Atari Centipede arcade machine restoration

Atari Centipede arcade machine restoration. Picture: The Arcade Blogger

You have to move quickly when you get a sniff of acquiring a classic arcade cabinet that’s been stored away somewhere, UK blogger Tony Temple says.

“Very few machines are coming to market, and the ones that do are fought over tooth and nail,” he said.

“This has driven prices up significantly, creating an environment of every man for himself. It’s dog eat dog out there.”

In a five-part series on his blog, The Arcade Blogger, Mr Temple has detailed the processes and work that went into restoring an old Atari Centipede machine that he found in a container “in the middle of the countryside”.

Even better, the blog posts are filled with pictures which show you exactly what Mr Temple talks about.

The series, aptly titled Centipede Upright Restoration, starts with a separate, humorous blog entry that details how Mr Temple came to find the old 80’s arcade machine.

“I met the guy at his house and he suggested I follow him in my car to the container which he said was 5 minutes away,” Mr Temple says in his blog post Atari Centipede: Weekend Pickup.

“Five minutes’ drive became 10 minutes, became 15 minutes, became 20 minutes, and we were getting further and further away from his town.

“We ended up in the middle of the countryside. I had no idea where we were. He finally turned off the road and down a track.

“The track got narrower and more bumpy, we made several sharp turns and were clearly travelling downwards.”

Mr Temple said they ended up at a place he imagined “Tony Soprano would take hoodlums to be executed and made to disappear”.

Luckily, nothing bad happened and Mr Temple bought the Centipede.

Mr Temple said the machine was “a bit of a mess”.

While the cabinet was intact and contained all the necessary parts, it was “full of cobwebs and dead insects” and “a light smattering of bird shit” adorned the top and control panel.

“But compared to some arcade machines I’ve come across, things could be a whole lot worse,” he said.

In the first entry of the five-part series Mr Temple took the machine apart and gave some of the parts a bath. Literally, he put parts of the machine in his bathtub and gave them a good scrub.

For other parts, they went into the sink with some washing powder.

Part two in the series involved some vacuuming, WD40 and paint stripper.

Part three charted wood repairs while in part four, Mr Temple acknowledged he may have underestimated just how much work he had to do to “get this cabinet up and running and looking decent again”.

Part five? The big unveil of the restored Atari Centipede.

If you’re into arcade gaming, machines, humour, do-it-yourself projects or tips and just plain old restorations then Mr Temple’s Centipede Upright Restoration series is for you.