The Automatic Services Universal Arcade Cabinet

A few weeks back I wrote about Automatic Services and the arcade cabinets that a group of us were able to acquire, after its owner Mark Shepherd passed away. If you missed that post, go here.

This week, I wanted to follow up by taking a closer look at one particular cabinet from the haul we took away with us. You may recall that I made reference to the Universal cabinets that were designed and built by the company to be placed out on location. And just to clarify, when I refer to “Universal” cabinets, I mean a generic cabinet capable of running pretty much any arcade PCB (i.e. not Universal, the arcade cabinet manufacturer).

We discovered 25 or so of these, and managed to rescue most of them – I ended up with three which have been sitting in my garage for a few weeks now.

I remarked at the time that first impressions were that these were very well built cabinets. They don’t look particularly pretty, but these were built as work-horses and were designed to withstand the knocks inevitably dished out by enthusiastic players during the 90s. Our guide on the day Drew, told us he estimated that several hundred of these were hand built in the workshop. Every cabinet was so precise, that you could interchange any of the panels, and not notice. Everything was constructed to the millimetre.

Inspired by some of the other guys who also grabbed some of these cabinets and have already started to clean them up, I decided this weekend to pull one out and take a closer look myself.

What’s particularly interesting about these cabinets, is the use of Induction joysticks, rather than traditional switch/leaf ones. These give a really nice feel to gameplay, with a short throw distance. The joysticks require a 5V line to operate and have magnets in them to facilitate the movement and centering motions. A potentiometer is accessible inside to easily switch from 4 to 8 way. Very unusual – I’ve never come across one before. There’s a thread with some detail on these sticks from way back which you can read here if you’re interested to learn more about them.

So let’s switch on and see what we get:

Time to investigate!

As I write this, I realise that I didn’t try to rotate the monitor. But I wouldn’t mind betting that the mounting board is exactly square, meaning it can be pulled out, rotated 90 degrees and dropped back in along the rails, making it horizontally mounted for games that require that setup. Very clever.

So with things up and running, it was time to grab a bucket of hot water, a cloth, the vacuum and glass spray and get to work!

I tested the game and had a few goes (sadly, Gals Panic is not the greatest game ever made!), but everything works perfectly and the machine accepts a 20p and 50p coin and credits up the cabinet.

I have to say, I’m very impressed with these cabinets. I’m not really a fan of the big wooden Jamma style cabinets that we had here in the UK during the 90s, but this is the best built one I’ve ever come across and the work that went into them is really evident. Very high quality parts were used (like those induction joysticks) and the quality of the work is astonishing, considering they were hand built in a small workshop just outside York. These are very solid and I can’t see them disintegrating like other Jamma cabinets.

They are a great testament to the levels of attention, care and thought that Automatic Services and their creator, Mark Shepherd, put into these revenue generating cabinets. I’m delighted to own them.

Quite where I’m going to put all three is up for debate (Mrs Arcade Blogger isn’t really up for a debate and I am totally out of space!), so I may well move a couple onto other collectors (if you’re in the UK, drop me a message if you’re interested).

I’ll look to get the other two fired up in the coming weeks – I am confident that they’ll be as robust as this one!

So there you have it. Hope you enjoyed this deep dive into a unique, hand built arcade cabinet that was operated during the 90s. These things were clearly built to last!

Thanks for reading this week.

Tony