I was 14 years old in 1979, so perfect timing for the release of Atari's Lunar Lander, followed by games like Pacman & Crazy Kong

Like a lot of others, I was hooked.

Before we knew it the phase was over, and that was that for about 15+ years

We had to settle for Play Station or Nintendo consoles, or PC games

I loved Intellivision & C64 games, but they were no match for the real deal, like the 80s had

My brother bought an old Crazy Kong machine, which could play Galaga and Commando as well. There was a repairer in my home town, Perth, for when things went wrong

It was amazing to discover there were more of these machines around, lots were from the mid to late 80s, but rarely would an old school machine come up for sale.

I found Aussie Arcade, then KLOV  and things skyrocketed from there.

With a military electronics training (Mainly Analogue, little digital), I had the advantage of being able to learn and understand these machines, to maybe one day fix them.

My first machine was an empty generic machine, which I MAMEd. It was great. I then got a Pit fighter Cab.

Next I built a Pacman shaped cab, which I fitted Mikes 96 in 1 Pacman kit into

I repaired some Pacman PCBs and got the bug. Then some Donkey Kong Boards etc

I found a few Asteroids cabs, interstate, and had them shipped to Perth. One was far gone, so I converted it to Lunar Lander, which never show up here in Australia

I now have Battlezone, an Upright Star Wars, along with Crazy Climber cocktail, Donkey Kong (Under construction - for 10 years LOL)

I had a driving cab running MAME, it was great, and still own a Pacman style cocktail machine

I owned and restored a Star Wars cockpit machine, I had to fix the monitor boards. This lead me to having to manufacture the PCBs and mine were badly burnt up

The process of making other bare PCBs grew from there.

I hope to return to Arcade cabinet making one day, for my personal collection.

Thanks for reading