Mortal Kombat Restoration
I was given this Mortal Kombat game for free last year. When I got the game it powered up, but played blind (in other words, the monitor was dead).
As you can see, the game is not in an original Mortal Kombat cabinet. It's actually in an old Atari Gravitar/Black Widow cabinet. My goal is to get the game working, and to convert the cabinet to look more like Mortal Kombat.
March 01, 2003
This spring I got a refurbished 19" monitor through a trade. I decided to connect the working monitor to the MK cabinet. Success! As you can see below, the game works with the new monitor. My new goal is to remove the old monitor, install the new monitor, and eventually troubleshoot the old monitor.
March 11, 2003
Saturday, my friend Jeff and I decided it would be a good day to do some body work on the cabinet. Those of you who prefer to restore a cabinet at any cost and don't believe in converting cabinets might want to look away right about now.
On the left you can see I've removed the control panel, monitor, and PCBs, in preparation for sanding and painting. On the right, you can see the cabinet's side art. This cabinet was originally a Gravitar cabinet, and it has Gravitar side art. Then, it was converted to Black Widow. About half of the Black Widow sticker remains. I would say approximately 30% of the Black Widow sideart remains, and approximately 90-95% of the Gravitar sideart remains. There are pieces that have been ripped off from both where you can see the paint below. I have no interest in owning either Gravitar or Black Widow, and no original parts of either game remain inside the cab. My goal is to sand this cabinet down, paint it black, replace the black molding with red, and complete the Mortal Kombat conversion. But, what to do with that remaining (damaged) sideart? Well, there's always dad's belt sander ...
I had hoped to continue this on the 12th, but it's begun to rain and as you can tell I'm doing a lot of this work outdoors. Waiting for blue skies to continue ...