As some of you may recall, I picked up a Space Zap back in 2021 - another game I fell in love with at @grinkers years earlier.
Unfortunately, it crapped out almost immediately after arrival. I won't go into details but the short of it is that, after a lot of troubleshooting on my own and then with a buddy's board set, the data custom had shit the bed. Exactly what happened is anyone's guess but I have my theories. Perhaps we'll speculate on that some other time.
There aren't a lot of options out there for replacing those customs - you either need to pull one from another board set or pull one from the Bally Astrocade console/computer. I'm hopeful for a repro someday but that doesn't help right now.
You can see where this is going now...
I looked for a long time trying to find one for a decent price but as their numbers fall, more die or are used to fix other consoles or arcade boards, the prices even on non working systems can get pretty nuts. Ultimately I just couldn't bring myself to pay the premium after paying so much for the Space Zap to begin with.
Flash forward a little over a year later and a buddy surprised me with a working Astrocade to help repair my Space Zap 😯 Here's hoping he found a really good deal but it's not like I'd turn it away!
It came with several controllers and a bunch of games so I felt it only right to spend some time with it before stripping it down. Full disclosure: I have no nostalgia for this thing so it wasn't easy to get into the games except for a few home versions of arcade games I appreciate.
Over the next several days I'll share some thoughts on each game. For science.