MY GAME PICS / INFO

Here are pictures taken of my previous CYCLONE machine.
Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it and for more information.

The following were taken with a disposable camera and scanned.






Promos



MY STORY

As a kid, I always had a fascination with amusement park rides. I would scotch-tape hot wheels cars to my mini-record player and pretend I was running the rides by flipping the on/off switch continuously (yeah....I was sick). When I was 11, Cyclone appeared in the Putt Putt Golf 'n Games lineup and, to nobody's surprise, I was immediately attracted to it. Cyclone had a tastefully cluttered playfield which made it continuously challenging, even without the presence of a multi-ball. It always kicked my tail. But, that didn't matter because my tokens continued to drop in the front slots game after game.

In 1999, I had been buying dot-matrix games recently and was ready for a classic. I gave my friend Herb a call at Fabulous Fantasies (a gameroom store I had previously purchased my Addams Family and Funhouse games from). He informed me that an excellent Cyclone was coming in stock very soon. It had been home-owned since new, was a unique Japanese import and would have a good price. Well...that was all I needed to hear.

This particular Cyclone was meticulous inside and out. Herb did a shop job on the game, and a tremendous one at that. You would be hard pressed to find any faults. The home-owner must have installed mylar himself (it was cut a little crude along the edges). However, it did protect the playfield well.

Plus, this particular Cyclone was unique. Not only was it a Japanese import (hence the "yen" coin slot in the front) but it had a spinning "light show" instead of a spinning wheel in the backboard (see photo of the backboard inside above or an .mpg in the Cyclone media section). According to Herb there were strict gambling laws prohibiting the usage of a spinning wheel-of-luck on a game. The wheel looked too much like a gambling device. Therefore, Williams created a special rotating lightbulb set and adhered the wheel sticker directly to the backglass. According to Herb, only about 100 of these were custom made.

Farewell:

Although I thought Cyclone would remain a keeper for its nostalgic feeling alone, after the year and 1/2 mark passed I had some major bills and the game needed sacrificed. I knew a friend from Canada who was interested in the machine from the moment he saw it a year earlier. I gave him a call, he was down within a week and we made a trade. I'm glad it went to a good home. "You paid your money, you take your chances!"