What does it mean to preserve an experience? Think about going to the beach. Can you feel the hot sand on your feet? Can you smell the ocean air? Now think of an arcade cabinet. The Arcade Conservation Lab at The Strong National Museum of Play is responsible for the physical conservation and preservation of arcade and pinball games, including the preservation of the experience of playing these games as originally intended. We keep and maintain original CRT monitors that came with the cabinets, use period correct coils in our pinballs, source replacement buttons that feel the same way as the originals. But what happens when replacement parts are not available, or when an item in our collection relies on obsolete, unreliable technology?
In 1972, Bally Manufacturing Co. released Bally Hill Climb. Hill Climb is an electromechanical racing game in which the player controls a miniature neon pink dirt bike riding up a steep hill. Although the game has been in the museum’s collection since 2018, it has never been available for the public to play until this year. This game, and many other games like it, have been used exclusively for exhibition purposes due to the age of the game, condition, and the extreme difficulty of finding replacement parts. Hill Climb itself had a few condition issues that needed to be addressed. The player-controlled bike was in rough shape—the bike’s blown plastic shell was cracked and warped due to age. To remedy this, the shell was removed and scanned using a RevoPoint Pop 3 3D scanner, which allowed the capture of the complex geometry of the plastic part.
The 3D model was then uploaded to the museum’s Prusia SL1s SLA 3D printer and printed in Prusiament Rich Black UV Resin. Once printed, the part was cleaned, and cured in a heated bath of isopropyl alcohol, followed by UV light exposure in the Prusia CW1S. The reproduced shell was then painted by the conservator to match the original, including considering the original bike’s efflorescence effect under the game’s special black light feature. The original plastic shell was then placed in an acid free box in collections storage, while our easily replaceable 3D-printed copy faces the terrain in Bally Hill Climb.
It can be tempting to integrate new technologies into many collections, but we must first ask the question, “Does this modification allow us to preserve the experience of the game in a meaningful way?” Similarly, should we put a flat screen TV in a game that originally had a CRT monitor? Or should we replace the original mechanical score reels in a game with a digital display? And lastly, should we replace original painted artwork with a printed replica? Most of the time, the answer to these questions is no. These kinds of modifications do allow for easier preservation and extension to the life of a game, but the cost is that the gameplay no longer preserves the original experience. There may come a time when we can no longer maintain this aging equipment but, as a lab dedicated to preservation and conservation, we must do our best to keep new and old technology
By: Zach Fischer, Assistant to the Arcade Game Conservation Technician