Challenger (1981 GamePlan, Licensed to Centuri)
Click on marquee for KLOV listing.
The Story: When you think of a "classic arcade game", what era comes to mind? For most, its the early 1980's, when arcade games truly were king. Now, if you were asked to name a few "classics", you'd normally name a few icons from the start. You know, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, maybe Dig Dug or Burgertime. So what comes next on that list? You might start thinking of more games. Spy Hunter, Centipede, maybe Tron or Pole Position. Well, have you ever heard of a game called Challenger? Yeah, its a little more obscure that all those others I just mentioned. But, in my mind, it screams something like "Hey, I represent 1981" in a truly nostalgic way. The wood grain cabinet, the raster graphics that are often confused for a vector game (as I have recently learned), the artwork, the gameplay and especially the sounds are truly reminiscent of their time.
This is another one of those games I discovered just recently in MAME. I never even heard of the game until a few years ago, but from the first time I played it and every other time after that, I was hooked. This game just has that certain early 1980's charm and appeal. It's just a shame it faded into obscurity, as there were ton's of space shooting games from the same era, and most of the iconic games would continue to dominate the market. Seeing as how I already have quite the collection of both icons and space shooters myself, I continued to enjoy this game via emulators and never gave a thought to acually finding one. But alas, my chance to score one at a decent price came along...
The Score: I found this one lurking on Craigslist in Kansas City. It was advertised as working and in good shape. The original asking price was set at $200. Now, this is an uncommon game, and yeah, sure, I wanted it, but it wasn't a "must have" at the time. This game was also going to mean another 5 hour round trip. So I haggle with the seller and we settle at $125. Now does any of this sound familiar? Another KC road trip and another $125 purchase of another space shooting game? Yep, this was turning out to be a carbon copy of the Space Zap roadtrip that I found myself on a couple years ago. Same price, same city.
Upon arrival The game looks pretty good. Very dirty, but everything intact and in decent shape. I power it on and the picture looks absolutely gorgeous, even thru all the years of grime. But then I noticed one serious flaw, the game does not have working sound. On top of that, the seller isn't home. The game is at a "friends" house whom I was dealing with in person. Other than the sound, the game checks out, and I just drove almost three hours to claim it. I tried adjusting the volume, tried reseating connectors, looked for bad connections and checked voltages in the typical testing points, even tried replacing fuses. Nope, still no sound. Now I'm not mad at the seller. Sometimes the average joe doesn't realize these games are supposed to make noise, or they just assume the volume is down or the speaker is bad. And in the excitement of making a road trip for this game, maybe I forgot to ask if it had sound. I don't know. But I did notice theres a seperate audio PCB in the game and I somehow knew then that it was the likely culprit. So there's still hope. I called the seller on the spot and explained the sound problem. I explained that I was still interested but that he would need to work with me a little more. We negotiate again and finally agree to settle at $100 this time. I hand over the cash, load up the game and go. So another pickup doesnt exactly go as planned and now I'm bringing home another project. My fingers are crossed on the trip back home hoping I can find the missing sound.
The Service: After cleaning the years of dust away, I threw the game into test mode and went into the audio tests. Every one of them failed, indicating that the audio PCB was indeed the problem, or at the very least it wasn't communicating with the main boardset. From there, I tried replacing caps, reseating chips and replacing the ribbon cable. Nothing worked, so I was on the hunt for another audio PCB. Luckily, a fellow forum member had an extra board. I was from a Megatack game which is basically the same hardware, just a slightly different custom rom. It was untested but the price was right. This fellow gamer just wanted the shipping price and nothing more. I sent a few more bucks his was along with my gratitude. Not more than a few days go by and it arrives in the mail. After swapping the custom IC's and hooking it up, I kept my fingers crossed yet again, turned on the power switch and heard the start-up siren. Yes, it works! The only problem was the volume pot was bad and the game was way too loud. I break out the old soldering iron, remove the pots from both boards and installed mine in the new board. It works great and all the sounds are intact. Aside from a good cleaning, the game just needed the typical adjustments and a couple of buttons replaced. I also replaced the T-Molding with some chrome & black molding I salvaged from a parted out game some time ago. It really dresses up the wood grain cabinet nicely. It has the typical faded side art and a few battle scars, but it's really in nice shape for being out in the field for over 30 years now. All in all it's a pretty good score.
This is another one of those games I discovered just recently in MAME. I never even heard of the game until a few years ago, but from the first time I played it and every other time after that, I was hooked. This game just has that certain early 1980's charm and appeal. It's just a shame it faded into obscurity, as there were ton's of space shooting games from the same era, and most of the iconic games would continue to dominate the market. Seeing as how I already have quite the collection of both icons and space shooters myself, I continued to enjoy this game via emulators and never gave a thought to acually finding one. But alas, my chance to score one at a decent price came along...
The Score: I found this one lurking on Craigslist in Kansas City. It was advertised as working and in good shape. The original asking price was set at $200. Now, this is an uncommon game, and yeah, sure, I wanted it, but it wasn't a "must have" at the time. This game was also going to mean another 5 hour round trip. So I haggle with the seller and we settle at $125. Now does any of this sound familiar? Another KC road trip and another $125 purchase of another space shooting game? Yep, this was turning out to be a carbon copy of the Space Zap roadtrip that I found myself on a couple years ago. Same price, same city.
Upon arrival The game looks pretty good. Very dirty, but everything intact and in decent shape. I power it on and the picture looks absolutely gorgeous, even thru all the years of grime. But then I noticed one serious flaw, the game does not have working sound. On top of that, the seller isn't home. The game is at a "friends" house whom I was dealing with in person. Other than the sound, the game checks out, and I just drove almost three hours to claim it. I tried adjusting the volume, tried reseating connectors, looked for bad connections and checked voltages in the typical testing points, even tried replacing fuses. Nope, still no sound. Now I'm not mad at the seller. Sometimes the average joe doesn't realize these games are supposed to make noise, or they just assume the volume is down or the speaker is bad. And in the excitement of making a road trip for this game, maybe I forgot to ask if it had sound. I don't know. But I did notice theres a seperate audio PCB in the game and I somehow knew then that it was the likely culprit. So there's still hope. I called the seller on the spot and explained the sound problem. I explained that I was still interested but that he would need to work with me a little more. We negotiate again and finally agree to settle at $100 this time. I hand over the cash, load up the game and go. So another pickup doesnt exactly go as planned and now I'm bringing home another project. My fingers are crossed on the trip back home hoping I can find the missing sound.
The Service: After cleaning the years of dust away, I threw the game into test mode and went into the audio tests. Every one of them failed, indicating that the audio PCB was indeed the problem, or at the very least it wasn't communicating with the main boardset. From there, I tried replacing caps, reseating chips and replacing the ribbon cable. Nothing worked, so I was on the hunt for another audio PCB. Luckily, a fellow forum member had an extra board. I was from a Megatack game which is basically the same hardware, just a slightly different custom rom. It was untested but the price was right. This fellow gamer just wanted the shipping price and nothing more. I sent a few more bucks his was along with my gratitude. Not more than a few days go by and it arrives in the mail. After swapping the custom IC's and hooking it up, I kept my fingers crossed yet again, turned on the power switch and heard the start-up siren. Yes, it works! The only problem was the volume pot was bad and the game was way too loud. I break out the old soldering iron, remove the pots from both boards and installed mine in the new board. It works great and all the sounds are intact. Aside from a good cleaning, the game just needed the typical adjustments and a couple of buttons replaced. I also replaced the T-Molding with some chrome & black molding I salvaged from a parted out game some time ago. It really dresses up the wood grain cabinet nicely. It has the typical faded side art and a few battle scars, but it's really in nice shape for being out in the field for over 30 years now. All in all it's a pretty good score.
