Spy Hunter thread

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OK dudes,
As it is my favourite game of all time I've decided to make a thread dedicated especially to it. 

I know lots of others on the forum really have a fondness for this game too but it seems to be very difficult to get hold of one of these in the UK nowadays.

Although it was quite common back in 1984 when it was released by Bally/Midway, I think that the game proved difficult to keep running for operators and because it was not easily converted into another game, most were eventually smashed up to make way for newer more reliable and profitable machines.

I remember there were 5 Spy Hunter's in my home town of Withernsea when I was a kid back in '84 (including one sit down 'cockpit' version), but I think all bar two uprights disappeared within about 18 months. Perhaps they became faulty or maybe they were taken out for some other reason, I don't know and as an 11 year old in 1985, never really thought to ask but I don't actually recall ever seeing any of them standing there out of action at any point.

I think the last time I recall seeing a Spy Hunter in the wild was probably around 1988 when I moved away from Withernsea. From that point onwards I still clearly remembered the game though. It was the one that had most captured my attention since I started frequenting arcades on a regular basis circa 1983 I think as a 9 year old.

I even remember asking my parents how much it would cost to buy my very own Spy Hunter machine as I loved the game that much. I think this was early 1985. Surprisingly enough I was never bought a full size arcade machine as a kid or even ever found out how much one would cost.........it was a crazy dream really, I knew my parents never had the sort of money that one of those was going to cost but I did want it more than I'd ever wanted anything before.

I think it was Easter 1985 when I got the Spectrum 48k version by US Gold as a gift 'instead of an Easter Egg'. I was over the moon as this was the closest it was going to get really although I knew straight away that the game actually was quite lame really and a poor imitation of it's arcade parent. Not even a snippet of the Peter Gunn theme.

The game came back to my attention in 1998 I think. A mate of mine was well into video game consoles, I had not really paid them much attention since I got rid of my Amiga in '91 and discovered other interests which mainly revolved around nightclubs up and down the country.

My mate had a Playstation and this crazy setup like an arcade machine in his bedroom. (It was basically a 21" Toshiba TV standing on top of a wooden cabinet with a Namco Arcade stick just at the right height, like a proper arcade machine. I had never heard of JAMMA at this point but the moment I saw that was the moment I fell back in love with games!

He had these arcade perfect conversions of Pacland, Paperboy, Gradius, Salamander and loads of my other favourites including Spy Hunter on the Williams Arcade Classics. Spy Hunter was good. It was amazing that I could now play an 'Arcade Perfect' version of the game, but after a few goes, playing it with a Playstation joypad just did not feel right.

I soon bought myself a similar set up to what my mate had and bought all of these classic collections for the Playstation. It was fantastic and I really enjoyed them over the next 2 years, building all manner of 'shame cabinets' on which to mount these arcade sticks/steering wheels etc.

Then in 2000, my gaming mate told me about this new toy he had coming. A proper JAMMA arcade machine. It sounded fantastic in theory, the only shame was that the only game he had at the beginning was T.M.N.T.. This just didn't do it for me but it did convince me that this was the future.

I knew I was soon to be moving into my own home at this point so I set about making it my main priority to get myself a JAMMA cabinet in which to play some 'proper' classic games. Before I moved in, I already had a collection of about 7/8 JAMMA pcbs ready to plug in any play when the big day came.

Another thing I knew was that this although a fantastic prospect was lacking something vital. I still wasn't going to be able to play Spy Hunter properly.

So I set about my quest to find one, searching online. I kept looking on these websites Arcade Warehouse and Arcade Heaven at the machines they had and drooling. I also checked ebay on a regular basis but alas there was not a sniff of a Spy Hunter machine anywhere.

After asking about for a few months I eventually got a lead. I got in touch with this guy through ebay who suggested that I should sign up to this website called U  K  V  A  C. He had already asked there for me but without success. He did know that there were at least a couple of members there who had one though, so it was definitely worth a go!

I signed up there in probably mid 2001 after I had moved into my house with my girlfriend (now wife). The first JAMMA cab arrived probably about a week after that I think. 

I finally found out that there was a guy called Andrew Baker who owned a Spy Hunter upright a couple of weeks after signing up to U  K  V  A  C. Coincidentally, he was also the guy who owned the Arcade Heaven website that I had kept on searching to try and find my grail.

This machine was not one he was retailing though, it was one of his 'keepers' from his personal collection. Nevertheless, I made him a 'very good offer' for it based upon his description of it as minty. I finally got my machine a few days later when he drove it up about 250 miles to me in a Mercedes Sprinter van loaded with other arcade classics.

He had stopped off at Arcade Warehouse on the way and they apparently had offered him even more for it than I had after seeing it in the van. But Andrew was a man of integrity and declined their offer, even though I think I had yet to pay him a penny for it. (There was no internet banking or paypal at that time, certainly not that I was aware of anyway).

When I finally got hold of the machine and Andrew had driven off into the distance, I quickly realised that there was no way this monster of a machine was going upstairs into the spare bedroom of my new-build house. I think the strain of this beast together with (now 2) JAMMA cabinets in there would have probably sent the whole lot through the floor boards and destroying my living room which was directly below.

So it stayed in the garage where he had left it, for the time being at least. After allowing it a little time to acclimatise as he had suggested I finally turned it on. At this point my heart sank.  Although the game was running, there was what I have subsequently found out to be a monitor fault in that the picture had a thick white horizontal line running across the screen about 1/3 of the way up.

The game could also not be steered, the car just veered off to the right and crashed into the side of the road every time you put your foot on the pedal. I subsequently found out that this was because the wires to the potentiometer on the 'steering wheel' were not connected properly.

Remember I was a total 'noob' at this point and had no clue about fixing these old machines when they developed a fault.

These things were just minor though in the grand scheme of things. My major problem was that the 'speaker fault' which Andrew had told me about which he hadn't had time to sort out actually turned out to be far far worse than that.

I'm sure he did not intentionally mislead me as he was a really helpful guy and did everything he feasibly could to help from 250 miles away including sending me a huge box of spares which he had forgotten to bring with him in the van when dropping it off.

I eventually found out that there must be faults which needed someone experienced with these types of old arcade machines to help resolve. I needed to know why I had this really bad scratching sound interfering with the Peter Gunn music when it played. (I managed to sort out the potentiometer so at least the game was playable).

This sound problem I found really detracted from the whole experience of playing the machine and partially because of where I lived.......in East Yorkshire....seemingly 70 miles minimum from anyone else on U  K  V  A  C and partially through desperation of not knowing what to do with it, I ended up taking the whole machine to Arcade Warehouse in Castleford for them to try and fix it for me.

EDIT: Had to leave it here for a while..........the story continues a few posts down this thread.

Edited by frothmeister - 19 April 2012 at 1:05am

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