This is part 3 in an ongoing series dedicated to the documentation of my warehouse raid in October, 2008. Read Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE.

I consider myself lucky that I was allowed time to look over the bounty to fully assess the condition. As you can see from the photo above, not all the games were in great condition. In fact, MANY of the arcade games (about 1/3) sustained massive water damage. Apparantly when you leave a building surrounded by trees unattended for 10 years, the gutters and roof fill with leaves which forces water to find other places to travel. Who would’ve thought?

Here’s the full list of games that were in the warehouse:

Solar Warrior
Touchdown Fever
Tiger Road
Vs Gradius
Space Firebird
Helifire
Stargate
The End
Vigilante
Sky Shark
Zero Hour
Trivia Wiz
Super Dodgeball
Firefox cockpit
AstroBlaster
Choplifter
Radarscope
Daytona Speedway
Moon Cresta
Spektar
Crossbow
Megaforce
The Shanghai
Kungfu master
Gyruss
Continental Circuit 3D
Vs Sky Kid
Contra
Two Tigers
Mania Challenge
Trivia madness
Monaco cockpit
Rolling Thunder
Altered Beast
720
Ghost and Goblins
Ikari
Mousetrap
Black Widow
Mat Mania
Power Drive
Asteroids x2
Robby Roto
Berzerk
Battlezone
Yie Are Kung Fu
Rip Off
Play Choice 10
Space Invaders
atari football
atari baseball
tiger road
Bosconian
Frogger x2
Missle Command
Victory Road
Top Secret
Road Blaster
Pac Man Cabaret
Galaga
Renegade
Time Soldiers
Major League
Arkanoid
Ms Pac Man
Rygar
Bayou Bomber
Centipede Mini

Aladdins castle pinball
powerplay pinball
royal flush pinball
fast draw pinball
elektra pinball
paragon pinball
stardust pinball
hyperball pinball
little chief pinball
gorgar pinball
black hole pinball
Strange science pinball
Strato-flite pinball
Grand Prix pinball

With the factors of water damage, rust, circuit board socket corrosion to consider along with the knowledge of time and money it would take to get the games cleared out and functioning I gave Bob my offer. He accepted, but now came the question I was worried about most – “How long before I need to have all the games cleared out?” Bob, well aware of how long he let the games sit previously said, “I don’t know. You know how I am. How does two to three….YEARS sound?!” Score! Not only did I score the entire lot of games, but I am able to store them at the warehouse as long as I need to. Had I been required to arrange transport and storage of all 80 games, I don’t know if I could have done it.

With the deal sealed, I arranged for several friends to come to the warehouse the coming weekend to help with some initial organizing, parting out, and removal of trashed cabinets. Along with the great price and the free storage, Bob went above and beyond by arranging for a construction dumpster to be dropped off at the location. Knowing that many of the cabs were beyond hope, he knew that we would be doing him a favor by clearing out the warehouse. That Saturday we began removal of many of the worst cabinets. Some of the first to get the dumpster treatment were two Galagas, a dedicated Contra, a Two Tigers, a Pac Man Cabaret, and others.

Fortunately, we weren’t just discovering trashed games, but a few treasures in the mix. While searching the warehouse, I found a few NOS (new old stock for you newbs) conversion kits. There were two for Donkey Kong 3 and one for a very cool and rare game called The Glob.

I had many offers to buy the kits, but I wanted to keep them as I regretted getting rid of all the NOS kits I got with my basement buyout. I realized, “How often does this kind of thing come around?”. However, with all the requests, I quickly realized that I needed to relinquish one of the DK3 kits in order to recoup some money spent on the buyout. While I refuse to tell the total amount spent on the whole lot until I complete the sale of all games, I will tell you that I was fortunate enough to sell the DK3 kit for 1/5 of the original purchase price of all 80 games! (whoa!) I still have one DK3 kit and The Glob kit for my personal collection. The discovery of the Glob kit even got me some coverage on some other arcade geek’s blog.

Some of the other gems of this collection that were in good shape turned out to be two early (if not the first) Nintendo Arcade Games: Radarscope and Helifire! Also, there were a few rare Exidy games like Mousetrap, Crossbow, Spectar, and Top Secret. Of course the Atari Firefox cockpit game was a nice find along with a lesser-known Midway game called (The Adventures of) Robby Roto. (see pics at the end of this post or see all the pictures I have taken so far of the warehouse raid in my Flickr set). Before we started, the games were so packed together that there was only a small isle in the shape of an “L” to work with. After the removal of 8 cabinets, there was a lot more elbow room to really get down and dirty, do some more analysis, and clear out more games on another day.

Tags: Bob, Exidy, Helifire, NOS, NOS Kit, Radarscope, warehouse raid