Dig Dug
Talking with Chris in Chicago about cone buttons
Back in September when we were in Chicago, I got another email from another collector who had machines that would be willing to meet me and show me around. Well, as we continued to email some, it turns out that he needed some web design services, and I told him I could help him out, that I could do a design for him. Well, that was sometime in November, right about the time I was leaving for Australia.
Photo of the Dig Dug control panel
I wasn’t going to hold my breath, but Tim is an upstanding guy. He sent me photos today of the Dig Dug control panel. It looks good. The control panel overlay has some chips in it, but I have seen a ton worse. However, it does seem to be missing the little buttons for player one and two.
Unsure even what these were called, I did a lot of research online tonight. Come to find out, these are called “cone” buttons, and are actually very hard to come by. A pair of them run $24 on ebay and other places, which is way too expensive for my blood. Might as well just buy a complete control panel. I haven’t given Tim and answer yet, only told him that I was going to try to find out some more about these buttons and I would let him know.
Found a Dig Dug control panel in Michigan
Took some time today to get out and meet some other arcade collectors in MI. The first guy I met, Tim in Vermontsville, has a ton of games. I told him about some of the things I was looking for, and he said that he has an almost complete Dig Dug control panel in one of his other storage spaces. He said I could have it if I wanted, but that we didn’t really have time to go look today. He said that he would send me photos in the next couple of days, at my request, so I could see condition and see if I wanted to pay to have it shipping to me.
Bought a Dig Dug Marquee
This weekend we went to Chicago for Emily’s 21st birthday. I emailed the Google Group to see if anyone had parts for a Dig Dug machine. I got one email back from a guy named Joe who was really great. He had a pristine Dig Dug Marquee that he sold me for a great price of $20.
Dig Dug restoration progress Aug. 20th-Sept. 25th, 2006
I worked on stripping off the black paints from the side of the cabinet. At first I used simple green, a green scrunchy kitchen pad, and elbow grease. It worked ok, I got the artwork back, and the black paint off, but it was very hard work and extremely slow going. Plus, the artwork would fade with the scrubbing, and the rubbing of the black paint left a grey tint in the white of the artwork.
I had been reading on forums for the best possible substance to remove paint from cabinets, and I kept reading about Goof Off. I talked to Justin about it, because it seemed that he had used it when he worked maintenace at the apartment complex in Lansing, and he also swore by the stuff. I got one can and sprayed it generously on one side of the cabinet that hadn’t been worked on yet. The one side I had sccrubbed down half of it with just Simple Green. My nails were black and my fingers tired and raw. But that was all to change.
The Goof Off bubbled up the paint on the untouched side and it just fell off in most places, or just a brush of the hand could take it off in others. I couldn’t believe it, and the artwork shown underneath was vibrant, colorful, and in great condition. I continued to use the Goof Off throughout the rest of the cabinet, I had to buy a second can, but it really made the whole stripping possible. The reaction worked best on areas where the artwork wasn’t damanged and had a smooth surface. If the surface wasn’t smooth, it didn’t come off as easy.
Like anything, of course, there were a lot of areas of touchup. I used the Goof Off and scrubbed, and in a ton of places, I gently used a scraper to get the paint off once loosened. Note: To a new serious collector who is very anal, I wouldn’t recommend this. In a couple of places, I scraped off tiny milimeters of artwork. But for those of you who would die if this happened, then you might just want to rub to get it off. I didn’t care that much since the game wasn’t for me, I just wanted to finish it up.
On September 25th I finished the cabinet, and it felt good. Little did I know that it would sit there for many more months before I would do much of anything else on it.
Taking off Land, Sea, Air overlay from Dig Dug
After reading something on the forums today, I got an idea. I read that, in many cases, operators would just apply a new overlay to an existing one. So that meant, potentially that the original Dig Dug overlay was still under the “Land, Sea, and Air” one. I went out into the garage, busted off the lexan covering, and ripped off the stuck on overlay. Sure enough, there was the original Dig Dug.
The overlay came off pretty easy, but left a very dense residue on the control panel. I tried to use some paint thinner without any luck. I will have to come back to the control panel I think either way, because the control panel underneath had new holes for different buttons, and other holes that were drilled out but left unplugged, must have been mistakes. I may need to just find a completely new replacement Control Panel.
Buying the Dig Dug cabinet
I had seen a post in the Google groups about a guy just south of Dayton that was selling working Contra and Super Contra machines. I knew that a friend of mine wanted a Contra, and it was a good deal at $150 so I thought I would go and check it out, it would be a fun roadtrip.
I knew that I would be using a truck that had room for one more game, and when I got there I found that this guy had a ton of games in a barn in the back of his house. He was trying to move some games for really cheap, everything in the cab for $50. I told him I was also kind of looking for a Dig Dug game. He pointed out a Land, Sea, and Air conversion that he said was in a Dig Dug cabinet. It was painted solid black on the side, but a couple of scratches showed that the artwork was in tact underneath and with a lot of work and elbow grease, could be cleaned and restored.
For $50, I couldn’t pass it up and knew that it would offset my total costs, so I took it home with me.
