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A Story of Finding Two Cosmic Chasms and a Cube Quest
For any pictures displayed in this story, you can click on the picture to bring up a high resolution image of the same shot.
It all started years ago when, on an innocent op raid, I picked up a complete NIB/NOS Thayer's Quest kit. About a year later, someone posted a WTB in the RGVAC newsgroup for some Thayer's Quest parts. I responded that I not only had the parts they were looking for, I had a whole kit. That led to a string of emails to work out a deal on the kit. I didn't know or recognize the buyer and was happy to get a good price for it.
A few months later the buyer emailed and asked if I was planning to attend CAX. I was and we arranged to meet there as he said he lived close by. Then 9/11/2001 happened. I was due to leave for CAX on the morning of the 15th. As you probably remember, all air travel was suspended for three days following that horrible tragedy, which meant that I would be trying to fly out on the first morning air travel throughout the country resumed. A buddy who was supposed to go with me heard the news reports and cancelled without even going to the airport. I decided to give it a try. It was to be my first CAX, and I was very much looking forward to the games and to meeting many collectors I had only talked to via email. The airport was an absolute madhouse. All the people that were stranded were trying to get home, and the people with regular flights (like me) doubled the population. It was without question the most crowded I've ever seen an airport.
The airport was so packed there were no lines, per se, just people wall to wall. My flight was due to leave in about 30 minutes and I was at the back of the building, nowhere near the check-in desks. I decided to cancel and started thinking about how I was going to get a ride home. Just then a United Airlines employee came out into the crowd, pretty much right next to me, and called out "Anyone with a flight leaving in the next 30 minutes, come with me." A few other ticket holders and I followed her and we went right through everything as if we were VIPs. I got on my flight no problem. That clearly was a miracle.
I got to CAX and was having a great time. I didn't think about the Thayer's Quest kit buyer as we had had only casual email conversations about meeting, more like "Hey, we should meet at CAX." I never thought it would happen as neither of us knew what the other looked like and no fixed arrangements had been made.
Early on Saturday evening, someone came up to me and asked if I was Joe. Yes, I replied. It was the Thayer's Quest buyer. I asked him how he found me and he said he asked a couple people who I was. The buyer turned out to be Brendon Z.. Still that name didn't register anything special with me collector wise. He invited me to his parents' house to check out the majority of his games there. It was there I found the most amazing, comprehensive laser game collection I had ever seen. I saw several laser games I had never seen before and several other laser games I had never even previously heard of.
One game that I played (but had never previously heard of) was Cube Quest. The graphics and sound/speech were really cool and I thought the game play was also very good (contrary to my opinion of most laser game play). I mentioned out loud that "I got to get me one of these." Brendon, very politely, didn't comment. It wasn't until several years later that he related what he was thinking at the time I said that.
From that initial meeting, Brendon and I grew to be pretty good friends, as good as can be expected considering we lived far apart. But that's another story altogether. Actually, there are a few other arcade collecting stories from our friendship, but like I said, not really relevant here.
Fast forward to summer 2006, 8-28-2006 to be specific, as I'm an email pack rat and still have the original email. I idle away a lot of time while my PC is on logged into a few of the arcade channels (chat rooms). On that day, out of the blue, I got a private-instant message (PM) from Al, a collecting buddy I know who lives in Atlanta. It went something like this:
Al: Hey, you're in the midwest aren't you?
Joe: Yep, Chicago area.
Al: I got a cold-call email stemming from my web site from some guy wanting to sell a bunch of video games. He's in the midwest, and you’re the only collector I know in the midwest, so if you're interested, I'll pass it along to you. He sent me a list of games he has.
Joe: Sure, absolutely, always interested, send me the email and the list.
Al: He's in South Dakota, by the way.
With that comment I'm thinking, South Dakota? Are you crazy? That's like a thousand miles from me. But I don't say anything. He forwards the email to me while we're still PM'ing back and forth. Before we go on, I want to mention that Al knows video games, but is really much more into collecting pinball games. I get the email and while I'm reading the list, the conversation continues...I PM back:
Joe: HOLY CRAP!!!
Al: Why, what?
It was at that point I realized he truly didn't know the desirability, rarity, and value of a couple games on the list--Cosmic Chasm (2), meaning two of them! Oh-oh, too late, I tipped him off. The conversation continues... I reply:
Joe: Oh, nothing special, just some odd-ball games on there.
Al: Well, there's no pinball games there of interest to me, so it's all yours, go for it.
Cool! He doesn't seem to be alerted by my comment and doesn't seem to really care.
I immediately begin an email exchange with the owner of the games in South Dakota. After getting the specific address, it turns out to be about 800 miles away--more than 12 hours one way by MapQuest (time based without stopping). Yuck. A long way, but I've certainly done several longer game trips. The owner sent me a list and some pictures. There really wasn't anything I was interested in besides the Cosmic Chasms and a Kosmic Kroozer and the games weren't in great condition, but still, on a rare game, you can't be too choosy.
After a few months of coordination, lining up dates the seller and I were both available--lining up a weekend when our family van was not needed, borrowing a trailer to pull, talking my wife into all of this--I finally set off on the trip on 11-11-2006. It was late in the year so my daylight would be limited. My plan was to leave about 4AM on a Saturday morning, get there by 4PM, make a deal, load the three games in a couple hours and then head home. Planning and hoping to be home Sunday morning in time to go to church, spend the day with my family and play with my kids. On the way there, I was making great time and the local radio stations I picked up along the way were all playing great music. Time was passing quickly and easily, I had no problems. I was in phone contact with the seller to let him know my status. When I was about an hour away, I called him one last time to let him know I was close. About 15 minutes after that call, in the middle of nowhere, I heard a loud pop from my engine, then some clanking like something broke off from the engine and bounced out under my car. A lot of white smoke and my engine was no longer running. I was going about 75 at the time, down hill on top of it. It took a long time to come to a stop, I estimate between a half mile to a mile.
It was then that I began a series of encounters with what had to be the friendliest people in the entire nation. Before I opened the door of my van, a couple in a pickup truck (a husband and wife who were out hunting deer) pulled over and stopped behind me with an offer of help. I described what happened and the man said it sounded like a blown engine. Dang it! Okay, I pull out my wallet, dig out my AAA card and try to call them. My borrowed cell phone doesn't work! What's going on? (I later found out that this was one of the few places in the USA that Cingular (now AT&T), didn't have a presence.) The couple generously offered to take me to the nearest "anything", which happened to be a bar about 10 miles down the road. During our ride together they explained that while they were happy to help, the initial reason they stopped was because they thought I hit a deer and wanted it (as they weren't having much luck hunting).
After I got to the bar I asked if I could use the pay phone. "We don't have one anymore" was their reply, as everyone used a cell phone now. But the barmaid let me use her phone to make several calls--another example of friendliness. I called the seller. I was about 40 minutes from him, but he said he'd come right out. (On a side note, there were some games at the bar that I played to pass the time while I was waiting. The workers said they were from a local operator with the exception of a Pong clone tucked away in the corner. The clone belonged to them but was no longer working.) The seller arrived after about 45 minutes. He wanted me to see the games before it got dark as there was no electricity in the building where they were stored, so he took me straight to the storage locations. Sure enough, two Cosmic Chasms. Poor condition, as the building was not much more than a large shed with lots of leaks in the roof. One monitor was missing and the other was missing the deflection. Both PCBs were there. Side art was ripped up. They were in pretty poor shape, but like I said, you can't be too choosy on some games. To be honest though, if it was any other game, they would be immediate part-out candidates.
The seller drove me around to try to find an open car repair place. It was just about 6 PM on Saturday at this point, so most of the places had just closed. Drats! He drove me back to my van to take a look. Turns out he is a diesel engine mechanic and knew something about cars. He said this was not good, he was sure it was a blown engine and I better start looking for a place to stay. He let me call AAA for a tow and left me to wait for the tow.
AAA came and within a couple minutes confirmed it was a blown engine. The van and trailer would need to be towed. As I rode with the tow truck driver back to the station, I mentioned how this was going to delay me several hours. He laughed. "You better figure on a few days, you aren't going anywhere for a while, that's a three day job." "No, you don't understand," I replied, "I need to be back at work on Monday." "No, you don't understand," he replied, "the engine is not fixable. You need to get a new engine. Or buy a new vehicle. You better start looking for a hotel." What? Monday was my major busy day at work. It would be really bad to miss it. The tow driver called the home office and explained the situation and about my needing a place to stay. The office replied that this might be trouble as this was the opening weekend of hunting season, and everything was sold out! It took some time and a few more calls but the home office found me a place to stay, a small motel room. I asked about when they could look at the engine. They replied that the earliest was Monday. What??? It's 6PM on a Saturday, you mean nothing is open? No, not in a small town in South Dakota. Well what about Sunday? He looked at me funny. "No car repair places are open on Sunday. It's family and church day". Wow, this sure wasn't Chicago.
Resigned to the fact I was going to be there a while, I made the best of it. But even that was difficult. Since this was supposed to be a turnaround trip, I had no extra clothes or even a toothbrush. No food, and the only place open was the gas station convenient mart. I watched TV Saturday evening and football games all day Sunday. I took a shower, but only had dirty smelly clothes to put back on.
On Monday, I was at the car repair place five minutes after they opened. Blown engine. They’ll need to make a few calls to see how long it would take to fix. Okay, I’ll rent a vehicle, pick up the games, and be back in time when the car is fixed to load the games and go home. I rent a pickup truck and go back to tell the auto repair place my plans. They tell me it will cost $1500 in labor and $1500 in parts for a new engine. Plus, it would take three days for the engine to be shipped. No, this can’t be happening. I can’t be away from work unplanned for so long. I ask options for getting back to Chicago. They said the nearest train station is about 90 minutes away. We called to check on the prices for renting a car one way, it was very high. The nearest major airport was Sioux Falls, about 75 minutes away. I asked about a ride to the airport, and they told me about a guy who makes a daily run there for package pick up and delivery, but that he had probably left already. I got his cell phone number and gave him a call. He confirmed that he'd already left, but was only about 20 miles out, so he’d be willing to turn around and come get me for an additional $5. Wow, now that’s something that wasn’t going to happen in a large town. I agreed and he turned around to come back. I returned the rental car (they didn’t charge me, another small town hospitality) and quickly checked out of the hotel.
The package delivery guy picked me up and we had nice discussion on the way to the airport. Once at the airport, I went about getting fleeced on one-way, no advance purchase airfare back to Chicago and then had to wait about five hours for the flight. I finally had cell phone service and made several calls to let people know what was happening. Enough calls that my phone went dead. I didn’t have a charger with me. I walked around the airport and spied someone with the same phone and asked to borrow his charger. I was finally able to get the phone charged.
Okay, so I’m back home. I've got a borrowed trailer and a van with a blown engine stuck in two different locations in South Dakota. After talking to the auto repair place and several other sources, I decided it was not worth fixing the van. I would end up donating the van to the American Lung Association but I still had to get the trailer home somehow. My family now had only one car, with me needing to get to work every day and my wife needing to take three kids around to school and their other activities. My mom was nice enough to let me use her car. After work all that week, I frantically went out looking for a new family van. On the weekend I took my family with to look at some vans and in about another week we bought a new van. So the local car troubles were solved, but I still have the trailer and games in South Dakota, with no idea what to do.
Enter a good buddy of mine and savior, Mark H.. Actually, it was his brother’s trailer that I borrowed. He volunteered to drive out there with his vehicle to pick up the trailer and games. Mark, his daughter Jessica, and I left a couple weeks later about 8PM on a Friday for an all night drive to South Dakota. We arrived about 8AM, had breakfast, picked up the trailer, and then headed for the games. The location was external storage where the ground had a lot of soot, possibly from a fire. The doors to each shed did not seal very well, and weren’t locked besides, so several of the games had been vandalized. Because of the soot and wind, it was one of the dirtiest op raids I’ve ever been on. Mark, his daughter, and I were completely filthy, head to toe. It was pretty cold, low 30s, so after our hands got inevitably chilled, it was tough to work the tools to part out the games.
More pictures can be seen here: http://www.missilecommand.net/Cube_Quest/bulk_buy/small_bulk_buy.html. We parted out several of the games, took both Cosmic Chasms, a Xevious, a few monitors, and some weird cocktail game that turned out to be Fun Four, plus any miscellaneous parts we could stuff in the vehicle and trailer. Notice the large PCB cage in the eighth picture on the left side opposite the Xevious in front of the Sprint 2:
It was filthy dirty and neither of us knew what it was. I was going to leave it because it was so large. It was sitting on top of a cigarette machine next to a juke box, so I figured it was something related to those. Mark grabbed it though, and we stuffed it in. When we were loading the trailer up, I wiped off a piece of the PCB cage and I saw Simutrek inscribed on it. What? Simutrek? They made Cube Quest. Could this be a Cube Quest? Naw, couldn’t be. I didn’t see a single other part there for Cube Quest. It must be another game they made. However I knew that Simutrek never made another game, so I was perplexed about this for a long time to come. I closed the deal with the storage location owner at a good price and went on our way.
We went to the local McDonalds and each of us literally took a bath in the sink of the bathroom there. Still our clothes were filthy. Not one to waste a trip, I had lined up a couple other operators to visit. One right in town, one about an hour outside of town. The first op were two brothers that were friendly and let us look around and pile up a big stack of various parts. We must have gotten 30 PCBs, a dozen control panels, and several other associated parts from them for a nice price. The second op was pretty much a bust. He really had no interest in selling anything, which turned out to be okay because he didn’t have anything of major interest anyhow. With the vehicle and trailer really loaded down, we headed home. The trip was very slow. It took us about 11.5 hours to get there, but more than 14 to get back. We couldn’t build up any speed because of the heavy load, and we really labored to go up any hills.
The trip back was not without incident. It started raining and the games were not covered. Thankfully, the rain was light and didn’t last long. A big deer darted out in front of us and how we missed it, we’ll never know. We passed some serious accidents and a spot drunk driving road check. One time we had to wait while they moved some cars off the road. Still, we were slowly making progress. About five miles from home, after being on the road for more than 13 hours, at about 4AM on a deserted expressway, one of the black and white XY monitors fell off the trailer. Made for some nice sparks. We couldn’t leave this big hunk of metal on the highway, so we pulled over and I went to retrieve it. I got it, threw it back on the trailer and we made it the rest of the way home. I dropped off Mark and his daughter and went home for a few hours sleep.
The next morning, I unloaded and drove an hour to return the trailer. Then I drove to Mark’s to return his vehicle and give him the parts that he wanted. One thing about Mark, he loves challenges. I gave him the monitor that fell off the trailer (snapped neck and really banged up). Two days later he called to tell me he had it all fixed! He swapped the tube and fixed the neck board, deflection board, and high voltage. All works fine to this day, in fact I’m using it in an Asteroids cabinet.
This would be the end of the story except for that mysterious Simutrek PCB we found, the one that Mark dumped into the trailer. A few days after I got home and unloaded, I had some time to hose off that PCB. The picture above (with the Sprint 2 in the back left) shows how it looked when it was found.
After hosing it off and comparing it to some pictures on the Dragon’s Lair Project web site, I confirmed that it was indeed a Cube Quest PCB. This is how it looked after some cleaning:
(If you want to see a full set of pictures of the cleaned up Cube Quest PCB, you can see them here: http://www.missilecommand.net/Cube_Quest/Cube_Quest/Cube_Quest_PCB.html). I thought about this PCB for several weeks. We didn’t see a single other part for a Cube Quest. But there must be something somewhere. What happened to it? Regular life, family, work, etc., took over and I somewhat (but not totally) forgot about it. But on December 18, 2006, I put up a New Year’s resolution on my wall at work: by 12-31-2007, a complete Cube Quest. I did a fair amount of investigative work on the game. I found and exchanged a couple of emails with two ex-Simutrek employees. One agreed to a written interview. It is a very interesting and revealing read. But that’s another story.
On April 28, 2007, I was moving a pinball game, carrying the head down three flights of stairs. Not a really heavy item, but bulky with no good place to grab it. Just as I started the last flight, I stubbed my toe into the carpet on the stair. My shoe stuck to the carpet a little bit. Normally wouldn’t have been an issue, but holding the head of the pin, I lost my balance. At the last second, I released the pin head and grabbed for the banister. My fingers grazed it, but not enough to hold on. I tumbled head over heels about four times down a flight of 24 stairs, with the head of a pinball game bouncing down about a half second ahead of me. I heard the pin head crash onto the floor and the back glass explode and I mentally braced for some pretty bad cuts. As it turned out, as with most pinball back glasses, the glass was safety glass and shattered into about a million very small pieces. I didn’t get a single cut, didn’t shed a single drop of blood. However, I shattered my right hip, broke it in three places, splintered it, fractured it, and sliced it open. It was a major injury. I would be in the hospital for a long time, and then on crutches for four months, and pretty much a shut-in at home facing a long and difficult recovery.
During the recovery time, I had lots of time to think and surf the internet, as I couldn't walk or get around much. I thought of the Cube Quest PCB a few times and decided to try to follow up. I called the guy that I got the Cosmic Chasms from. He was not an operator. He owned the building, which was divided up into multiple smaller units and used as rental public storage. An operator had rented a couple of the units, abandoned them, and the storage building owner had taken possession and was selling the contents to try to recoup storage charges. I asked further about the operator. It turns out he had passed away several years before. That’s not sounding good. Still, I asked for his name and he passed it along to me. After a few more weeks, I decided to see what I could find. I figured some other operator in the area must have bought out the deceased operator's route and the rest of the items. Fortunately, the deceased operator's last name wasn’t a very common last name (like Smith or Jones). I did a search of people with that last name in South Dakota and started making cold calls. It was a little bit awkward to call and ask for a dead person, but as I said, with my hip recovery, I didn’t have much else to do. And I didn’t have much else to go on to try to find more info. After several calls, I hit pay dirt. I found the son of the deceased operator. He turned out to be a very nice man and was happy to talk about his dad and games in general. When the son was younger (too young to officially work), he rode along with his dad when his dad worked the route. When he was old enough to work, he worked the route himself.
I explained about the storage location and the parts I found and that I was looking for a certain game. I asked if he might remember it, and what might have happened to it and if possible, what operator ended up getting his dad’s stock. He asked what game. I said, “Well, it’s a laser disc game...” and he replied “Dragon’s Lair?” No, I then told him Cube Quest. He said, yes, he remembered that game well. Cool! I asked if he knew what happened to it, who ended up with the equipment that wasn’t in those storage locations. I got a very surprising answer. He said his family (his mom) still had it all. But she was negotiating a sale with someone local. He thought that a deal was actually already agreed to, but that the new buyer had not yet taken possession of the inventory. I asked if the Cube Quest was still there, and what game it had been converted to. He was pretty sure it was still there and suggested I call back in a couple days, after he'd had a chance to check on it. The son was a truck driver, so he was on the road a lot. I was very worried it would be gone by the time he was back in town (he was actually on his cell phone on the road when I reached him, as his wife, who I'd cold called at home gave me his cell phone number).
I called about a week later and got hold of him. He had talked to his mom and she confirmed that a deal had been made, but the games had not yet been picked up. He also confirmed that the Cube Quest cabinet was still there. I asked if there was any chance they could pull that game aside and I could buy it separately. He said he would try. I called again a couple weeks later and he said he and his brother went over and pulled it out of storage and took it to his mom’s garage. At this point, it was out of the deal to the buyer of the rest of the inventory. I’m sure I drove him crazy at this point with constant questions, “Is the garage safe”, “Will the garage flood”, “How does the game look”, “Can you get pictures”, and many others. He assured me the garage was safe and would not flood and the game was not in the way. He didn’t own a digital camera, so I couldn’t get pictures. Now I had to tell him the bad part. I was laid up and couldn’t drive for at least two months due to my injury. I spoke with his mom and she seemed to be okay with it, just saying “Let us know when you can make it out here.” His mom also confirmed that she had the Cube Quest laser disc (and a couple others, too).
During the next few months, I talked to the son several times while he was on the road driving. One time when I asked him about the game, he mentioned that he had had to “take it apart to move it.” I asked him what he meant by that. He said “Well, the seat came off pretty easily, and then we moved it as two separate pieces.” The seat? You mean the seat was there, too? Yes, it was! This was truly amazing because on this game the seat cost extra. You didn’t need to buy the seat to get the game. Very few operators would buy the seat because it was too big; it was just a seat that wasn’t needed to play the game and it would take up space where another money making game could be placed. I had heard rumors that some collectors questioned if the seat ever truly existed as no one had ever seen or heard about one except on the flyer for the game.
On one discussion with the son, I asked him about what game the cabinet was converted to because I had the PCB. He answered that as far as he could tell, it wasn’t converted to anything. He said the only thing missing was the back door to the cabinet, and a little sign on the back of the seat. This couldn’t be. I had the PCB. He must be missing something. One time I talked to him when he was at his mom’s and he said, “Well, maybe you do have the PCB, but I don’t see where in the cabinet it would have fit.” Very strange. It was a very large PCB, hard to miss an open spot that big.
A couple of months went by and while my wife was against me driving such a long distance by myself, with my hip in that condition, she knew nothing was going to stop me. My plan was to take a rented van (to be sure I had enough space for the game and the seat), drive up the night before, stay in a cheap motel and pick the game up in the morning. I also made arrangements to see the person that was getting all the deceased operator's stock. I further arranged to get back in the original storage location as there was a piece missing from the Kozmik Kroozer spaceship that Mark and I had parted out when we were there. It was a little plastic piece, less than two inches long. A major long shot in all the soot (at least three inches deep) in that building.
The drive up went pretty easy. I stopped several times to stretch as my hip and knee got very stiff when I sat in the same position too long. I checked into the hotel and got a good night’s sleep. I was supposed to meet the son at his mom’s house at 7:30AM the next morning. I drove up about 7:25 and I saw the garage door open with the Cube Quest sitting right at the front. After shaking hands and greeting each other, the very first question the son asked was “Now, show me where that PCB you have is supposed to go.” I replied “Well, it would go right here…” as I went to the back of the machine and pointed to what should have been a big empty spot in the back. But I was stopped, both in my tracks and in my words. There was no empty spot. There was a big steel PCB cage there. What? Huh? How could this be? What’s going on? I opened it up, and sure enough, it was a Cube Quest PCB. A second one! I played dumb. Pretty easy because I was very dumbfounded by these events. I stammered “Well, I must have a PCB from another game.” The game had not been converted and the original Magnavox player was also present. The mom came out and handed me a few laser discs. Besides the Cube Quest disc, there was a Thayer’s Quest disc and a Mach III disc.
The mom went back in the house and I made a deal with the son on the game, paid him cash and we loaded the game and seat into the van and I was out of there before 8AM. Before I left though, I talked to the mom who told me how lucky I was. The guy that bought out the inventory picked up all the other games less than a week after the son pulled the Cube Quest and put it in the garage. Finally, for once, I was “one week” on the right side of a deal. How many times have you heard stories from collectors who have had operators tell them “I just threw away a whole bunch of games last week”?
After leaving that house, I drove five minutes to meet up with the guy that bought out the inventory. I looked through the entire building and there wasn’t anything noteworthy. There were two NOS 19” B/W XY monitors and that was about it. I got the impression that the guy was very distrusting of me as he followed me every step of the way while I was in the building, making sure to never lose sight of me. Also, it was very clear he had no intention of selling anything, parts or whole games, at any price. I realized I was even luckier than the deceased op’s wife told me I was. If this guy had gotten the Cube Quest, I am quite sure I would not have been able to make a deal on it for any reasonable price.
After I left there (fairly quickly), I went to the original storage owner. He was the total opposite of the man I just visited. He unlocked the door and said “I’m going to get breakfast, I’ll be back in about an hour, take anything you want” and drove off. I stripped off a few minor parts from a couple of cabinets and then got to the Kozmik Kroozer. It was a pain to get to because it was buried behind other games. I had to move several games in a very tight space. Plus it was buried under all the soot. I finally was able to take a look at the game when the storage owner came back. “How you doing?” he called. I pretty much expected a dead end here, as the piece I was looking for was so small. I asked him for 10 more minutes and then I’d be out of there. About 30 seconds after I said that, I spotted the piece in a corner of the cabinet, up on the coin box shelf. If it had fallen off of that into the soot it would have been unfindable. “I got it!” I called. The storage owner looked at the piece and just laughed at me that I would move so many games and get that filthy for that small plastic piece. As we closed up the storage location, I told him about my previous two stops and the distrust I felt with the second guy. This was a small town where everyone knows everyone and he knew both parties very well. He said of the second man “Well, that guy is a thief, and a thief doesn’t trust anyone because they think everyone else is a thief too and they're out to steal from him.” He also stated that the guy thinks everything he has (not just games) is worth more than anyone else’s in the world, which is why I’d have never been able to make a reasonable deal with him. After thinking about it, that pretty much did describe him perfectly.
We closed up, shook hands and I left. I went to the nearest fast food place and cleaned up, had breakfast and hit the road. I was thinking about the second Cube Quest PCB and it got me wondering. Where is the second Cube Quest in this town? I picked up the separate PCB and the original was still in the game, with no other parts in sight. Plus there was no sign of a Thayer’s Quest or Mach III either in the storage location or with the guy who just bought the inventory. I guessed those discs were just left over from games long since converted or outright trashed. I’m really pushing my luck now, but I guessed that the original Cube Quest disc was still in the player, in the game. While I knew that was a long shot, on the trip home, I tried to convince myself why I was right (while not letting myself get too excited about it). It was a long ride home, about 14 hours, but relatively uneventful.
After unpacking and returning the van, I went to open the player to check for a disc. It wouldn’t open. I exchanged emails with Brendon who told me on that game the player won’t open unless it’s connected to the PCB. I hooked the player up to the PCB, turned it on and hit eject and the player opened. There was a second disc in the player!
I relayed the majority of this story to Brendon as he was the one who introduced me to the game. We recalled when I was at his house playing Cube Quest and I had remarked “This is a great game, I have to find me one of these.” At the time he was polite, but this time he told me what he had really been thinking at the time... “This guy has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. He doesn’t realize how rare and difficult it will be to find this game.”
I fully admit, I got very lucky to find the Cosmic Chasms and the Cube Quest. The Cube Quest, when I consider how many things had to go right, extremely lucky. Consider these items:
-The Cube Quest PCB was very dirty, big, and heavy. I didn’t recognize it and wasn’t going to take it. My buddy Mark happened to throw it in the pile.
-The storage location owner recalled the name of the deceased operator.
-The deceased operator’s family lived in the area.
-The son was willing to talk to me even though he was no longer in the vending business.
-The mother still had the game.
-There needed to be a second Cube Quest involved or it would not have been found. The complete game was only found because a second PCB was found. Other parts of the Cube Quest from the PCB I found have not been discovered (besides the extra disc that the mom gave me).
-I was able to have the son pull the game after it was sold (before it would have been picked up less than seven days later).
-It was doubtful I would have been able to make a reasonable deal with the guy that bought the games.
-The mother was willing to let it sit in her garage for nine weeks while I recovered enough to be able to drive.
-The game was complete and not converted.
Current status (Cube Quest) (October 2008): I have a very nice working Wells Gardner 7900 monitor ready for the game. Both discs have been cleaned and thoroughly tested on four different players by Tim S.. There is no laser rot on either disc! I have the player out for repair. Tim has removed all custom modifications and repaired the player. Verified that the player now works 100% without any custom modifications applied. The player now needs to have the custom modification reapplied and shipped back to me. That leaves the PCB and the power supply. I found someone that is confident that he can do the PCB repair, but he is very busy at work and with his family right now. But he is a game collecter too and is very interested in getting the game going. He has fixed some PCBs for me before, I know he can do the job when he has the time. I hope I will soon join Brendon in having the second known working complete Cube Quest. We’ll see. It will sit proudly in my basement when it’s ready. In September 2008, I bought a second Magnavox player for this game off of ebay and had it sent directly to Tim for repair. He will repair it and apply the custom modifications so that I can have a second player ready to go should the first player ever have a problem. I would only need to plug in the custom player interface board (I have only one of those). I’ve told very few people about the Cube Quest find, as I don’t want talk about it much until I can get it working. But I can’t wait until I can play the game again. I did a full ROM dump and donated that to the Daphne developers and the MAME developers. A MAME developer has completed emulation and Cube Quest is in MAME as of version .127 (released in August 2008). Note: You will need a very fast PC with lots of memory to get the game to play properly. You can see the MAME developers work-in-progress here: http://philwip.mameworld.info/ (look for the July 29, 2008 update). I loaned out my disc to Warren O., who did a high quality dump for preservation and for Daphne and MAME. While the MAME release includes the laser footage, emulation for the custom player interface board is still being worked on by MAME. I also received word that the Daphne developers are actively working on adding the game in Daphne too (they have some screen shots, so good progress is being made).
Current status (Cosmic Chasm) (October 2008): Both PCBs have been repaired and are 100% ready to go. Both G08_105 monitors have been repaired and are 100% ready to go. I have been in touch with someone who appears willing to rebuild the cabinets, moving the non-wood parts from the damaged cabinets to the new ones. Brian J. (prok) is in the early stages of redoing the CPOs for the game. I sent him one of my CPs for a model and color matching. My buddy Mark will be checking/repairing the power supplies. The side art will be a problem, but Brian might be able to be talked into it.
I hope you enjoyed the story. I’ll update the last paragraphs (current status) as the status of the games change. If you have any questions comments or would like any additional pictures, please email me at joemagiera@ameritech.net.
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