Author Topic: $37,995.00 from one game  (Read 1148 times)

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Offline Caveoftreasures

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$37,995.00 from one game
« on: March 13, 2010, 05:05:47 PM »
I looked into the hard drive statistics on my Star Trek Voyager Arcade Game and it had almost 38,000 games at $1 dollar a game.

Thats 2003 to 2010. say 7 years, but i believe it was not used and was for sale for about 1 x year.

So over 6 years, it earnt a staggering $6500 USA per annum. That means the game paid for itself in the first year, and made a killing every year since.

Yep, might be time to open up a cafe/pinball/arcade parlour on the gold coast somewhere !

 
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Offline Caveoftreasures

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2010, 05:21:49 PM »
anyone got any ideas about putting another computer board inside so i can play other shoot em up style games. something like killing zombies or any shoot em up games i could intergrate. any prices on relevant computer boards etc and where is the best place to buy them.etc any websites i could look at.

thanks in advance, brett

Behind every garage door could be a pinball collectors
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Into  Stern -JJP - Cars , Road Bikes- Jet Skis - Star Trek n Sci-Fi & Electronics    
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Offline MartyJ

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2010, 05:57:27 PM »
Brett,

What I don't know about vid's could fill a warehouse...but do you know if the wiring loom is JAMMA or proprietary for the game.

I think this will be the deciding factor as to whether you can drop another shoot'n board into it.

As far as places to get them, eBay or ex-operators may have a stash of boards

Offline Extra Ball

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2010, 07:56:02 PM »
have it switchable to mame?

Offline Pintoxicated

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2010, 09:06:56 PM »
One operator told me that one TAF machine grossed him just over $100k in a year, obviously when pinball was at it's peak and TAF was the flavour of the day.
Addicted to pins.

Offline Caveoftreasures

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2010, 09:45:15 PM »
I will have to take some photos of the inside of the machine to work out the techy questions u have asked guys.

It will be fun to add more games to it. A few $$$ will take care of the adding on part. Time to get Andrew into it.
Behind every garage door could be a pinball collectors
"Cave of Treasures" 55 in my collection

Into  Stern -JJP - Cars , Road Bikes- Jet Skis - Star Trek n Sci-Fi & Electronics    
Beware of Stalkers & Walkers when playing The Walking Dead

My 7yr old son Hunter is my best mate in the world !

Offline MartyJ

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #6 on: March 13, 2010, 09:47:55 PM »
I will have to take some photos of the inside of the machine to work out the techy questions u have asked guys.

It will be fun to add more games to it. A few $$$ will take care of the adding on part. Time to get Andrew into it.

Beaky should be able to tell you what loom is in it in about 2.5 seconds flat!

Offline Retropin

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2010, 09:55:47 PM »
Have a pinny here that i pulled out of a pub.. they had had it since 1973 on location..started at 10C, then 20c...50c.... it was $1 for 5 balls when i pulled it out.. had been earning them money for 36 years. They sold it cos it broke down, maintanance guy took one look inside and immediately put it in the "too hard basket"... i soldered ONE wire back onto a flipper coil and she worked 100%.

Ill check out the plays meter when im next in my shop

Offline Strangeways

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #8 on: March 13, 2010, 09:58:13 PM »
Original LAI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cost around $7000 NEW. My old man bought THREE, and put them on location. He was called TWO days later because one of the units was not accepting coins. He thought the coin acceptor was jammed. The cashbox was FULL and the machine would not accept any more credits. I'd say the three machines paid for themselves very quickly. He recalls that the only other Video Game that did this was Street Fighter 2. He used to have a row of three of them on one location and there used to be "real" fighting over the machines !

The pinballs were even worse (or better  &&)
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Offline beaky

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #9 on: March 13, 2010, 10:03:29 PM »
good old tmnt video game. that vid was a god send to operators. at one stage when they where only a couple of months old an operator had to wait for weeks to get one as they sold like hot cakes.
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Offline Caveoftreasures

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #10 on: March 13, 2010, 10:05:21 PM »
I would love to see the pinny that made money for 30 years onsite.  ^^^

Was it still in decent nick when it came offsite or was the playfield trashed ?  !@#
« Last Edit: March 13, 2010, 10:22:57 PM by caveoftreasures »
Behind every garage door could be a pinball collectors
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Into  Stern -JJP - Cars , Road Bikes- Jet Skis - Star Trek n Sci-Fi & Electronics    
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Offline beaky

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #11 on: March 13, 2010, 10:23:36 PM »
the wiring loom inside the voyager is not jamma. it uses a standard pc setup with a card plugged into the parallel port for the guns.
there was a shoot'em up game i worked on years ago that used an amiga pc and a video laser disk player (the ones that took the 12 inch laser disks).

the easiest way to convert this system to a mame set up is to install windows on another hard drive and use the windows os selector on boot up. you will then just select the voyager hard drive or the mame hard drive on boot up.
we may have a problem if the voyager commands are set to the C: drive, if this is the case the game may have problems.
if that is the case then we fit another pc into the cabinet and use a selector switch on the output of the both graphics between the monitor input and the card outputs.

or we make up a jamma loom and buy a jamma board and do the same thing with the video outputs.

the mame set up would be the cheaper, easier and the better way to go, as i have noticed with those jamma game boards several differences between the original games and the jamma games.
but the mame versions of the games are spot on compaired to the original games.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2010, 10:25:39 PM by beaky »
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Offline MartyJ

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #12 on: March 13, 2010, 10:25:39 PM »
Interesting..

How about a good 2-way KVM and a second PC?

Offline beaky

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #13 on: March 13, 2010, 10:31:28 PM »
Interesting..

How about a good 2-way KVM and a second PC?
kvm? i assume that is some type of monitor, if it is when the original monitor dies then yep but until then a standard vga monitor switch is the go.

sorry for my ignorance if i am wrong. LOL
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Offline Caveoftreasures

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Re: $37,995.00 from one game
« Reply #14 on: March 13, 2010, 10:32:51 PM »
as long as the voyager part of it all can never be damaged or software stuffed up, i reckon we go for a complete seperate system and shove it inside.

the extra money is no big deal, i will sleep better that way. i have to keep the voyager part original and untouched/undamaged.

ALSO

sitting inside that huge cabinet is just unbelievable and bloody great fun. it changes your whole world. u feel like you are actually right there, right inside the game. u really feel like u are in another world. the whole atmosphere of it all is so unique and great fun.

the whole dark booth, would be great to watch movies in as well.

I will take a video tomorrow and post it for members to see the game in action.  ^^^ ^^^ ^^^

Behind every garage door could be a pinball collectors
"Cave of Treasures" 55 in my collection

Into  Stern -JJP - Cars , Road Bikes- Jet Skis - Star Trek n Sci-Fi & Electronics    
Beware of Stalkers & Walkers when playing The Walking Dead

My 7yr old son Hunter is my best mate in the world !