| |
|
I bought this machine from a guy in Grand Rapids. The side decals
were in very bad shape. The marquee had seen better days. The
control panel was looking bad as well. The first thing I tackled
was rebuilding the control panel and applying a new overlay.
It was a moderately painless process and looks really nice.
I rebuilt the joystick and the spinner and they both operate
flawlessly. Soon after I was done with the control panel the
sound started failing. I lost a few channels of music. I purchased
a working board set and will repair the old board set later.
Next I tackled the side decals. It took about two hours a side
with a heat gun and a blade to remove the decals piece by piece.
Once this was done I applied goo-gone to the sides to remove
the residual adhesive and then cleaned the surface with degreaser.
Next I lightly sanded both sides and then painted them a matte
black. Applying the decals, from Phoenix Arcade, took no time
at all and they look great. I also installed a new marquee.
There is still a little work to do on the machine but right
now it looks and plays great.
If you were not a geek, Tron was a pretty bad movie plot wise.
If you were a geek, like me, plot be damned. The thought of
being inside a computer to play games was awesome. The graphics
were incredible for the time and still look good today. I remember
playing this game for the first time at Scottsdale Mall in South
Bend and I fell in love with it. The cabinet is really the coolest
video game cabinet ever. The graphics and music were great.
The game is fun and it keeps your adrenaline pumping. The game
does go from easy to incredibly hard rather quickly though.
I’ve made it to the SNOBOL level. All of Tron’s
levels are named after programming languages except for the
last which is USER. As I’m writing this I decided I need
to try and find some tips on how to get to higher levels. I
love turning this machine on just to look at it. It’s
one that will never leave my collection.
BACK TO VIDEO GAMES
|
|
|
