Jeff's Arcade » Track & Field

Hyper Sports Added To Collection

Jeff — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:54:07 +0000

Well, after my recent woes with Dig Dug, it’s about time for some good news. I recently added a Hyper Sports board to my collection. For those of you not familiar with the game, it is essentially the sequel to Track & Field. The board is playable in the Track & Field cabinet, uses the same button layout and features the following events: swimming, skeet shooting, vaulting horse, archery, triple jump, weight lifting and the pole vault. Here are the scans of the original market flyer for the game:

I was able to mount the board in the cabinet in a position that the edge connector can reach both the Track & Field board and the Hyper Sports board. To switch between games, I simply power the cabinet off and move the edge connector from one board to the other. The Track & Field board is in the metal cage, the Hyper Sports board is mount to the board spanning the width of the cabinet:

It’s always fun to add a new game to the collection, especially when you can do it in an existing cabinet and save much needed space. I played a few games last night and realized I’m not very good. I can’t seem to make it past the third event, the horse vault. Here are a few shots of the game in action:

On a side note, I upgraded to WordPress 2.7 this morning and had a few issues. hopefully everything is sorted out. If you have any issues with the site, please let me know. That’s all for now. Hopefully there will be some progress with Dig Dug soon!

Track & Field – New Buttons Installed

Jeff — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:07:45 +0000

Since it’s 8 degrees outside with a wind chill of 15 below, I decided tonight would be a good night to stay inside and do some work on one of the machines. Having just gotten over a cold and sore throat, I really wasn’t in the mood to tackle all of the dust in the Dig Dug cabinet, so I decided to replace all of the buttons on Track & Field.

The first step was to remove the control panel from the cabinet. After that, the next step was to replace the 10 buttons on the control panel; 4 white buttons, 4 red buttons and 2 blue buttons. Below are a couple of shots of the control panel with the old buttons and the bag of parts (new buttons, leaf switches and spacers):

I had to desolder the wires from the old buttons, then remove them. The wires I just removed had to be resoldered onto the new leaf switches. The new buttons got installed from the top of the control panel, then two spacers on the underside, the new leaf switch and a nut to hold everything together. About every four buttons, I plugged the board back into the machine to test the functionality of the new buttons. Everything worked on the initial test.

Unfortunately, it was late when I finished so I didn’t get a chance to pound on the buttons. Now that the “anti cheat” buttons are gone, I need to find a pencil or comb!

Track & Field Marketing Flyers

Jeff — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:04:32 +0000

I’ve ordered and received new buttons and leaf switches for this game. Unfortunately, Omega Race is taking up most of my workbench space so their won’t be much work until that project progresses a bit. In the meantime, here are some scans of the original marketing flyer for this game:

Track & Field – Additional Pictures

Jeff — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:00:06 +0000

Here’s a slew of pictures of the Track & Field cabinet in it’s present condition:

These pictures can also be viewed in the photo gallery.

A New Project

Jeff — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 10:12:35 +0000

A new toy arrived just in time for Christmas! It’s a fully working, dedicated Konami Track & Field game. I’ve been on the hunt for one of these for a while and finally got one at the right price. Given the repairs I plan on doing, I probably over paid for it, but I have seen similar machines in much worse condition sell for much more money.

For those of you unfamiliar with this game, it was released in 1983 and features various Olympic events. The principal is simple, bash the run buttons as fast as you can to make your player run then press the jump/throw button at the appropriate time. You can read it’s entry in the Killer List Of Video Games here . I spent many youthful dollars on this machine.

As with all of my projects, I’ll be setting up a dedicated page on this web site to keep you up to date. I’ll be adding photos to that page, as well as the photo gallery. Here’s what I have planned for this cabinet:

Repair the holes in the front panel near the coin door (a security latch was installed here)
Repaint the entire cabinet
Replace the buttons and leaf switches on the control panel
Possibly install new side art. I’m kinda fond of the side art on this game as it has names and things etched into it, which adds to the history of the machine.

I probably won’t start on the majority of this project until after the start of the new year.