Burger Time Arcade Game Discovery

Yesterday was probably one of my best days all summer. The weather was perfect, not hot not cold, no rain, just a bright and sunny day. My friend Josh had arranged to go and pickup an arcade game that he had heard about on tradio (radio classified ads). We had no clue what we were in for.

To start with Josh was listening to tradio when he heard a caller say that he had a Guardian video game, more specifically “one of them games that takes quarters.” Price: FREE! Of course Josh called immediately to reserve his free Guardian arcade machine. The guy giving it away was nice enough to let him know that it wasn’t working, but that didn’t matter to Josh because he has a friend (ie Craig) that could take a look, and maybe fix it, or perhaps make it a MAME cabinet. And the adventure begins.

So after some research we mount up to go after the machine, which was conveniently located in the middle of nowhere. I am talking hillbilly country. No trespassing signs, beware of dog signs, I mean some Wrong Turn type stuff. How this game got out here was beyond me. But sure enough, when we got there it was sitting on the porch waiting for us.

On the way to pick it up we were very excited, discussing what it could be (seeing as how we had very little info). We didn’t know if it was Guardians of the Hood , the conversion kit Guardians, or the rare Guardians/Denjin Makai 2. We were really hoping for the rare version, so you could imagine our disappointment when we realized that it was the cheap, conversion game Guardians. It was also a blow when we realized that the cabinet has spent the last several years outside, was missing parts, and not in the best shape. But we had made it this far, and all of our bad luck aside, we loaded it up, and took it anyways. If nothing else we would have enjoyed destroying it.

So we got the cabinet back to Josh’s place, and started cleaning it up. We were very surprised how good all of the pcb’s, and the cabinet started to look once all of the layers of grime were removed. But we kept wondering what type of game this used to be. The cabinet had an odd shape, but we couldn’t find any markings to indicate what it may have been. We could make out some writing under the existing paint, but could only make out a big “P.” So after a few hours of cleaning, and talking, we started Googling. It wasn’t long until Josh discovered that this cabinet was an original Burger Time, that’s right, the P we were seeing was on the hat of Peter Pepper.

Burger Time Converted to Guardian

Converted Burger Time side view
Inside of cabinet before cleaning, pcb's removed for cleaning.
Tax placard found inside of power supply.

So now we are in a predicament. The cabinet is not in very good shape, and is going to take some a lot of work. Now we must decide whether or not to restore the cabinet as a Burger Time, or make it something else. Either way we go the price was right, and it was an exciting find.

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