# Arcade Game Pickup - Project Updates & MORE GAMES!!!

**Source:** RetroRalph  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2021-07-29  
**Duration:** 14m 14s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtHU3r4aEDE

---

## Analysis

RetroRalph provides an update on multiple arcade restoration and conversion projects in his garage, including newly acquired machines (Frogger cocktail, Space Invaders, Friction conversion), ongoing work on conversions (Donkey Kong, Killer Instinct), and machines awaiting decisions on restoration direction (Astro City, Roadrunner, Taito Cabaret). He also discusses Street Fighter 2 control panel artwork restoration challenges.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Frogger cocktail cabinet was manufactured in February 1982 by Sega Enterprises — _Directly read from manufacture date visible in cabinet: 'February 24th of 1982, Sega Enterprises'_
- [HIGH] Space Invaders cabinet uses fluorescent tube backlighting with plastic overlay and cardboard backing — _RetroRalph demonstrates and explains the internal construction: 'there's a fluorescent tube...that's a fluorescent tube and that's sort of a plastic overlay. And then the thing behind it is just cardboard.'_
- [HIGH] Roadrunner arcade requires hall effect joystick with analog sensitivity to play correctly, and emulation with standard 8-way joystick does not replicate the experience — _RetroRalph explains technical gameplay requirement: 'when you'd push the hall effect joystick more in one direction, Roadrunner would go faster in that direction. And it's actually important that you can have that accuracy'_
- [HIGH] Astro City arcade cabinet has prohibitively expensive replacement parts including control panels and internal wiring harnesses — _RetroRalph states: 'the parts for it are super, super expensive. The control panels are expensive, and some of the parts internally, the wiring harnesses and stuff'_
- [HIGH] Street Fighter 2 control panel artwork removal is challenging due to excessive factory adhesive application — _RetroRalph describes the adhesive removal difficulty: 'I could not for the life of me get all the glue off of this control panel...They were putting the glue on with like a bazooka or something'_

### Notable Quotes

> "Ever since Terminator became the hot topic, I've been playing this a bit more. But I've had it for a while now, and I love this game. It's an awesome game."
> — **RetroRalph**, 00:00:30
> _Indicates increased interest in Terminator 2 pinball machine due to community focus_

> "This is a really old machine...you can see even the inside is super, super clean for what it is. The CRT is in great condition, and just everything about it is really minty."
> — **RetroRalph**, 01:15
> _Assessment of Frogger cocktail cabinet condition_

> "The Roadrunner...when you'd push the hall effect joystick more in one direction, Roadrunner would go faster in that direction. And it's actually important that you can have that accuracy in order to play the game correctly."
> — **RetroRalph**, 06:30
> _Technical explanation of Roadrunner's unique joystick mechanic_

> "At some point the cost of it's just not going to make sense. So we'll see. I haven't given up on it completely, but I might do something different with it."
> — **RetroRalph**, 05:45
> _Hesitation about Astro City restoration due to parts cost_

> "I'm at the point where I'm going to dig underground, and we're going to start Bunkercade...We could go right here. You could go right here. Just no permits or nothing, just start digging at night."
> — **RetroRalph**, 13:30
> _Humorous joking about needing more space for arcade projects_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| RetroRalph | person | Content creator and arcade collector/restorer who maintains multiple arcade projects and documents them on his YouTube channel |
| Terminator 2 | game | Williams pinball machine that RetroRalph owns and has been playing more frequently |
| Frogger | game | Cocktail arcade cabinet acquired in February 1982, manufactured by Sega Enterprises |
| Space Invaders | game | Arcade cabinet recently acquired by RetroRalph, featuring fluorescent backlighting with plastic overlay and cardboard backing |
| Friction | game | Arcade conversion project using a Crossfire Maximum Paintball cabinet shell; RetroRalph plans to sell to Danny at a Glendale, Arizona arcade |
| Donkey Kong | game | Arcade conversion project in progress; RetroRalph has documented progress in previous video |
| Killer Instinct | game | Arcade cabinet restoration project needing control panel and multi-board/Darksoft mod completion |
| Roadrunner | game | Arcade cabinet that uses hall effect joystick; RetroRalph considering restoring to original theme rather than current conversion |
| Astro City | game | Arcade cabinet with prohibitively expensive replacement parts; restoration viability uncertain |
| Street Fighter 2 | game | Arcade machine picked up from Flynn's arcade (documented in Arcade Pickers episode 1); control panel artwork requires restoration |
| Gorf | game | Cocktail cabinet from Arcade Pickers episode 3; not currently working due to difficult PCB board set |
| Taito Cabaret | game | Taito Space Invaders machine converted to Galaga; parts availability concerns prevent immediate restoration |
| RoboCop | game | Arcade cabinet referenced for bezel component in RetroRalph's parts collection |
| Danny | person | Arcade operator in Glendale, Arizona; potential buyer for Friction conversion cabinet |
| Nick Madsen | person | Sent RetroRalph Street Fighter control panel artwork as a gift |
| Jeff (Arcade Hollywood) | person | Arcade operator referenced in comparison of arcade venues |
| Sam (Barncade) | person | Arcade operator referenced in comparison of arcade venues |
| Joe Sabo | person | Potential source for Space Invaders acrylic replacement parts |
| Konami | company | Potentially manufacturer of Frogger arcade game (RetroRalph uncertain of original manufacturer) |
| Sega | company | Distributor of Frogger cocktail cabinet manufactured in 1982 |
| Glendale, Arizona | location | Location of Danny's arcade where Friction conversion may be placed |
| Flynn's | location | Arcade venue where RetroRalph picked up Street Fighter 2 machine (Arcade Pickers episode 1) |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Arcade cabinet restoration and conversion projects, Arcade hardware and technical specifications, Arcade game acquisition and collection curation
- **Secondary:** Parts sourcing and availability challenges, Arcade venue operations and business, Vintage arcade hardware preservation
- **Mentioned:** Pinball machine gameplay (Terminator 2)

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.78) — RetroRalph expresses enthusiasm about arcade pickups and projects, though shows frustration with parts availability and restoration challenges. Maintains optimistic tone throughout with humor about space constraints. No negative sentiment toward games themselves, primarily frustration with logistics and costs.

### Signals

- **[market_signal]** Astro City arcade cabinet parts market shows high prices for control panels and internal wiring harnesses, making restoration economically unviable for collectors (confidence: high) — 'the parts for it are super, super expensive. The control panels are expensive, and some of the parts internally, the wiring harnesses and stuff'
- **[product_concern]** Excessive factory adhesive on Street Fighter 2 control panel makes artwork restoration difficult; RetroRalph using Goo Gone and rapid remover with limited success (confidence: high) — 'I could not for the life of me get all the glue off of this control panel...They were putting the glue on with like a bazooka or something'
- **[technology_signal]** Arcade restoration community recognizes hall effect joystick requirement for accurate Roadrunner gameplay; standard MAME emulation with 8-way joystick inadequate (confidence: high) — 'if you try to play it under MAME with like an eight-way joystick, you're gonna probably find it's not a fun game to play...when you'd push the hall effect joystick more in one direction, Roadrunner would go faster'

---

## Transcript

 Alright guys, I'm in the arcade. We're going to play a little bit of Terminator 2 really quick. You can hear how loud the solenoids are on this gun. It's crazy. You know, ever since Terminator became the hot topic, I've been playing this a bit more. But I've had it for a while now, and I love this game. It's an awesome game. It's also a really hard game, but there's also so many cool, unique features of this arcade cabinet. I'm gonna definitely have to do a review of it at some point. But anyway, what I really wanted to do is take you guys into the garage and show you a little bit about what's going on in there. So let's go into the garage. We'll leave T2 alone for now. We'll go out the front door, and I want to show you all the projects that I'm kind of working on and stuff like that. So there's been some new arcades that have made their way into the garage, so I thought it'd be fun to do a quick update video on that, what projects I'm working on, what restorations I have to do and all that. So here we are. This just came in. It is a Frogger cocktail cabinet. It's super clean. You can see everything is really nice. It is missing, it's missing a door right here, but I haven't even cleaned it off and it just looks amazing. I actually didn't realize that this was actually distributed by Sega. I can't remember who made it though. I think it's, is it a Konami game maybe? I can't remember exactly. Yeah, it has all the original manuals and everything, so pretty cool. I can't remember who made it, though, for some reason. It's Sega that distributed it out, but anyway, really cool to have the original manuals in there. So, pretty stoked about that, and like I said, it's in really great condition. It's been wired for free play, sort of. You hit that to insert your coins, and then you hit player one start, and there you go. I wanted to show you guys the inside of this really quick, because it's in such good shape. I mean, think about it, this is a pretty old machine. I don't know the exact date, but you can see even the inside is super, super clean for what it is. The CRT is in great condition, and just everything about it is really minty. Actually, it looks like there's the manufacture date right there. It was February 24th of 1982, Sega Enterprises. So, pretty cool stuff. Anyway, to put the top down you just pop this thing out and then try to do this with one hand and get the top down there. The Donkey Kong is coming along nicely, the conversion. You guys, I did a video on that if you haven't checked that out already. But it's coming, it's coming, it's coming along. I gotta get the side art still and there's a lot of boxes to get the internals done. So I still have a ways to go with that but I just wanted to give you an update. This is brand new and this just hit the garage yesterday, which is the Space Invaders. So I'm really excited about the Space Invaders. Really, really cool. And it's in great shape too. You can see the control panel looks really good. The artwork around the bezel is all in really good shape. The side art's definitely really good for what it is. I mean, I'm not planning on changing out the side art. I think it looks amazing. I'll show you the other side as well. The front of the machine looks good, so I'm pretty stoked about this pickup. Really, really awesome. There's some really cool unique things about this cabinet that some people might not be aware of. Like, that those are just overlays inside it. So there a fluorescent tube you can kind of see from the hot spot That a fluorescent tube and that sort of a plastic overlay And then the thing behind it is just cardboard I show you that really quick because if you don know about it it kind of interesting So I'll take the key out and we'll go around back. And we're going to pop this, oh man I forgot it's a screw, hold on. Luckily I've got everything handy here in the garage. Okay so we're going to pull that down. Oh there it is, okay. So what you're looking at right here is the back of the cardboard piece. So you can see, there's the bulb and this is just a piece of cardboard. Pretty interesting, right? I don't know if a lot of people knew that, but this literally is just a cardboard piece and that's sort of an acrylic piece. You can see over the years it's kind of got warped. I'm going to see if I can find a replacement for this. See if someone like Joe Sabo prints these, but this one's a little bit warped. Maybe we can see about playing with putting an LED light in there so that this warp doesn't happen again anyways I'm gonna put that back it doesn't even really sit in any grooves it just kind of sits back there like that that's kind of it so that's the back of the cabinet all right then the other thing I'm working on is this guy right here this is actually a game called friction and friction I've done a video where I've kind of featured this game before this cabinets is really lame it is a lame game I'm telling you go check it out go google crossfire maximum paintball it's it is terrible but anyways so I'm using this cabinet to make a friction kit and unfortunately you're going to see a lot of flickering on the CRT but maybe I can hit it at an angle where you can see it a bit better let's see that doesn't that makes it a little bit better there's just some light that are getting that's getting away but anyways I got it kind of wired up it's sort of working I think let's give it a little test run really quickly here yeah I've got it working sorta the gun needs to be calibrated but yeah it's a fun game it's got a great soundtrack I have it turned down right now because the thing is ungodly loud I'm not sure why but it's a really really loud game but I mean you know obviously if it's in an arcade you want it to be loud right but I'm thinking about putting this together and then selling it to Danny who's got an arcade over in Glendale, Arizona. So anyways, that's that cabinet. Still got some work to do. I don't have the coin mechanisms connected. I did find a friction marquee, so that's great. So I got the marquee. I think I'm going to do something fun with this. And what's really cool is this orange strip lights up. There's actually a fluorescent bulb behind this. So I'm going to light that up, and then I thought it would be cool to really make it pop. to put some orange T-molding on it. So I think that would look really neat with, and it kind of brings out the orange in the marquee. So that's what I'm planning on doing, is putting some orange T-mold on that. Dress that up really nice. So yeah, other than that, the other projects I have in here, I know you guys have been giving me crap for a long time. It's the killer instinct. I haven't done anything with it. I know. I really need to finish it. It's really all that needs to be done is, Oops, the control panel. And I still have the board. What's it called? Ah, the multi-board. I can't think of the name of it right now. I still have the Darksoft mod in there. So I've got to pull that out. Get that all dressed up and finished I got to blow it out It got some dust and stuff And then I can get to some of these other projects I have no idea what I going to do with the Astro City To be quite open and honest about the Astro City is that the parts for it are super super expensive The control panels are expensive and some of the parts internally, the wiring harnesses and stuff. So I don't really know what I'm going to do with it. I might sell it to someone that really is a little bit more familiar with it. It's not that I'm giving up on the project, but at some point the cost of it's just not going to make sense. So we'll see. I haven't given up on it completely, but I might do something different with it. Outside of that, let's see. The Roadrunner, I'm not sure what I want to do with the Roadrunner yet. The more I keep looking at it, the more I want to turn it back to an actual Roadrunner. So, I don't know. it's a really fun game guys but the caveat to Roadrunner is if you've ever played it under emulation the joystick that it uses it uses a hall effect joystick so if you try to play it under MAME with like an eight-way joystick you're gonna probably find it's not a fun game to play and the reason why is because when you'd push the hall effect joystick more in one direction Roadrunner would go faster in that direction and it's actually pretty important that you can have that accuracy in order to play the game correctly so the more I think about it the more I want to turn it back into a Roadrunner. It's just that, you know, I got some cabinet work that I have to do. No big deal. It's not terrible. And then this thing I haven't showed on the channel yet. You're probably like, what the hell is this? This is actually a Tato. This is a Tato Cabaret cabinet. So this was actually a Space Invaders, believe it or not, Tato machine that someone converted into a Galaga and I don't know what they did. They painted the coin door magenta and all this stuff. I don't know what I'm going to do with that yet either because the problem I'm facing with that one is parts availability and things like that. So I want to do it right. I want to turn it back into what it should be, but I need to find the parts and stuff. So that's probably going to sit for a little bit. I don't want to hack it up. And then the other thing I wanted to just mention really quick is when you start getting into this hobby, you're definitely going to want to keep parts around so you'll notice there's scattered CRTs um you know and things like that on the ground and I have some of them because some of them have good monitor chassis some of these monitors have severe burn-in like you can tell I think that's defender you can see it even says defender I've got extra control panels this was a working bench at some point it's kind of messed up but yeah it's kind of it's meant to be a workbench but right now it's kind of not I got another extra 19 inch monitor there. I got the, this is the marquee for the, um, Astro City. So yeah, so there's, there's a lot of stuff going on here and here's the Gorf cocktail cabinet. That's from arcade James Piekarz episode three. Um, this is not working right now. Uh, I don't know what I'm doing with that yet. Gorf, Gorf, God bless Gorf. It's PCB board set is a royal pain in the balls. But I love the game, so we got to get this running and we'll figure out what we're going to do with that. And then this is a wild idea I had. I was playing with this and I was like, I don't know what made me think of this, but some of you will know what this control panel is. And I was like, man, that control panel would fit in here with a little bit of modification. I not going to do that I just was kind of playing with it And I was like man that would actually fit so so yeah that the unfiltered unedited garage tour as I trip over everything that it that that what I got going on right now so you will see periodic videos on updates on all these projects and I need more space okay I almost forgot I wanted to give you an update on the Street Fighter 2 that I picked up at Flynn's from Arcade James Piekarz episode 1 so the control panel on this guy it needs some work the colors are actually reversed by the way it should go uh is it red i think it's red blue white but anyway so i don't like the way the control panel is all kind of beat up and everything so i have a control panel outside and i'll show you guys i was working on this and and man i could not for the life of me get all the glue off of this control panel so i can apply the new artwork it's just been a complete pain in the ass so i'm trying with Goo Gone. I'm trying with this stuff, this rapid remover. I have, you know, I'm trying to then scrape it, you know, as I go. It seems to be working better now, but man, I don't know what they used to do at the factory with these things. It's like they got glue happy, adhesive happy, and they just like, I don't know, they just used a ton of it. I don't know what happened that day. They were putting the glue on with like a bazooka or something. So anyways, so I'm hoping to get this finished soon here. I'm feeling a little hopeful because I've got a lot of the adhesive off now, but we'll go back inside really quick before we wrap this up, and I'll show you. I have the artwork right here. Actually, the funny thing is I have a bunch of stuff right here. This is a bezel for a RoboCop. So there you go, you can see that. This is actually a RoboCop PCB, and there's the Street Fighter overlay artwork. So you can kind of see it. Sorry, the lighting isn't as good in here. And then you can see, just ignore the Goonies thing. You can see that's the Street Fighter control panel art. So I got a big shout out to Nick Madsen who sent me this. So that's awesome. So that's one less thing that I have to buy. But if I could just get that damn adhesive off, we could get that project completed. I'm at the point where I'm going to dig underground and we're going to start Bunkercade. Jeff, Arcade Hollywood may have Barncade. Well you ain't seen nothing yet. We're gonna have the first underground arcade, Bunkercade. Nah, probably not. Imagine there's a whole field right here of dirt. I mean no one would notice. We could go right here. We could go right here. Think about it. We could go right here. We could you know just you know no permits or nothing just start digging at night every once in a while a little bit here and there and I mean look we could have bunker cade right in this field we could have like a the dirts over it imagine it opens up walk down seems legit to me but anyways so that's that's that that's it for this video guys thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this video give me a thumbs up consider subscribing to the channel put your comments below I I want to hear from you. And that's it for now. We will see you on the next one. Take care, everybody.

_(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

---

*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 288c6286-8ea6-4094-85e8-3f7da0aa29cb*