Environmental Discs of Tron Roadside Pickup
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Owning a Medieval Madness table has become one of my "boy, if I ever won the lottery" fantasies, and will likely remain that way.
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.
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.
I'm gonna guess "belonged to former husband". Dead or divorced, who knows.
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)
I calculated it out once, and if he'd taken the deal they were offering, Connery would have - based on what the movie grossed - made a decent slice of a billion dollars.
He really needed someone savvy to guide him, which he never got. At least he made The Rock .
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.
All other things being equal, having the space to keep a large object you're not using is gonna be a big predictor for how many specimens end up in a safe storage situation for long enough to become antique.
So often it might be worth quite a bit it someone in another location, but especially after someone dies, there often isn’t the energy to deal with it. So on the street it goes.
You can find some people asking $6000 for a Hammond B3, but then someone can’t give away a D-152 outside of an urban area because folks don’t know what it is on a search. It better than a B3, essentially the deluxe model. But they weight nearly 500lbs and people don’t know how to turn them on to test even (it is a 2 step process)
Unfortunately I had to relocate for work and I couldn't take it with me. I tried to sell it, then I advertised to give it away. Eventually I had to take it to local "it recycling" facility rum by the council where they had me pay a fee for "disposal of a business grade it system" (fair enough). I wish I could've kept it.
I don't I could sell it if I wanted to. The drives alone seem to powered by washing machine motors.
This group usually tries to rescue things. https://vcfed.org
It’s impossiblely hard to keep all the machines working, but they're still fun to look up.
The large Scale systems museum. New Kensington, PA.
Back in this era it was very rare for an arcade cabinet to be sold directly to the home. Aside from being very expensive, you had to buy from a distributor much like a car dealer. Most local distributors hated dealing with home owners (too many questions, couldn't fix it themselves, delivery was a bitch, etc).
Given this was found in a Chicago suburb I'm going to take a wild guess and say it was a Bally/Midway employee that kept it in their garage or basement for a few decades and then decided it just took up too much room. Or it was handed off to a friend or neighbor over the years but either way it really hasn't left the city and never saw hard use in an arcade. Galloping Ghost has taken great advantage of this situation and obtained many pieces that are more rare then Discs of Tron.
The reason I know this is because I have a few engineering sample games in my basement as well.
The Franklin Park factory is actually still in use. It now makes equipment for Life Fitness, which has a historical tie back to Bally.
Here's the factory back in 1982: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62s_BIYg5Gs
And today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UUpzCJaNrQ
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 actual universe do you see these kinds of things just left out on the curb?? The only things I see on the curbs in my neighborhood are old junky furniture and kids' toys.
I subscribe to estate sale newsletters to find treasures like this, and have never seen something like this even for sale, let alone free by the side of the road. What an amazing read!
You never know what's in peoples' garages.
I happen to see a couple unlabeled sheets of paper tacked up in a corner with grainy scans of cards.
I asked the old farmer if she has some for sale and she pulls out this massive binder of cards with many first edition and holo cards in very good condition… they were from her sister’s estate and she didn’t have time or interest to deal with them.
I mean, part of it is that you should also remain ignorant. If you see an expensive card on the first page, yeah, morally you're in a spot if you act like you didn't. But if you just assume that a collector has something of value, but you don't really go through it other than to make sure that it's actually all the same stuff, I think the terms are fine. Just so long as you're actually spinning the wheel as well.
I'm reminded, though, of High Fidelity. There's a part of the book (maybe a deleted scene on the DVD as well) where Rob goes to buy a collection and he's seeing all these great items, first editions in pristine condition. The seller is a woman who is going through a divorce and doesn't need the money but her husband does, and he asked her to sell them for him, and she's trying to dump them for very low price to be mean.
Rob can't bring himself to buy them, even though he wants some for his collection. So I get where you're coming from. I don't make as much money as I could because I don't fleece people, either. But there's times when people are asking for your expertise and times when they just want to move on, and everyone should be happy in the end.
An arcade machine, regardless of how rare it was, would be something I walked straight past though! Too big and heavy. I suspect that's why this turned up on the street.
And it was so much fun...
The great finds are far more rare now.
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 house and had no room for his vintage arcade cab... So he offered it to me. I immediately took it (my fancy car wasn't big enough to carry it so I went and borrowed my parents' car).
This cab has already been moved to three (EU) countries (!).
It's fully working, I've got a few PCBs (both originals and bootleg PCBs) and I've got a Raspberry Pi with a Pi2JAMMA adapter, driving the CRT screen...
It's a joy to see my little daughter play on the games I used to play as a kid (like Elevator Action, Buster Bros/Pang!, Bomb Jack, etc.).
It's an amazing relic from really glorious times.
P.S: it used to be in my office room first, then in the living room (which was epic) and now in its new house it's in the laundry room next to the washing machine : )
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.
When I was a kid, my dad acquired an Eight-Ball Deluxe pinball machine. He restored it, and for years it was a regular fixture of our house. We moved a ton, but it always came with us, for about a decade. Then my dad finally sold it.
I played that game a lot. I have fond memories of the lights, sounds, and feel of it. It was a very different experience than modern pinball machines.
Guns were easily fixed. The vibrator is a solenoid with a rubber tipped plunger mounted to an L shaped bracket made from stamped sheet metal. The plunger strikes the short length of the L and the bend takes the stress. Over the years the constant slapping broke the plate at the bend. I welded the plates back on adding two gusset strips on each side to brace them and the guns were back to vibrating. Still have it but hasn't been powered on in ages.
And we don't know what else was on the curb that was taken by the trash people; sometimes you get to a point where you decide that cleaning out fast is worth more than hoarding until you're able to sell everything.
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.
Or perhaps they just get thrown out when the barcade replaces the machines or goes out of business.
Often these transaction costs are both in time and in money, and people all value their time and money in different ways.
Disposing of this thing, which likely has a huge amount of emotional weight already embodied in it, via a specialist web site and interacting with a gazillion flakes is likely an exhausting prospect.
I think people underestimate the time and effort that goes into doing that. It's not as simple as "I'll see if anyone wants to buy it", now it's a project you have to manage. Not only do you have to deal with people contacting you about it but then you have to find a time/price/location that works for everyone and you get to deal with the long tail of "Is this still for sale?".
I mean for something like this I would absolutely put out feelers since I know there are people who would pay for it but in general I just donate stuff after posting in my friends chat to see if anyone wants it. It's just not worth the hassle, for myself it needs to be well over $100 before I try to sell it. Maybe that's "privilege", maybe that's "lazy", I don't know.
Except ... ever tried to sell something worth $500+?
Good grief, the number of idiots. And it goes both ways.
Look, I know what I'm selling. I know what it sells for on FleaBay. Any offer below 50% of that and I'm going to tell you to pound sand (most of the time it's not even 10%--I mean, really?). I will throw it in the garbage rather than enable these kinds of morons. By the same token, if you give me about 65-75% of FleaBay, IT'S YOURS.
And, vice versa. Dude, I can see what the last 10 of these went for on FleaBay, and you're trying to get quadruple that. Get stuffed.
I am reminded of a quote:
"The best things in life are free!"
(Usually those things are such things as sunlight, oxygen, trees, water, flowers, grass, friendly small animals, human beings that express the best of humanity, etc., etc... but in this case it's sort of like a very specific subcase of a very specific subset of a very specific subcase of all of those other best things in life that are free... this specific subcase happens to be that of a "Discs Of Tron" arcade game(!) -- probably from the 1980's -- with its own (highly immersive!) full "environmental" (arcade) cabinet -- left on the curbside, for FREE!)
So the best things in life -- really are free!
(Up to and including a "Discs of Tron" full cabinet arcade game -- with its catchy tagline: "Become the most powerful video warrior of the computer world"... :-) <g>)
I mean, what's not to love about all of that? :-) <g>)
The issue was the previous owner had literally torn the backbox off of the cabinet, and had snipped the two bundles of wires connecting the two (at least 50 color coded wires). So it required woodwork to mount the backbox back on, and rewiring.
It sat it my garage for a few months before I accepted that I wasn’t making progress and I gave it to a friend.
Anyway, yeah, people dump this stuff! My hobby dev project is a pinball one, so it felt very serendipitous to find one sitting on the side of the road.
I got excited and quickly rounded up some coworkers, one with a truck, to go down to their building and "rescue" it. It ended up in my office and needed a few repairs. Over time, I learned how to do minor repairs here and there and even did a monitor tube swap (found an old CRT TV at Goodwill that became the donor).
The thing is huge, so became a nuisance when I moved teams a few times. I got good at putting it on a dolly and transporting it myself from office to office. I left Microsoft years ago, but kept the machine and it's now sitting in my home office.
Jorge: do you think a foosball table will fit in you Honda (element)?
Me: I’ll take the back seats out and be right over.
He was given the table when the office moved and only had room to move one of the tables. And it does fit.. barely.
It was fun. 2 joysticks, one for each tread (forward and back). You could roll the tank using the joysitcks left right together, or turn the tank up by pulling the joysticks apart. The fire button was on the joysticks. Sounds weird but was pretty intuitive. I tried it emulated, even with 2 analog sticks it wasn't the same.
Tempest has the spinning nob. Centipede had the trackball. That sitdown helicopter game with the elevation control at your right hip. Or intellivision with that wierd 16 direction disc and the keypad. They don't work as well without. analog sticks help some (robotron for example).
There is also the chance that memory of those games has given them a more rosy glow. For example I can't imagine grinding up ulitma3 levels today.. But I did so fairly happily in my youth.
That, and emulation is just not perfect, and you can often "feel" when you're playing through an emulator and not the OG electronics.
The main thing I notice on the environmental version is the Sark voice acting, I still wonder if they actually got David Warner to do it. :)
I worked fro my uncle who rented games to arcades. Discs of Tron always had problems with the 3D joystick. You need it for the Discs game the levels go up and down.
I can hear the music now...!
Look, I’m willing to accept that rare things can happen, but this is pushing the bounds of belief. There are so many coincidences and this story needs to at least be viewed with some skepticism toward the details.
It’s not unreasonable to wonder if the goal here is to generate a viral story, which seems to be working at some level.
Occam’s razor would suggest that they obtained the game “somehow” and the provider just doesn’t want any publicity.
P.S. And if they decide to sell it, the decent thing to do would be to at least checkin with the old lady and offer some of the proceeds.
The hard to believe part is that this specific guy found it at this precise time/place
Imagine how many random time-limited opportunities exist around you like this that you just never hear about.
Some game collectors are motivated by the idea of owning something that no one else has. For decades, there were no preserved, shares versions of Marble Madness 2 available for that reason, but looks like that finally changed last year.[1] Akka Arrh was a similar case.
If a collector is interested in preserving and sharing, there's still the expense/effort factor. For an arcade game, they need to buy (or find someone with) specialized equipment, and may need to desolder chips from the board. I.e. there's a non-zero chance of destroying a one-off artifact, even when performed by people with experience.
The production ROMs for Discs of Tron have been preserved for quite awhile.[2]
However, if this was a test machine, it would be neat for someone with the necessary gear to dump it and see if the code is different.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/05/after-30-years-the-wo...
[2] e.g. http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/dettaglio_mame.php?game_name=dot...
- Crashing a plane
- Pretending to have been kidnapped
- Eating laundry detergent
...To name a few... It's not crazy to always suspect people are pretending just to get attention on the internet.
I occasionally get guitar questions because people know that I put the time into researching what's what and can at least tell them "yeah, this is crap - don't buy it".