Q*Bert is a classic game of the golden age of arcade video games. One of the more iconic titles as far as pop culture and merchandising.
Sadly many of the original cabinets did not survive the 80s. Typically the games were converted into more contemporary or profitable titles.
My Qbert machine was turned into Ataxx, I got it in 2013 for $100. The game was sold to me by a coworker. They said they bought it at a thrift store for very cheap, like $10.
Good
- Cabinet in relatively good condition
- Working K7000 Monitor
- Original power supply
Bad
- Horizontal monitor Frame.
- Jammatized with new power supply.
- Monitor Burn.
- Atari coin door.
- Missing original harness.
- Missing all original boards.
- Marquee light broken
- Loose wiring.
Ugly
- Painted puke orange .
- South Dakota registration tags with years of layers.
- Ataxx Gameplay in General.
Everything is hard soldered and held together with ducktape.
So what’s ataxx like?
It’s a 90s abstract puzzle game..doesn’t seem that bad at first. Over time it plays like it was designed by a 13 year old boy with minimal experience, complete creative control, and 2 liter of doctor pepper.
It’s a board/strategy game (similar to go) juxtaposed with a mortal combat style campaign against creature shown in the below flyer. You can also play head to head in a game mode with confusing rules.
The attract music pulsates with garbled space sounds interwoven + pink-floyd-esque electric guitar wailing.
Extreme! Still looks kinda fun right?
What if I said you move a windows 98 style mouse cursor slowly around the screen to make plays?
This pretty much sums up the gameplay:
The arcade version is timed, similarly to blitz chess. Each player’s timer counts down while it is their turn to move; they lose if it reaches zero, but may buy more time (100 seconds per quarter) while the game is in progress. After completing a game (whether they won or lost), a player may choose whether or not to play another game with the time remaining. – Wikipedia
Maybe the most un-fun thing ever, made worse as this Ataxx was a conversion kit from 1982’s Q*Bert.
Breaking Down
Any question that it wasn’t originally a qbert was squashed with a little digging in the cabinet.
I’m going to attempt my 1st ground-up restores. Pulling everything off, cosmetically recreating the game and configuring the electronics.
The original Qbert wiring harness was replaced/missing. There’s a modern stepdown power supply and the monitor reuses the original power supply’s isolation transformer.
They’re not easy to come by and usually in poor condition so I’m going to use the JROK Multigame JAMMA PCB as a replacement for the original cpu and sound board. I’ll be replacing the original (known to be flakey) power supply with a step-down and wiring the cabinet for Jamma.
This replacement pcb is actually amazing and is FPGA not emulation or raspberry pie. This is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – hence “field-programmable” i.e. recreating the original hardware functions.
Many folks are pulling qberts out of basements and barns to do this and there’s an awesome variety of online resources for reproduction hard and hardware.
Here’s what I ended up needing for the cabinet:
From Phoenix Arcade
- Swearing Marquee
From Arcade Shop
- $225 JROK Board
- $59 – Upright Monitor Bezel
- $19 – Upright front overlay
- Upright control panel overlay
- Knocker Grommet
- $65 – Side Art Set
- Knocker plunger Rod
- Coil Sleeve for knocker
- knocker assembly with 30v Coil
Home Depot
- Bondo
- citristrip
- Kilz White Primer
- Black Latex Paint.
- 20 GA colored wiring + crimps.
From Ebay/collectors
- Complete control panel replacement w/joystick harness
- Complete service panel with harness
- Reproduction marquee trim
- Original Manual
More Q*Bert confirmed after I used a heat gun to removed the art.
Once I removed all of the parts I applied a layer of citristrip for 15-20 min to pull the cheap paint off.
This stuff is seriously gross.
Safety Yellow!
The citristrip if you’re lucky does a lot of the work removing paint.
Pulled the coin door off and hit the front.
Before painting I touched up the cabinet with wood hardener, bondo, and repeated sanding. In general it was in good shape with most of the damage to the base.
First layers white kilz primer and black latex paint.
Applied this black latex paint with high density foam rollers and cycles of sanding between layers.
Beginning the painting process. I was lucky to have some good friends with experience spraying latex paint to help me get a good coat.
Meanwhile, I was able to buy a reproduction Control panel from a klov user. Extremely awesome as the original was long gone.
Applied the repro overlay with blue tape and a credit card.
Reproduction Q*Bert swearing marquee.
Repro plastic bezel.
An original joystick and harness took 10+ months of searching to find.
