My first experience was the unloading of a container of video games - mainly second hand. Car games like "Wheels", "Demolition Derby" and these huge boxes.. I had no interest in the boxes, but I could not wait to play the car games. The boxes were some of the first "Space Invaders" uprights. They were the only original "Space Invaders" I ever saw - both the blue and red cabinets. Then the cocktail tables took off - but I never saw an original cocktail table with the exception of Atari Asteroids. But the Taiwanese cocktail tables were container after container. There where white tables, brown tables, woodgrail tables - all with bootleg Space Invaders. They all had strange names and were written in Japanese with Yen coin acceptors. Not one original table - all copies. I'd say we had well over 200 tables. The last tables were color CRTs. I still have two of these. I have an original shipping box of one of these tables.
Boards - very rarely originals. They were bootlegs from Taiwan or later, Korea. My Dad actually visited one of these factories. They were churning out Galaga and Donkey Kong faster than burgers at Mc Donalds. The old cocktail tables were replaced with colour CRTs and then rewired for the non jamma games. Eventually, some would be converted to video poker game (MA1). Lots of stories to tell with those machines !
I still have an original box, from the Atari Factory. It had several PCBs. I' should check out the label as it probably had the list of games on it.
It was really rare to have original boards in games in the early 80's, but I sold a crapload of bootleg boards on eBay a couple of years ago and even sold an original Space Invaders board for over $300 to a guy in Brazil !
Upright cabinets - rare to see originals. Dad and I reverse engineered an old Atari Breakout cabinet and scratch built 30 cabinets on the mini production line in his workshop. I did not do very well at school during these years (1984-86). But I had a lot of fun !
