Custom Tron "prototype" cocktail cabinet.

[TxBabyHuey]

So Tron is just as important to me as Star Wars is. My brother and I have gone through a few Tron arcades and to me the arcade is just as much of the Tron mystique as anything else.

As far as inventions or projects that man has created, the original arcade is actually somewhat of a symphony of great ideas and taste rolled into one machine. I still get giddy every time I see one.

The cocktail however has always been a little more rare and kind of bland in my opinion. Now if you wanted to build one of these it's a little hard because they red joysticks are unique to this cocktail and will cost you about $300-$400 alone.

Since I want to pretend it's 1982 and I have been charged with creating the prototype for the cocktail I've decided to go full throttle on it.

We had the original joystick 3d Scanned by Bruce Lee and with his amazing knowledge and help we are going to shrink the original joystick down to be cocktail sized.

My friend nabbed me a Galaxian cocktail for REALLY cheap so I decided to butcher it into my Tron cocktail.

Here are some progress pics and concepts I was messing with.

The boards for the side are being CNC'ed this week and I should have a good joystick to print within a month (hopefully)

Anyway here are the pics so far.

 

[TxBabyHuey]

I am making the wood sides different because I was able to at least nab the control panels for fairly cheap. The Tron cocktail panel is more narrow than the Galaxian so I might as well make them a little more Tron like right?

 

[TxBabyHuey]

So for those that don't know the original cabinet was designed by a guy named George Gomez. And in 2001ish an image surfaced of the original Tron prototype which was fashioned out of a Gorf cabinet which is almost similar to the Tron cabinet.

My brother and I flipped when we saw this 15 years ago as it was just too damn cool.'

But the cd we saved it on is long gone and the image was somewhat forgotten over the past 15 years. But I went on the KLOV to see if anyone had it and after years of googling I just couldn't find it again. To my chagrin most people didn't really know what I was talking about but a couple did and they dug up the old image.

As you can see it's a LOT different than what came out and it's beautiful.

I was able to get a hold of George Gomez and asked him about a little history.

He said that it was actually in the arcade near where Flynn was playing Space Paranoids and he basically had to baby sit it.
For those that don't know, the cabinet is just badass, features black lights, but more importantly it was one of the first games where there were multiple games in one and featured the lightcycles as closely as they could to what happened in the film.

He told us he has some production photos from the film and it blew my mind that Disney did not contact him during the revamp of the dvd's and Blu Ray for the special features. He said they simply didn't dig that deep which is a sin. Hopefully some of these production photos show up soon.

 

[ultraman]

looking forward to seeing this build!
i was addicted to all the arcades as a kid also.
i loved the mini arcade games and the watches too...remember those donkey kong and pacman watches!!!! :cool

good luck on the project!

 

[TxBabyHuey]

looking forward to seeing this build!
i was addicted to all the arcades as a kid also.
i loved the mini arcade games and the watches too...remember those donkey kong and pacman watches!!!! :cool

good luck on the project!

Thanks a lot man. It's a budget build with ambition. Don't know if that means anything.

I am doing a lot of this at RebelScum's joint and as always he is brilliant as hell when it comes to problem solving. This project wouldn't be anywhere without him.
I know once we cast the joystick his place is more than well equipped to cast them in clear plastic.

But is there someone here who is known as doing it and doing it well? Just trying to see if I can skip that mess because I know that's what it is. It's not I don't think RebelScum is capable or not, but I was wondering if someone else can just do it for me? Wishful thinking.

 

[karmajay]

I was a big arcade rat when I was a kid and have always dreamed of having a tron cabinet

 

[mattkelly]

Subscribing! Please, the more arcane trivia you can deliver about the original cabinet and your own cocktail design, the better! Love this stuff.