Dude just happens to find a fully working and in great condition arcade cabinet deluxe from 1983 in 2023? Jesus! What a find! I’m a huge fan of old arcade games and even built a few mame cabinets myself - this is extraordinary. There aren’t very many of those games left let alone working in great condition. Many have lost their CGA monitors or fried their boards.
Per the placard over the Tron pinball machine at the Pacific Pinball Museum, the licensed arcade games made more money than the original Tron movie!
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.
> Per the placard over the Tron pinball machine at the Pacific Pinball Museum, the licensed arcade games made more money than the original Tron movie!
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)
The producers of The Fellowship of the Ring were so anxious about the production, having sunk so much into it even before filming, that they offered Sean Connery the part of Gandalf. They offered him a percentage of the gross. Reportedly, he wasn't familiar with Tolkien and didn't care for the script (what the fuck is a hobbit?), and of course everything worked out fine for everyone concerned. Ian McKellen was great, and worked cheaper than Connery. Connery retired to a Carribean paradise with a good golf course.
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.
Sean never managed to figure out which projects to join. Of course, being fucking Sean Connery, every script with a semblance of an older, wise but cranky man were sent to him. But he never got it right. He turned down Morpheus in The Matrix. He turned down Die Hard 3. He turned down Jurassic Park.
He really needed someone savvy to guide him, which he never got. At least he made The Rock .
"Tim decided to knock on the door of the owner. A woman answered and explained that the EDOT had sat in her garage for many years and she wanted to get shot of it. Tim was welcome to take it away for free, but she didn’t really want to discuss the machine’s provenance – Where was it from? Who acquired it?"
I'm gonna guess "belonged to former husband". Dead or divorced, who knows.
At $2k it would sell today. The condition looks great could easily go for more then double that to the right buyer (Environmentals are prized but obviously limit who has room for them).
This is a crazy rare version of an already rare arcade cabinet. I've seen exactly one of these in my entire life. The price may not be that silly if it is in good condition.
As someone who just recently spent a wistful afternoon looking at listings on Pinside, this price barely even seems crazy. It's a bit different since pinball tables have all the mechanical bits and bobs, but still.
Owning a Medieval Madness table has become one of my "boy, if I ever won the lottery" fantasies, and will likely remain that way.
There are pinball distributors that will do short to medium term rentals, a few hundred dollars for a couple months. Medieval Madness is probably in short supply for that, but there are quite a few other options for newer games, often ones a few years old that just came off a public location. Renting could be a way to go if you really want it but can't swing ownership.
You know, that's actually an interesting idea. Probably still the kind of expense that I couldn't currently justify, but it's also sort of nice to think that I could "subscribe" and have some rotating pin in my basement if I wanted to without having to take out a car-sized loan.
And that’s for one needing some TLC. The top of the cabinet is coming apart. The speakers are missing. The floorboard is missing. The display has ghosting. The colors are fresh and crisp but it’s hardly “slightly used” as the one in the OP is. Still. I’m just lost for words he got this off the street.
