The Food Fight that got away

How badly did I want to own a Food Fight? Apparently bad enough to drive all the way from Indianapolis to the border of Georgia and Florida to pick one up this past December. I’ve always loved the Food Fight cabinet, but did not have an overwhelming desire to own the game. That was until one fateful email in May of 2010.

Two unloved arcade games, left in a closet

It seems that I wasn’t the only one that was on the fence about owning a Food Fight. I got an email from a couple who moved into a home in Mason OH, and they were greeted with two arcade games, left in the house by the previous owner. One of them happened to be a Food Fight, serial number UR00480. I have wacked out dreams like this after a night of Blue Moon, a supreme pizza and Cinnamon Toast Crunch – Where I walk into my new house and there are arcade games bursting from every room and every closet. Check out the photos.

The Food Fight was missing the knob off of the joystick, but other than that appeared to be complete and working. The other game was a non-working Q*Bert, with no sideart and a Willis cpanel overlay.

A real possibility of picking up two fun games near Indianapolis

Two fun games, neither of which were in my possession at the time. The couple was looking to sell both games and approached me first to see if I was interested. Some research online turned up a wide range of prices for a Food Fight, including the typical ‘retailers’ looking to gouge home owners in that $2,000-$4,000 range. The Q*Bert would have been an easy restoration, and I knew I could track down a knob so I decided to make an offer to purchase both.

There were several phone calls an emails that spanned nearly 5 months, but in the end the sellers decided to try listing the games on eBay.

I wish every offer I made panned out – but then again, I’d have to build a bigger house to hold what is now an 18 game collection. I monitored the auctions, my offer was higher than the final prices for the two games.

Doing the math – 119 miles to Mason OH vs. 800 miles to Folkston GA. Sigh.

But hey, now I own a Food Fight. Plus, I got to see some things on the trip to Folkston. Including this cab fail around Atlanta GA. Enjoy.

If you ended up purchasing this Q*Bert and / or the Food Fight out of Cincinnati, drop a line, give an update on how they are working today.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Food Fight Cabinet
• Food Fight Chef on Kickplate finished
• Received Food Fight Kickplate Photos
• Value of NOS Mappy and Food Fight bezels
• Scrubbed off some more paint on the Food Fight

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.