Joust-main

Joust arcade machine - cosmetic restoration in progress

My Joust originally came to me around 1994 as an Aliens machine. I worked for Loew’s Theatres at the time and during our company picnic my coworker Mike won it from the theater’s amusement machine provider. I bought it from him I think for $200. For a lot of the next 25 years it was in my brother’s basement. When he moved in 2020 I reacquired it and then it sat in my basement.

Aliens is a fun game but after a few years it does get a bit tiresome. I knew it had been retrofitted into the cabinet but I knew nothing else about it. I had been looking at newer multicade machines made by Arcade1Up before I realized they were pieces of garbage. So I decided to break into the Aliens cab, I lost the keys years ago, and poke around. I had heard the term JAMMA before and knew that Aliens was JAMMA but didn’t quite understand any more than I might be able to replace something inside my cab and turn it into another game.

Here are some artifacts I found inside. It was apparently in a 10-plex in Dublin, Ohio in 1990.

I started with the monitor. Very scary looking so I didn’t really touch anything. It was filthy with dust. I found some labels but they didn’t tell me much other than the model of the CRT. Then I found some dates stamped in a couple of places -1982. And I found a Williams sticker. The black paint on the outside of the cabinet had started to peel and a small piece of what I assumed to be the original design was visible. Thank the internet gods, that was plenty of info to be able to figure out exactly what I had.

I believe that Aliens was at least the second game put into this cabinet after Joust. There were remnants of decals on both sides of the cabinet. The control panel had some extra holes in it not being used for another button and a joystick in the center. Later when I took it apart and removed the Aliens glued-on overlay for cleaning I found remnants of another overlay that did not match the colors of either Aliens or Joust.

Regardless of the number of conversions there was quite a bit of original bits left in my cabinet. Wiring, power transformer, CRT monitor, all original. What was missing was the original marquee and bezel, the original controls, and the original ROMs, sound board, control card etc. that was the heart of the original Joust.

There’s a guy on YouTube that has a fantastic 12-part video series on his restoration of a Joust machine. I can’t believe it exists. Thankfully I found it before I really started doing anything to my cabinet—I had originally planned to just strip it completely and use it as a shell for a custom build. But when I saw his videos and his technique for removing the old latex paint and recovering the amazing original 3-color stenciled artwork which was done by Python Anghelo, the same guy who designed the animations and sprites in the game, I knew I had to restore what I could instead of recycle it.

Exploration and discovery over. Time to move on to my Joust restoration.

Last updated 3/16/25 9:28am

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