Taito (Bubble Bobble) Cabinet Restore

[SNESNESCUBE64 | 539]

About two months ago now I finally started a project on a cabinet that needed a lot of help. For a long time now I've been wanting a Bubble Bobble cabinet because it is my absolute favorite arcade game, and when a Taito cabinet came up for sale locally on facebook marketplace, I was able to start

This is what I had to start with, a poor Jungle King cabinet that had been converted several times in its life. Unfortunately it had holes in the side of the cabinet and the base was completely totaled. Cabinet also had some swelling problems and was just a genuinely not fun game. Plus the poor thing had its beautiful Taito paint covered. But at least everything was there.

First thing was first, this thing needed to be stripped down and redone. Unfortunately I could not save the original paint, they used some really nasty paint on the side. Ripping off the crappy tecmo artwork confirmed what game it was: Jungle King

From there it was just pulling the cabinet apart. All the parts had to be pulled out so I could begin the cabinet work. Basically, The goal was to strip down the sides so that I could repaint with a new stencil. While I was stripping, it was also beneficial for me to replace the base because boy was that thing trashed. I used Citrusstrip to remove the paint, from there I could sand down the surface. While after I sanded down the edges, I made sure to use some wood hardener where the cabinet was swollen on the bottom. Hopefully with the wood hardener, it will stop the swelling.

Building the base was trivial, I just bought some lumber from home depot and slapped it together. This time however, I decided I wanted leg levelers so that way the cabinet is not sitting right on the wood, which will hopefully prevent damage on there. From there it was just attaching it using wood glue. Worked out pretty well I'd say.

From there it was time to fix the damage. This poor thing had a chip missing in the front corner and a few holes in the side. For this I used bondo and a lot of sanding. It made that corner look like it was brand new. I was even able to make a nice groove for the tmolding to fit. While I was at it, I also filled in the holes that were on the side, unfortunately I didn't take a picture of that.

After the damage was addressed, it was time for paint. I used Glidden gripper primer for the base, wet sanding between each coat with a fine sanding sponge to give it a smooth surface. From there I painted the sides with electric lime statin finish and the front with black satin finish paint from Shermin-Williams. I was super happy with how it looked, the electric lime was also SUPER close to the original, almost indistinguishable.

Now for the really scary/fun part: The stencil. My two options were wait a year for This Old Game to make a run of the stencils or I could get it from escapepod. Now I will say this, the stencil was NOT the best quality, but it was accurate and worked for the purpose at hand. Overall I was pretty happy with it. I will continue to NOT recommend escapepod for anything, I am not a fan of their artwork as a whole, but your mileage may vary. I just used green rustolium spray paint (which was surprisingly hard to find locally). The front stencil was a similar situation, just with a lime green krylon paint. I will say that I was not too happy with the paint itself, but the color was almost perfect.

After that, I did the last piece of woodworking that I needed to do: built the piece of wood that power input block slides into because it was missing. It was pretty easy, just used a piece of scrap wood and routed out the slot. After was just some black spray paint and some screws.

Basement time! Moving it down to the basement was a straight forward task. From there it was just putting it back together. Stocking it full of electronics is my forte. I had built a harness and redid the coin door because it was all hacked up. I also went ahead and installed a highscore save kit because I like all my games to save my score. I also made sure to rebuild the monitor. The tube itself actually tested pretty healthy, so I think I'm going to keep that one in there. I also replaced the switcher with a high quality RT-125A supply while I was there. The original power supply had been pulled out years ago for a switcher.

Controls time: The original control panel was a mess, fortunately joseph77 on KLOV makes reproduction control panels, so he hooked me up with one for this. With the new panel, it needed some planning out to where the holes were going to be, so I laid it out in Kicad because I didn't have real design software. It worked out very well actually. From there I used a drill press for the buttons and then a power drill with some metal bits for everything else. The square holes for the carriage bolts were made using a dremel with a metal bit to remove the roundness. Afterwords it was time for the artwork. The control panel overlay was made by arcadeartshop.com and they did an excellent job. I cannot recommend them enough for artwork, they make nothing but quality. The joysticks were Seimitsu LS-32s and the buttons were generic ones with cherry switches that I got from my weekend job.

After all of this, it was time to finally apply the finishing touches with the artwork. It ended up turning out super nice and I am super happy with how it turned out. The rest of the artwork was done by arcadeartshop.com and I am super happy with it. The only thing I wasn't 100% happy with was the stencil, it might have been user error on my part though, but it no matter, it still turned out pretty good.

 

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

That's so awesome, man!  I've actually been planning on doing the same thing ever since I sold my Bubble Bobble years ago (it was in a 3-Koam Z-back cab).  I'm going to do a green Taito cab, just like you, the only difference is that I really dig the original Romstar artwork for the US distribution of the kit, so I'll be sticking with original art, but in a Taito cab.  Just a matter of getting 'round to it one of these days...

[a3quit4s | 4,097]

Wow this is really good work man congrats and enjoy playing it!!

[Hammerfestus | 3,838]

That’s so cool.  

[SNESNESCUBE64 | 539]

6 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

That's so awesome, man!  I've actually been planning on doing the same thing ever since I sold my Bubble Bobble years ago (it was in a 3-Koam Z-back cab).  I'm going to do a green Taito cab, just like you, the only difference is that I really dig the original Romstar artwork for the US distribution of the kit, so I'll be sticking with original art, but in a Taito cab.  Just a matter of getting 'round to it one of these days...

The only problem with doing a Taito cabinet is that the wood is MDF, so I had problems with swelling. I thought about doing the ROMSTAR artwork because that is who distributed bubble bobble here, but I think that marquee looks ugly and everything else is generic, ROMSTAR artwork which actually looks alright for generic artwork.

[spacepup | 2,404]

Thanks so much for sharing!!!  I think it turned out fantastic, and you should be really proud of the work you did on this!  It is so great to see the passion and hard work put in to a project like this.  Awesome stuff, keep up the great work!

[drxandy | 3,225]

My man it is gorgeous! Love watching you work on discord, thank you for sharing and the end result is really really niiiiice!!!!

[SNESNESCUBE64 | 539]

23 minutes ago, drxandy said:

My man it is gorgeous! Love watching you work on discord, thank you for sharing and the end result is really really niiiiice!!!!

It's super fun sharing progress updates on the discord because its easy to share the pictures and can be less formal. Glad you enjoyed the ride there!

[croagunk | 798]

It’s so beautiful! Congrats on a job well done. Enjoy!

[Tanooki | 4,933]

Yeah now that I think of it I saw pieces of this like that nice bubble bobble cpo wrap there on that image above.  That took some serious work, need to know what you're doing, have the tools, supplies, and workspace.  I'm glad what I do have came in great shape as that's way over my head, though fun to watch it being done.

[SNESNESCUBE64 | 539]

On 8/28/2021 at 10:09 PM, Tanooki said:

Yeah now that I think of it I saw pieces of this like that nice bubble bobble cpo wrap there on that image above.  That took some serious work, need to know what you're doing, have the tools, supplies, and workspace.  I'm glad what I do have came in great shape as that's way over my head, though fun to watch it being done.

Anyone can do it/can learn, you it just takes a lot of effort. For example, I had never fixed a corner or filled holes with bondo before, but its something to learn. I also have never used a stencil before, that was a 'fun' new experience I got to do.

There are so many resources out there these days, its a great time to learn new skills like this!

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

High quality fab work. Looks great.  

[B.A. | 1,139]

Wow! That looks great! Nice work.

[Murray | 2,448]

Great job Snesy! Now you can finally get to work on those Ball Street Kid carts. 

[DarkTone | 984]

Thanks for sharing. 

[Sumez | 2,950]

I've been following your progress and showing my support on Discord, but I'd be an ass not to praise you here as well. Congratulations on finishing this, it's really a beautiful job, and it warms my heart to see projects like this, amidst a sea of horrendeous mame cabinets built around the world by people who have no understanding for what arcade games actually are.

It's no secret to anyone, least of all to SNESNESCUBE64 I'm assuming, that the Bubble Bobble series is one of my all-time favourite arcade series (as evident from my profile pic), and if I had my way, every thread on the forum would be about the classic BB games.  

Edited August 31, 2021 by Sumez