Another Holy Grail Arcade Game Pickup - Atari's Food Fight!

RetroRalph·video·15m 50s·analyzed·Nov 5, 2023

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.022

TL;DR

RetroRalph acquires rare original Food Fight arcade cabinet for $4K with gameplay walkthrough.

Summary

RetroRalph purchases a rare original Food Fight arcade cabinet (less than 2,000 made) for $4,000, a childhood favorite from the Atari 7800 era. The video documents the cabinet's condition, unique pressure-sensitive joystick mechanics, technical specifications including the Motorola 68000 CPU, and gameplay demonstration, with a monitor swap mid-filming due to equipment failure.

Key Claims

Food Fight arcade cabinet was developed by GCC, not Atari, as repayment for a lawsuit loss to Atari
medium confidence · Speaker states GCC developed Food Fight and that 'GCC lost a lawsuit to Atari, and to repay that debt...they developed Food Fight.' Claims GCC has history with Ms. Pac-Man litigation.
Less than 2,000 Food Fight arcade cabinets were manufactured
medium confidence · Speaker: 'there was less than 2,000 of these made. So to have one is pretty rare.'
Food Fight was the first arcade game to use the Motorola 68000 CPU
low confidence · Speaker says 'I'm pretty sure that...this game also was i think the first game to use the 68000 cpu' and later repeats 'this was the first I believe to use the Motorola 68000.'
The Food Fight joystick is a one-off design unique to this game only
medium confidence · Speaker: 'This is the only known application of this joystick that I know of. I think this is a one and done for Atari. I don't think they use this joystick in any other game.'
Food Fight features an instant replay feature that triggers at specific times during gameplay
medium confidence · Speaker: 'there's an instant replay feature that gets implemented every now and then during the game it's like specific times during the game.'

Notable Quotes

“if you get into this hobby, it's not when it's going to break. Wait I said that wrong it's not if it's gonna break it's when it's gonna break”
Jon (RetroRalph)@ 2:27 — Humorous reflection on arcade restoration hobby reliability issues; monitor failure mid-filming exemplifies this point.
“This is the only known application of this joystick that I know of. I think this is a one and done for Atari.”
Jon (RetroRalph)@ 5:41 — Technical observation about Food Fight's unique hardware specification and rarity.
“I mean, this thing is in awesome shape for being all original. I can't imagine doing anything to this outside of just fixing that one piece.”
Jon (RetroRalph)@ 8:28 — Assessment of cabinet condition; indicates quality preservation and restoration philosophy.
“I'm telling you, man, this game is so fun and so underrated, I feel like it's a game that just, like, I don't know, I feel like kids would like it too, it's just fun”
Jon (RetroRalph)@ 13:22 — Personal opinion on game design and accessibility; expresses enthusiasm for the title's gameplay mechanics.

Entities

RetroRalph (Jon)personFood FightgameGCC (Game Composition and Creation)companyAtaricompanyGodzilla (pinball)gameFinal FightgameGolden AxegameAfterburnergameMissile CommandgamePinball Expo 2023event

Signals

?
event_signal: Pinball Expo 2023 recently attended; energized speaker's enthusiasm for pinball modding projects.
high · Speaker: 'I'm fresh off of Pinball Expo 2023' and later 'after coming out of Pinball Expo i'm all fired up about this'
?
announcement: New Wave Toys created a replica Food Fight arcade cabinet, generating recent media coverage.
medium · Speaker: 'because new wave toys did a really cool replica of it as well' and 'It's been released on other Atari platforms...It also came out on...the arcade version is definitely the best.'
?
collector_signal: Food Fight arcade cabinet (<2,000 units manufactured) acquired at $4,000; speaker notes this is a significant collector's item.
high · Speaker: 'there was less than 2,000 of these made. So to have one is pretty rare' and 'asked the guy, would you be willing to sell it? And he said, yeah, for four grand.'

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.047

0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. In today's video, we're going to do an arcade pickup. I know, it's been forever, and I'm fresh off of Pinball Expo 2023, and believe me, I want to show you all the mods that I've done to this Godzilla back here. And it probably looks a little bare in here because the Stranger Things had to get moved out of the way so I can film that video later. But anyways, this video is all about an arcade pickup that I've been looking for and eyeing for a really long time. If you remember, at Game On Expo a couple years ago, I saw this game, and I mentioned how much I want it, but there was a little caveat. Okay, I'm standing in front of Food Fight. This was one of my childhood favorite games on the Atari 5200, I know. I don't know why we had that, but we did. And Food Fight was an awesome game. Here's the thing, the arcade cabinet has gotten really expensive over the years, but I haven't really been tracking it. So I asked the guy, would you be willing to sell it? And he said, yeah, for four grand. Okay, so I mentioned, I think the wrong Atari version. It was actually the Atari 7800 that I played that game on. And I loved it. I fell in love with it. I actually never played the arcade game in the real arcade. I only discovered that later. Now, one of the interesting fun facts about Food Fight is it wasn't actually done by Atari. It was done by GCC. They developed the game. If you know the history of it, GCC, it goes pretty deep with Ms. Pac-Man and litigations and lawsuits, but anyways, GCC lost a lawsuit to Atari, and to repay that debt, I believe, that's when they developed Food Fight, and there was a couple other games, I can't remember the names of them, one of them I don't even think ever came out, but kind of some interesting history there. So let's go into the garage. We'll check out this game because it's got some definitely unique features And then of course it's been all in the media lately because new wave toys did a really cool replica of it as well Let's go to the garage. Okay, so slight change of plans I'm actually at my storage unit because I went into the garage to fire up the food fight, you know before I was gonna start the video and the monitor dies. So there it is right there. It's the G07 that's probably the original one that came with it. It looks like it's been recapped a couple times, maybe even a flyback replacement. But it died, and I don't have time to diagnose it because today is probably one of the only days I can film, so I'm going to swap it out with one I have in storage, and then we'll come back, go to the garage, and we'll pretend like none of this ever happened. It didn't even happen. But keep in mind, PSA folks, if you get into this hobby, it's not when it's going to break. wait I said that wrong it's not if it's gonna break it's when it's gonna break so but it always seems to break right before I'm filming a YouTube video it always goes like that anyway I'm gonna swap this puppy out we'll diagnose it later and then we will continue with this video well folks it doesn't get any more real than this this stuff seems to happen all the time when I'm gonna film something but anyways we got the monitor back home this is also a G07 this one was pulled out of a missile command so you can see there's a lot of missile command burn in on it but no big deal but yeah this is the reality of the hobby you go in you're like yeah man can't wait to play fire it up and the monitor dies so we'll continue with the rest of the video so you can actually see the food fight in a minute here but i'm not going to bore you with the details we're good to go let's get back to the video okay so we're back where we started we're gonna try this again we're gonna go into the garage right now and we're gonna go and check out the food fight. Now I replaced the monitor as you saw and it looks pretty good actually. It's got some burn in like I said and hey don't judge the garage is kind of a mess. I know we haven't really done much in here gone in here and I'm sorry it's very dark in here. Yeah actually there's two games right here. This is like a pickup within a pickup. We never I never showed you guys. I got a great final fight. I got to do a little bit of work on it but it's it's looking pretty good So yeah we got a great final fight right next to Golden Axe over here But as we round the corner you can see the final fight or the food fight right here So yeah I put the food fight right here It looks good man It's got, you know, I have a little issue right here. There's a little gouge right there. But I mean, the side art is looking really nice on this. It's got a great marquee. It has the variant, the striped shirt variant. I don't know all the story behind that, but here's one cool thing about this game. This game, there was only, there was less than 2,000 of these made. So to have one is pretty rare. You know, you don't see them that often. So, but yeah, this is all original. This is all original control panel artwork. It looks really good. It's got a very unique joystick, which we'll talk about here in a minute. And, you know, I love the Atari volcano buttons. Everyone loves those. And I'm going to shut the light off real quick so you can see the monitor. the monitor looks pretty good. I mean, for one I had in storage, it looks pretty damn good. So we'll get into gameplay and stuff in a second, but I'm going to turn the light back on because I want to show you guys how cool the joystick is on this. So just hang out up there while I unlatch both sides. I've got to stick my arm up in here. Okay, hold on. I always mess it up. There we go. Okay. So this joystick is pretty interesting. Oh shoot. The coin door is in the way. Hold on. All right. We're going to close up the coin door and I'm going to show you this joystick. So this joystick is unique. There's, there's literally, if you look as you move the joystick, it moves the potentiometers. And actually the more you move one way or the other, the faster you'll run. So kind of cool. This is the only known application of this joystick that I know of. I think this is a one and done for Atari. I don't think they use this joystick in any other game. The one thing that's kind of sucky about it is the fact they only used it for one game. So if you have spare parts for it or whatever, it's good to hold on to those. As a matter of fact, I saw one go up for sale, an extra one, and I should have bought it and I didn't. It does have a calibration in it. I think this might have been the first...

6:13

Actually, I don't really know. I'd have to go back and watch one of Todd's videos. He did talk about this joystick a long time ago. So I'd have to go back. For your Player 1 and Player 2 start buttons, you have... Oh, sorry. For your... Not Player 1, Player 2. When you're throwing food, you've got little leaf switches right there. So I love leaf switches. They're great. very very accurate and then you have the volcano buttons right there so yeah so this game also real quick as i put that back we'll talk a minute about it this game also was i think the first game to use the 68 000 cpu i'm pretty sure that uh there's also some really cool things there's an instant replay feature that gets implemented every now and then during the game it's like specific times during the game, which is pretty cool. And yeah, it's been released on other Atari platforms, the 7800. It also came out on, I want to say there was a 2600 version, I think. By far, the arcade version is definitely the best. So I'll show you a little bit more of the cabinet, and then we'll do some gameplay. Okay, I decided to go outside so you can get a good idea of how the side artwork looks the marquee looks great on this too there's that little gouge I was talking about so and I don't know if anybody knows the story behind the variant of the striped shirt I'm not really sure what the whole story is but I know that's not common I think that's actually a unique part of this as well I did have a little gouge here I got a fix I started to fill it on this side but uh but I haven got it finished yet so I probably just fill that in get some black paint but really if you look at it I mean this thing is in awesome shape for being all original I give you a better look at the control panel now that you can see it with um you know with some sunlight on it to get some good lighting but yeah man this thing looks great you see the artwork in the front looks great I mean it doesn't get much better than this as far as an original arcade cabinet. You know you expect originals to be pretty beat up and a lot of mine were beat up and had to restore them but not this one. This is, I can't imagine doing anything to this outside of just fixing that one piece because man it looks it looks really good. I'll go in and show you the side of it too and while we're here you can see the afterburner hasn't really moved much so it's still sitting there we'll get it soon my buddy Matt he uh he gave me the board he redid one of the driver boards that goes let's see right there so we'll uh we'll get that in the problem is is this thing is on a pallet so in order for me to get this rotation to work I got to get it off the pallet so I kind of have a car jack right here so I'm going to jack it up put two jack stands and then I'm going to do the same on the back and then I'll be able to take the actual pallet out of the middle because this thing is 900 plus pounds anyways it's really really heavy so okay back to food fight let me see if I can show you the other side it's going to be a little blown out because of the lighting but yeah I mean this thing looks looks minty man pretty excited about it okay well I'm going to close up the garage and we'll do some gameplay and I'll give you some final thoughts on food fight I almost forgot to show you the back of the cabinet the inside because there's some cool things in here so there's the G07 monitor nothing crazy to to look at there but what's really neat is is a couple things so here's your main board right here and again this was the first I believe to use the Motorola 68000 there's your Atari AR board these things are kind of a pain in the ass this one I actually got from, it's like a reproduction, but it's got some old parts and some new parts, it's kind of random, but it was in need of one, and I saw this were pretty cheap, so I picked it up. I did replace the power supply, so I did put a new Suzo Hap power supply in there to make sure we're getting some reliable power. I think one thing I should do that I haven't done is, they call this the, they have these in a lot of Atari games, but it's the Atari Big Blue Capacitor. I'll eventually get to that and replace that. It doesn't seem like it's swollen or anything, but maybe a good idea to do that. But the cool thing is I did get this from another collector. So, you know, oftentimes collectors are going to do things like keep the original manuals in them when they have them. So it's got the original, let's see, it's got the original operator's manual. It's got a supplemental operator's manual and I think this would have been on the back of the door. Yeah so typically on Atari games they put these things on the back door which is like a little bit of information about dip switches and stuff like that which is really cool. I love when you have this stuff because you know it's all it's all cool history stuff and you know definitely stick it in the cabinet so you know if another collector gets it they'll appreciate stuff like that. Alright I'm gonna close up the garage and then we'll do some quick gameplay. Okay it's time to play some food fight let's do this now the thing I told you is when you move in a direction the faster or the harder you move in that direction he'll go run faster now the premises of this game is totally interesting because I don't know why these chefs are so pissed off but they are they're pissed off at you and they stop at nothing to kill you so anyways and the objective is to eat the ice cream cone So apparently Charlie Chuck really just wants ice cream and these chefs are just so upset about it They're like, look, ah, crap. Yeah, you don't want to do that.