Space Wars

Manufacturer: Cinematronics / F.lli Bertolino
Year: 1977

Useful info

Cabinet type: Upright
Measures (WxHxD): 71,0 x 185,0 x 71,5 cm
Working voltage: 220V
Maximum consumption: 135,50W 0.850A
Technology: Horizontal B/W vector monitor

The 1977 Arcade Transposition of the game created by MIT in 1961, it is the first vector-based coin-operated game. It represents a battle in which the two players face each other in space. The game has many options, such as the mode of inertia of the movement, the gravity of the star in the center of the screen and other details that place it, for the time, in a rather high level of complexity. Cinematronics built a dedicated hardware and monitor for this game, then reused for several other titles. It is definitely part of videogame history, and it has to be considered one of the starting points of both videogame technology and interaction.

This cabinet has been restored leaving all the original graphics intact. It is a version completely localized in Italian by F.lli Bertolino, reseller of this game for Italy. It was not so used to translate the game instructions and print them on the control panel, but the amount of options and especially the novelty led to build this version of the control panel. This F.lli Bertolino’s version is unique at the moment.

Cine-Italia

1 April 2014

I never thought to find a Space Wars (it was 2006), let alone in Italian! It is not a bootleg but yet another F.lli Bertolino production. Yes, inside all hardware including wiring is Cinematronics but the cabinet (smaller than the original) has been made here in Italy. These are the initial conditions of the cabinet. Not so bad, not so good. Italiandoh and Kold666 were included in the package.

Control panel

1 April 2014

From the aesthetic point of view I had to find a solution for the CP. I decided just to clean it and cover the damaged part with white vinyl.

Buttons

1 April 2014

Actually the cab was not working. Monitor damaged, faulty PCB, one not working button. I don’t have any record about monitor and PCB fix but I took a picture of the reed relay.

For people who don’t know, Cine buttons work with reed relay. The reed relay used is a glass case with two very close metal plates.

When a magnetic field is close to the glass case, the two plates attract each other.

…something like this…

Some old PC keyboards work in the same way.

Inside

1 April 2014

after cleaning…

Monitor

1 April 2014

wow, my first cine monitor in my hands… I find this monitor very smart. It is a very simple vector monitor (XY monitor) but has DACs on it. So digital signals arrive directly from the game board and are converted in analog signals directly by the monitor.

PCB

1 April 2014

I started to collect vector PCBs years before collecting cabinets so just like in other cases (Tempest, Asteroids, …) PCB troubleshootinhg was not so complicated.