Alien Poker: "When I win, I win big!"

I won this on ebay. http://lousarcade.com/alienpoker.jpg It was actually slightly more expensive than the ending price, because I had negotiated off-auction with the seller. He wanted to dump the game quickly so he turned down higher offers that would have been more hassle. He would drop it off to me (for FREE!) to my house as it was on the way for him, the next day.

Amazingly, the pick-up of the AP went well. The dude was from the Valley area and for all I know, could have shot me and taken my $500. hahah. It's always nerve racking getting games from unknowns. So I met this guy at my office on Sand Canyon (hate strangers coming to my house), as he was on his way down the 405 to Tijuana to pick up furniture.

The guy pulls up and has the AP on it's legs in a trailer. We had to bust the lock on his trailer as he forgot the lock key at home - LOL. Not a good start. Well the game is in average to a bit above avg shape. The cab has dry crazing like the playfield, but there are not very many wear spots at all. The PF is above avg. I was disappointed at the back-glass though, it's useable, but as with all APs, flaking quite a bit. I'll have to keep my out for another. Last one on ebay went for 170 or so, ouch.

Get the game home and leave it in the truck overnight.

Morning, visual inspection... Before I powered the game on even, I had to replace the battery holder (hmmmm, I may get lucky and the game doesn't work because the CPU is stuck in test mode due to dead batteries...). Replaced that. I also noticed a fuse blown, replaced that. Check for any weird hax0rness, all looks okay... Power on #1, woohoo, signs of life, it's stuck some kind of cycling test mode!! All 5 displays come up!!! Good sign, this may be a cheap repair... (each display is at least 50-70 to replace... but.... no sound.... yikes...

I noticed that the boards were not secured and only being held by 2 or 3 bolts instead of 8 or 10 on all corners grounding properly. I'm having some doubts... but nothing looked hacked or burnt or cut. I resoldered a bunch crusty solder joints. secured the cpu and driver boards down. Power on #2, Bam, game goes into test mode again and I figure out how to cycle through, this time I get to the sound tests and they check out, all the coils start cycling through and they check out. Got the game into game mode - lo and behold the game is playing - but a few sensor switches are out.

To make a long story short, I finally got the thing working by cleaning up a lot of things. I had to do MASSIVE touchup on the Back Glass and a bit of cleaning and touch up on the playfield. All in all the game is now a 7.5/10, but playing perfectly. It was really nice to see a game come back from the silent dead, AP is a real chatterbox.

Not bad for $500 and some elbow grease, glad to get my holy grail. I haven't really played it since 1981 or 1982 in the arcade I grew up with. It's great listening to all those vintage williams sounds again. It's as good as I remembered it.

System 6's aren't really too bad at all. If I get any other 1980's games, it would be Xenon, Black knight and maybe Space Invaders, but there are too many good 1990's pinballs out there to waste space on, this will be my only early 80's pinball I think.

More AP quotes:

"I deal Jo-ker"

"When I deal, you lose"