Insert coin · 38 machines on the floor tonight

Every cabinet here still takes your quarter.

We are a volunteer workshop that finds dying arcade machines, restores them board by board, and puts them back on a floor where anyone can play them. Museums keep games behind glass. Glass is where games go to die.

See what's playable How restoration works

Cabinets rescued since 2017

On the floor, playable

On the bench right now

The floor, honestly labelled.

Every machine carries its own status card, including the two we keep only for spares. If a game is running on a reproduction board, the card says so; originality matters, and so does not lying about it.

Cabinet	Year	Maker	Board	Status
Galaxian	1979	Namco	Original	Playable
Asteroids	1979	Atari	Original, third PCB	Playable
Donkey Kong	1981	Nintendo	Original	Playable
Ms. Pac-Man	1982	Midway	Reproduction, labelled	Playable
Q*bert	1982	Gottlieb	Original	On the bench, knocker coil
Tempest	1981	Atari	Original, colour vector	On the bench, deflection board
Asteroids (unit 2)	1980	Atari	Stripped	Parts machine, says so on the label
Defender	1981	Williams	Original	Playable, famously unfair

Full inventory of 61 cabinets in the logbook by the door, repair history included.

Restoration, in the order it actually happens.

A cabinet takes eighty to two hundred volunteer hours. The wood is the easy part.

Step 1

Stabilise, don't strip

Original side art stays, scratches and all. We seal it, we never repaint over it; a 1981 scar is part of the machine's memory.

Step 2

The board gets a bath

Every capacitor tested, every socket reflowed, ROMs dumped and archived before we touch anything. The dump goes to three offsite copies first.

Step 3

The tube keeps its glow

We recap and rejuvenate original CRTs rather than swap in flat panels. When a tube finally dies, the cabinet waits for a donor; it does not get a television.

Thursdays are free play. Bring nobody's quarters.

Open Thursday to Sunday, 16:00 to 23:00, at 12 Ferry Works. Thursday costs nothing, every other night is five for entry and the machines run on real coins we sell at the door, four for a pound. All of it goes to the bench fund.

Plan a visit