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Environmental Discs of Tron Roadside Pickup

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Re: Environmental Discs of Tron Roadside Pickup

#91

Post by whinenot »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #68
gabereiser wrote: post #17

Dude just happens to find a fully working and in great condition arcade cabinet deluxe from 1983 in 2023? Jesus! What a find! I’m a huge fan of old arcade games and even built a few mame cabinets myself - this is extraordinary. There aren’t very many of those games left let alone working in great condition. Many have lost their CGA monitors or fried their boards.

Per the placard over the Tron pinball machine at the Pacific Pinball Museum, the licensed arcade games made more money than the original Tron movie! These cabinets are so rare, I have to wonder how it wound up on the curb. I'd imagine there's no way it's a happy story, unfortunately. Someone apparently felt that was worthless.

>Someone apparently felt that was worthless.

There is a significant probability that mom was tired of hearing "I'm gonna move it out of the garage, soon" and just said to hell with it.

Re: Environmental Discs of Tron Roadside Pickup

#92

Post by egypturnash »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #68
gabereiser wrote: post #17

Dude just happens to find a fully working and in great condition arcade cabinet deluxe from 1983 in 2023? Jesus! What a find! I’m a huge fan of old arcade games and even built a few mame cabinets myself - this is extraordinary. There aren’t very many of those games left let alone working in great condition. Many have lost their CGA monitors or fried their boards.

Per the placard over the Tron pinball machine at the Pacific Pinball Museum, the licensed arcade games made more money than the original Tron movie! These cabinets are so rare, I have to wonder how it wound up on the curb. I'd imagine there's no way it's a happy story, unfortunately. Someone apparently felt that was worthless.

"Tim decided to knock on the door of the owner. A woman answered and explained that the EDOT had sat in her garage for many years and she wanted to get shot of it. Tim was welcome to take it away for free, but she didn’t really want to discuss the machine’s provenance – Where was it from? Who acquired it?"

I'm gonna guess "belonged to former husband". Dead or divorced, who knows.

Re: Environmental Discs of Tron Roadside Pickup

#93

Post by justin66 »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #68
gabereiser wrote: post #17

Dude just happens to find a fully working and in great condition arcade cabinet deluxe from 1983 in 2023? Jesus! What a find! I’m a huge fan of old arcade games and even built a few mame cabinets myself - this is extraordinary. There aren’t very many of those games left let alone working in great condition. Many have lost their CGA monitors or fried their boards.

Per the placard over the Tron pinball machine at the Pacific Pinball Museum, the licensed arcade games made more money than the original Tron movie! These cabinets are so rare, I have to wonder how it wound up on the curb. I'd imagine there's no way it's a happy story, unfortunately. Someone apparently felt that was worthless.

> Per the placard over the Tron pinball machine at the Pacific Pinball Museum, the licensed arcade games made more money than the original Tron movie!

That might be due to movie accounting. There are times the producers of the movie have an incentive to make sure a movie has little or no profit, even if it does okay at the box office. For example when someone other than the producers will contractually get a percentage of the net proceeds of the movie.

It's not a great example (I have no idea about his specific motivations), but one example of how to tweak those knobs is when Kubrick's films had to use special equipment that was literally only available from a single company. A company that Kubrick happened to own, and could decide how much it charged the production. You can see how anyone involved in the production who had a piece of the film's net would have the size of their piece impacted by however many millions went to Kubrick's company.

(there's a play in which greedy producers joke about how "there is no net!" but I can't for the life of me remember much about it beyond that joke)

Re: Environmental Discs of Tron Roadside Pickup

#94

Post by xnx »

xnx wrote: post #35
trentnix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m working order? Maybe as much as 10-12k. The emergence of barcodes has inflated the price of games like this. A DoT environmental is widely considered an arcade grail and is rare. It’s extremely sought after and the logistics of the size of the cabinet resulted in lots of them being trashed over the year or chopped up.

Confused until I realized "barcodes" was probably an autocorrect of "barcodes".

Argh. I undid the first auto-correct from "barcafes" and it still got me!

Re: Environmental Discs of Tron Roadside Pickup

#95

Post by sidewndr46 »

IceCreamJonsey wrote: post #87
sidewndr46 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing with aquariums. If you want a 150 gallon you have to pay. If you want a 2000 gallon and are willing to go pick it up and move it, it's usually free.

Exact thing happened to me when I first started collecting arcade games. I was ready to sell a Xenophobe cabinet, which is a massive, awkward monstrosity. Took a huge "loss" on it but at the time needed it out of my house and only cared that a potential seller could help get it up the stairs. :)

Ha, I knew someone who formerly worked for IGT. Said when he relocated he had a complete gambling machine (massively obsolete) in his living room. Including the 300 lbs something steel plate that is used to weigh it down. Put it on craigslist for free and said it was gone that evening, scrappers showed up and moved it out for him.

Re: Environmental Discs of Tron Roadside Pickup

#96

Post by Damogran6 »

ryandrake wrote: post #70
Luc wrote: post #4

I saw this a few days ago on an arcade collector's forum (not based in the US), and the majority reaction was disbelief. People seemed to think it was a hoax. That thing is museum quality. I wonder if it's due to those suburban garages, allowing people to pile up stuff for decades. That and having more cash to buy goodies than most of the rest of the world, of course.

Incredible is really the perfect word to describe this: Both the "extraordinary" definition and the "impossible to believe" definition. It's too bad the two top-level comments doubting this story have been downvoted into oblivion and dunked on for being cynical. We might not like that line of conversation, but I think it's a legitimate POV that adds to the discussion. This find just seems so...incredible. In what act…

It may be an intentional misdirection...The guy may have had a contact that was easy to deduce, and neither of them wanted the attention it would bring...so it 'fell off the back of a truck.'

Re: Environmental Discs of Tron Roadside Pickup

#97

Post by Damogran6 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #33
baz00 wrote: post #6

I'm not surprised at seeing this. Most of my electronics "purchases" in the 80s to 00s were perfectly good discarded things just thrown out on the street because they were inconvenient or someone bought something shinier. I even got a 2 year old Intel Mac Mini once and used it as a desktop for nearly 3 years! An arcade machine, regardless of how rare it was, would be something I walked straight past though! Too big a…

> An arcade machine, regardless of how rare it was, would be something I walked straight past though! Too big and heavy. Yeah but there's nothing like standing up in front of an actual arcade cab, one joystick in each hand, and playing Robotron 2084! (one joystick to move in one of eight directions and the other joystick to fire in one of eight directions). About ten years ago a friend of mine was moving to a smaller…

We had a similar situation...broken Defender cabinet...free

A power supply and 3 RAM chips and my kids got to experience unlimited Defender...having 24x7 access to that cabinet like that, you picked up really interesting insights into the code...and the realization that, no matter how much I played, I was never really going to get good at it.

Re: Environmental Discs of Tron Roadside Pickup

#98

Post by epiccoleman »

vikingerik wrote: post #79
epiccoleman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who just recently spent a wistful afternoon looking at listings on Pinside, this price barely even seems crazy. It's a bit different since pinball tables have all the mechanical bits and bobs, but still. Owning a Medieval Madness table has become one of my "boy, if I ever won the lottery" fantasies, and will likely remain that way.

There are pinball distributors that will do short to medium term rentals, a few hundred dollars for a couple months. Medieval Madness is probably in short supply for that, but there are quite a few other options for newer games, often ones a few years old that just came off a public location. Renting could be a way to go if you really want it but can't swing ownership.

You know, that's actually an interesting idea. Probably still the kind of expense that I couldn't currently justify, but it's also sort of nice to think that I could "subscribe" and have some rotating pin in my basement if I wanted to without having to take out a car-sized loan.
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