I bought an awesome Mad Planets for $50!
I’m still in shock, these things can transpire so quickly. Yesterday was a normal day, push through the leadership coursework, caught up with a couple of people, sit down in front of my computer and what do I have waiting in my RSS feeds? A Mad Planets for sale for $100 in Evanston on Craigslist. But the ad was posted at noon, surely it was gone by then. It wasn’t…and I even got it cheaper!
This Mad Planets has some interesting connections
I am hoping that a few more in depth stories will be coming out of this soon, it was an exciting day.
Last night, I was able to get in touch with the owner and I couldn’t believe that after 12 hours he still had the game for sale! We made an initial agreement and then I had a buddy go to Evanston, shocking, and pick up the Mad Planets. Knowing how this hobby is, I knew I had to move fast and demonstrate my commitment to coming to get this game right away at the asking price. In the end, he was so nice that he went out of his way to take another $50 off the Mad Planets because he knew the length of the drive for pickup and because he just needed it out. $50! And it turns out, just like the Craigslist ad says, the game does work, a fully working nice looking Mad Planets for $50. I am so pumped, here are some photos.
The control panel is what struck me, it looks really good. I haven’t seen too many Mad Planets, but in photos I see a lot of the control panel overlays worn away on that front edge and rust showing through. This may have some minor spots like that, but nothing major.
The game isn’t perfect, and will need a once over, but still.
Now I have all of those Mad Planets parts
I guess having most of the Mad Planets boards, marquee and other parts is a good thing, backups in case I need to replace pieces of a game where parts are hard to come by. It was a great monetary deal, but it should work out on many other fronts. I don’t have to use a Q*Bert cab that was intended to be built into a full project, and I don’t have to spend several long days restoring the game from scratch without knowing if everything would just ‘come together’.
What does this mean for the bezel artwork or the underlay artwork? Well, I don’t know. The Mad Planets bezel artwork is finished. It needs color matching and probably some checking on dimensions but it is ready otherwise. I put about 2 hours of work into the Underlay, so the vectors for that are started but no where near being done. For both pieces right now I am wait and see.
When I learn a little bit more from the owner on how long he had it, where he bought it etc. I will definitely share. If you have a great story on how you got your Mad Planets leave a comment below. I have met most of the guys now that own them and are visible in the community and know some of their stories, but not all of them and wonder if someone has another cool recollection to share.
Here are some similar arcade posts
- Acquiring more pieces to the Mad Planets puzzle
- The “Mad” Planets align, got game guts in the mail
- Mad Planets underlay artwork progress
- Mad Planets underlay artwork progress part 2
- Mad Planets Bezel Artwork Finished
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Comments
Yeah….the fact that the Mad Planets control panel has a bat handle joystick on there makes me wonder if this thing was ever played, or just sat in storage. Hope to find out soon.
I’m glad I could help secure this little beauty! Of course the joystick is not original, but what Jeff didn’t mention is that enough parts were included to make at least one working joystick, if not two. Shockingly good deal and a really nice guy that sold the game.
Congratulations Jeff! After reading about your interest in this game, I know how exciting of a find this is for you. 🙂
It was played… In fact I played it quite a lot. I wired up the joystick to just fire all the time. Not optimal, but it certainly allowed me to enjoy the game while constantly putting off wiring up the ‘real’ joystick 🙂
The story of where this game came from is kinda funny, but Ill tell it to Jeff so he can write about it.
$50….nice deal. I know you’ve been looking for one of these for quite a while. Sure beats the $50 I just spent on a mouse infected, non working Centipede.
I honestly haven’t been looking very long for a Mad Planets, I kind of feel weird about getting it. Almost, doubting myself like “Am I sure I love this game as much as I remember?” Because of my policy of not buying a game until I am sure I will not get rid of it unless some extreme circumstance….
What are you doing with the Centipede? Flip?
Maybe it just seems like you’ve been looking for one for a while.
I had thoughts of flipping the Centipede but don’t think I’m going to be able to make a profit on it. The cabinet is in terrible shape, it needs a new PCB, a new trackball, a new marquee and I don’t even know about the monitor yet. I’m going to throw a new board in it and see what kind of luck I have. I won’t even consider working on the cabinet repairs until the game is working. Hopefully the monitor works, at least I can keep it around as a spare. I’ll probably have some pictures of it on my site early next week.
Nice score Jeff. Welcome to the club. Does the sound work? If it does, consider yourself lucky.
Kent
There were only around 1500 of this machine produced. This is a nice find! ESPECIALLY in this condition! I am sure you could get the same effects from a TRON or similar joystick setup. Shit, to get just about any arcade machine working for 50 bucks is awesome! Good question on that joystick though. LOL You really have no reason to stop firing in Mad Planets anyway, so making it autofire was a good idea anyway. LOLOL
True James, always firing, it’s the equivalent of a button masher classic-style. I fired it up today, got a new high score of 263K. Pretty pumped, but would like to break the 300K barrier sooner than later.
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March 27, 2009
Very nice Jeff. I might be borrowing a CP, harness and PCB so I can check out mad planets in person… haa haa.