wanted to improve, and personalize,
and upgrade.
And that's what this video
is going to be about here.
So, as mentioned in the previous video
about this cabinet, there were some things
that I wanted to address
down in the coin door area.
While you can play this on free-play
and that's how it was set when I got it,
I really like the idea of inserting my own
quarters and credits and stuff
into the actual coin slots to play the game.
I don't know, it just, it rings more true
to me as an arcade experience.
But the coin mechanisms themselves
had all sorts of issues,
like they just weren't accepting coins
reliably at all, and the red coin reject buttons
they were kind of sticking, and the door
down in the little bottom right there,
that little flappy thing, was sticking as well.
Not only that, but I had no way of
saving high scores on the machine
and yeah that's an original feature
I suppose you could say,
these machines didn't come with
battery-backed saving or chips that allowed
memory to remember anything after you turned it off
or unplugged it.
It would just lose all your high scores.
But there are modern ways to get around that,
upgrade this. And that is one of the very first
things that I bought, was this little PCB
from Braze Technologies.
It's called the
Missile Command Multigame and High Score Save Kit.
And really it's just a little board
that goes between the 6502 Processor
on the Missile Command motherboard
and it adds the ability to save high scores
whenever it's powered off.
As well, as a bit of a nice bonus feature
in the fact that it also allows you to
switch over and play Super Missile Attack
whenever you want.
Which is a 1981 enhancement kit,
kind of ROM hack conversion
by General Computer Corporation
just like a more difficult version
of Missile Command. The main reason I wanted it
was the high score saving ability.
Just need to grab the key to the rear of the machine,
there's a wooden door panel thing
that comes off so you can access
the PCB and other internals.
And what we need to get to is
all the way in the bottom left,
like near the very front of the
Missile Command Cabinet, that is the 6502 Processor
and in order to reach that, it's thankfully very easy
to get the boards out of these machines.
Really in my case it's just a matter of
removing the wiring harness and
one screw on the top here,
and then just sliding the entire board forward
and there we go, I can now reach the CPU
and pull that out with a IC Puller.
Yeah look at that!
Classic 6502A Microprocessor, good stuff.
And, yeah, it's just a matter of
lining up the little notch on the board
and the CPU
and plugging it in right here
and then sticking that back into
the Missile Command main PCB
in the same direction as the
CPU would have been before.
That's it! That is all that is involved
with these kinds of upgrade kits
it's a very easy mod and there's a bunch of systems
that Braze Technologies and I'm sure other people
make these for. It's really cool stuff.
And there we go! Got the system powered back on.
So far so good, in fact it looks exactly the same
up to this point, but then if you press
the START 1 and START 2 buttons at the same time
you can switch over to Super Missile Attack
and play that version of the game instead
of the original Missile Command.
You know, again, I really just bought this
for the High Score saving ability
but it's cool to have this option
to play something a little bit different
from time to time, although this is
much more punishing, to just downright difficult
than even the original Missile Command.
So this absolutely destroys me.
Every single time.
Wow.
[Buzzing missile destruction sounds]
If you're like one of those crazy marathon players
and you can play it for infinity
then maybe you'll be able to have more of a challenge
out of this, but for me it's just punishing
so I pretty much never play it.
Anyway, I am happy to have the
High Score saving ability on the
regular Missile Command game.
That was enough for me!
But with that out of the way,
the next order of business was to address
some of the coin door and coin area issues
and just little things that I wanted to tweak
and make better and, [laughs] Actually,
one of the first things that I did
was I dropped 800 quarters into the coin tray.
[laughs] Yeah, okay.
So the reason that I did this was very simple.
When you dropped quarters into this thing
they were just plunking down on this plastic tray
and it sounded stupid.
You know when I was playing arcade games as a kid
I always liked that satisfying sound
of the quarter or the credit just dropping
into the machine, and "clink" it just,
ah, you know, the metallic coins up against coins.
So a quick and easy way to get around that
you know, just make it sound a little more awesome
was to drop a lot of my own quarters in there.
So I just went to the bank,
withdrew some quarters, and put 'em in there.
Yeah, it sounds much more legit now
when dropping quarters in
[satisfying clink]
Yeah, but whatever. That's just a silly thing.
The main real thing that I wanted to address
with this coin door
were the mechanisms themselves.
And as you can see, the little red reject buttons
stick in place, not that there's much reason
to press them in, this machine
doesn't actually reject coins,
but the fact that you could press them
and they got stuck annoyed me.
Anyhow these flappy doors at the bottom
were getting stuck,
and just inserting quarters to begin with
sometimes they would just get stuck
in the coin mechanism.
So I needed to really take it all apart.
And to do that, there are several different
nuts to take off of these bolts
because as far as I could tell,
the coin mechanisms were working okay,
they're just plastic ones,
they weren't metal ones unfortunately
but it's all this metal, and kind of the
rail where the quarters slide through
that seemed to be the problem.
But yeah, once I got this first part off
I was able to get to the red plastic reject buttons
and see what those were about.
[laughs] For one thing they were
incredibly dirty, so that probably had
something to do with it, and then also
the labels that are inside there were different.
That bothered me as well.
I wanted to replace those.
Anyway, continuing with some more of
the mechanism here, and I was able to get
this top part off,
and yeah this thing is bent
in several different spots.
Who knows what happened to it over the years.
And then finally, these little doors at the bottom,
turns out they are screwed into
the front face plate as well.
It's not just the door that comes out,
like this entire front piece comes off with it.
So yeah, that's interesting.
It was very dirty, very grimy.
I figured, yeah, it's probably just crap
getting in the way,
so I took these over to the sink
and gave them a thorough washing.
In fact there's a lot of this machine that could
probably benefit from a thorough washing
but we're going to start here.
And yeah, just a bit of dish soap and warm water
and it's already looking a lot better
and the door is flapping around more freely.
But once it dried I started noticing
there's this kind of rubber degradation.
Maybe it's the kind of plastic or something,
I don't know, but there's a coating on here
that is coming apart.
And I think that's actually what was causing
a good bit of the sticking.
So I pulled off all the chunks that I could
and actually added just a little bit of lubrication,
screwed them back onto the coin door itself
and yeah check it out! The doors are nice
and freely flapping around as they should.
Now that, ah, little things like this
are super satisfying to do
on such a big machine like this.
I don't know why.
Next up were the coin reject button areas
and yeah, [laughs] these were so nasty!
I can't imagine they've ever been cleaned.
So I just took a little cloth, alcohol wipe thing
and swiped away the main junk that was going on.
Years and years of sticky fingers,
coin residue, and who knows what.
And it was not enough.
Absolutely had to bring out a toothbrush
and some isopropyl alcohol and just keep on going
until I got as much of that grime away as I could.
Now as for the red buttons themselves,
I was considering replacing them outright
with some brand new ones,
just to really make it shine
but I realized they weren't quite the
exact same size, even though they seemed to be
online, according to all the websites,
but no, man, they're totally not.
They're a totally different design and size.
And when I put them in there,
they wiggled around, and just didn't feel right at all
plus that little stem in the back
didn't push back far enough to actually move
the coin mechanism at all.
So yeah, this is not going to work
I'm just going to use the original ones
and clean them up as best as I can.
And since I'm doing that, I may as well take
the opportunity to address the little
mismatched labels that are inside there.
Because, yeah, you can actually part
these things apart. I didn't know that.
And replace the labels that are inside there.
And that immediately gave me an idea.
Like, what if I could just re-create
the kind of label that I like in Photoshop?
So I did, I just scanned it in,
stuck it in there in Photoshop
and recreated it and printed it out on paper
I mean that's looking pretty cool.
Now these original inserts,
it's worth noting that they're
kind of a translucent hard plastic.
Really though I don't care about
the material so much, I just wanted to make sure
that light would shine through it.
And it kind of looks like it will
so we're going to give it a shot.
After taking the red plastics to the sink
and giving them a nice good scrubbing
those are looking pretty darn good too.
So I'm happy with that.
So let's try my newly printed-out
coin reject label thingy here
and yeah, it goes right in place
and looks pretty awesome inside there
you wouldn't be able to tell that it's
some cheap recreation at all.
And shining a light through it,
it looks, eh, you know, not as good honestly,
because of the paper, it's a little bit thin
so the black levels don't look as great
but eh, it'll work for now.
And since I'm screwing around with
making my own designs anyway,
why don't I just come up with my own
completely custom coin reject label?
[laughs] So, yeah man,
I just stuck an LGR logo on there
and look at that!
It's like the kind of thing I always dreamed of
as a kid, like have my own arcade games
and my own little logos on things.
I've even thought of getting my own
custom tokens made, if anybody knows a good way to do that
let me know, I might actually do that.
But yeah, this looks awesome as well.
I am thoroughly happy with this already.
And now the coin rejection buttons match.
Ah, that right there alone makes me happy!
So we'll stick those back in the slots there
and get the door back on slightly,
and yeah, look at that, man
that looks so cool already.
This is going to look awesome
when I get the lights in place
and yeah, dude, exciting stuff.
Speaking of the lights, they're actually installed
in those little metal bits that
I pulled out earlier, that I think are kind of
bent apart, so I'm going to take the lights out.
And then really just take this whole thing apart.
It's just bent metal everywhere.
That's how it's held together.
So fixing it is just a matter of bending it back
the other way, I think.
So let's see how this works
because man, like I said, this was
all kinds of out of whack.
It's not supposed to be exactly straight
but it is supposed to guide the quarter
down this little path
on the coin mechanism itself and then drop it
into a slot. And what was happening is
the quarters were getting stuck along that path
because the metal bits weren't guiding
the quarters down it.
So I just kept bending things,
and bending things back until the quarters
would drop through every time.
[coins slide and clink]
I mean, that seems like problem solved to me
so we'll just bend the pins back into shape
and get everything stuck back together
and reinstall them on the door
just in reverse order, the same thing
that I did earlier.
Just got to plug the lights back in
those are just those little leads there
and that's it!
Coin mechanisms are a lot simpler than
I imagined they were as a kid.
They always felt like some magical thing,
like, ooh, I thought they had some sensors
to recognize credits or something, but not really
it's all very mechanical, so it can go
very wrong very easily, especially with these
cheaper plastic coin mechs that are in here
and things slightly bent out of shape.
I'll just get a quarter inserted here and listen
[coin clinks, rolls, and clunks]
[Game makes siren sound]
Nice. Now the coin mechs are very much reliable
and cleaned up and looking great
with those LGR inserts in place
and oh man, this is exactly what I was hoping for
and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be
thankfully this stuff is all admirably low-tech.
I really enjoy working on these mechanisms
now that I know that they're relatively simple.
I do want to maybe upgrade the inserts
with a better material,
but you know, that'll be something to do
sometime in the future.
I'm happy with them for now,
cause at a distance they look fine.
So I was just going to leave things there
and that was going to be the video,
just taking care of the coin door
and the little upgrade board, but
Drew Nicholson got in touch,
he apparently runs the channel The 8-Bit Pit
and he generously sent along a bunch of
really cool Missile Command related things
along with a warning saying,
"the arcade addiction is real."
And yes, yes it is.
But yeah, look at this awesome stuff!
He sent along some metal coin mechanisms
as well as some DeoxIT D Series
that is always handy to have a little bit more of
along with some miniature little light bulbs
and these'll go inside those
coin rejection mech areas,
in case those ever burn out.
Also a little fluorescent starter
for the fluorescent bulb that's
behind the marquee I presume
and finally a cover for my coin tray.
So this is cool, and I figured there should have been
something that went on top here,
but yeah, this will just slide on top of
the plastic tray and it's just sort of a cover.
It's got some slots for the coins to fall through
and just sort of complete that whole thing.
Oh yeah and dude, I mean,
he sent along so much cool stuff
Look at this.
Some replacement operation maintenance
and service manuals for the original
Missile Command full-size cabinet.
It pretty much applies to mine as well.
But yeah, let's go ahead and get these
metal coin mechs installed
because, dude, these look satisfying.
[metal-on-metal clink]
Oh, that's so much more satisfying.
[metal-on-metal clink, sound of coin dropping onto table]
So this'll be about the simplest upgrade
in the world, it's just a matter of
pulling out these plastic coin mechs
that are already in here.
Look at how they're held in place by rusty metal bits
[laughs] they're not supposed to be rusty.
But you know, they are. And it's fine.
We accept it for how it is.
And you can just drop in the new ones,
right in the same place.
And that's that.
And yeah, I like how easy these are to swap out.
It makes sense that they are like this
because then you could just use the same
basic coin door all over the world,
you know, swap out the coin mechs
for different currencies and credit styles,
you know, if you wanted to make your own tokens,
like I maybe want to do.
And then the coin tray itself,
just pulled that out, put it on the floor here,
and we can stick the cover on top of that.
That looks [laughs] way more legit.
[rattly sound of fingers tapping on the metal]
It has slots for three coin mechs, but
the ones on the left and right
will line up with the ones that I have in the machine
quarters just drop directly in there
and that's awesome.
It's much more sturdy looking now
and it's just a pleasing result.
Again, thank you Drew!
But we got one more order of business
because while I've been poking around
in here and doing research on these machines
and looking what other people's cabinets look like,
I noticed that mine has this blank area
on the back panel door, with some staples
and little bits of paper in there.
And I figured something must have been there before
and yeah, turns out, Atari originally had
stapled to the back door, this
Missile Command Self-Test Procedure sheet.
It's about 17 by 11 inches, and luckily,
a website called Mike's Arcade, had some of these
back door operation sheets scanned in
and available for download.
So I was able to find one for Missile Command
and yeah, that's perfect.
I'm totally going to get one of these made up
and put in there.
So first things first,
I just got the back door here.
You can see these four staples,
and little bits of paper
where the sheet used to be.
No need for any of that any more,
so I'll just pry the staples out of there
and take care of the papers and, you know,
get it cleaned up a little bit
and vacuum away the excess nastiness.
Then I went to a local Staples print center
and had them print out a nice copy
on 11 by 17 paper, and here we go!
It's a bit more bleached white
than maybe it should be,
but, eh, it's cool,
it'll yellow eventually I suppose.
Now I did change one thing around though.
Where the staples were before, it seems like
the paper was stapled all the way near the bottom
of the door, which actually makes this sheet
rather hard to see from the inside
just looking through the coin mech area.
I wanted to be able to see it,
just looking from the front of the cabinet
so I moved it up a bit,
stapled that in place right there
and yeah man, check that out.
Brand new operation sheet, yeah!
Just get that propped into place
and there you go, look at that!
You can see it.
Now whenever I need to change around
a DIP switch setting, or whatever,
I can just quickly look inside of it
and refer to the back there.
Yeah, I've used that a time or two,
it's useful to have, and I'm glad it's there.
And you know at this point,
I'm just getting obsessed with weird little details
so [laughs] I ran across these stickers,
these are some from Atari here,
Defective Warranty Parts.
I don't think this actually goes on the machine,
I'm not gonna put them on there,
but I thought it was cool so I picked it up.
This one on the other hand,
this is an Atari Service Center sticker
from really nearby.
Ashville, North Carolina.
They spelt Asheville without the 'E' in the middle
but apparently SDX Corporation
used to be a thing near here.
I don't know where this machine originally came from
but I thought it'd be a really cool regional touch
and I'm going to put it on the back,
sort of top area of the cabinet
where it looks like there used to be a sticker
in fact I think maybe this was the original
Atari serial number sticker,
I don't see one of those on this machine.
It would have had one, I wish it still did
but you know what, I'm gonna put this sticker
here instead because it looks cool
even though it's not something this machine
would have originally had, more than likely.
But it's awesome.
It's an Asheville Atari Service Center sticker.
And then finally, I've got one more little detail
that I've really been wanting to put on this machine
ever since I figured out it existed
and that is on the coin door itself,
there used to be these little game pricing labels
as you can see in the manual for Missile Command here
there were several different types
for different types of credit situations.
It would have come with the manual,
but my manuals don't have them,
so I looked around online until I found some
that seemed like they could work
and yeah, I just ran across these Atari ones.
I'd like some that say "1 coin = 1 play"
and I'll just stick it on the coin door there
and ah, dang it.
See it's not quite the right width.
[laughs] It should be like a quarter of an inch,
a couple millimeters wider on each side.
So I'm not fully satisfied with this.
It's okay at a distance,
but again I'd really like one that says
1 quarter equals 1 credit and is the right width.
So if anybody knows where I can get one of those
that'd be awesome.
That is, finally it for this update video
on the Missile Command Cabinet.
This thing is so much fun to work on.
Yes I know a lot of these upgrades are very minor
and just tiny little things that don't
add up to a whole lot.
But, man, it makes it really satisfying
to look at and to use and to show off.
Something that I'm gonna continue to be
tweaking and adding to and working on
for years no doubt!
And I hope that you enjoyed seeing this
come together.
Like I said, I've got a whole bunch other things
that I want to mess with in the future,
so maybe I'll do a video on that.
Let me know if you'd like to see more of this
or other arcade things.
Hope that you enjoyed this video,
if you did, awesome,
maybe check out some of my others
or stick around for new videos every week
here on LGR.
And as always, thank you very much for watching!