Random arcade scoops last month:
Survival Arts - Goofy-ass MK clone. Popped up locally cheap so grabbed it to convert to Dyna Gears down the line. Oddly fascinated with it for some reason, it's so weird
Magical Crystals - Copped from the ZDTF a couple weeks ago, this game fuckin' rules. That being said, whoever it was at Kaneko that decided to put SMD caps under a conformal coating is a dillhole. If you have a Kaneko PCB with the same IC, you WILL have to scrape off the coating to recap these or replace it entirely with a Caius reproduction of it, otherwise the audio volume will be like a quarter of what it's supposed to be. Your Gals Panic board deserves better than that.
Strikers 1945 - Guy had an ad on FB Marketplace with a bunch of overpriced PCBs. One line says "1945 Strikers working, needs a little." for $150. I message asking what that even means, the guy's wife responds saying they have two boards, one works and the other doesn't. When I ask what's wrong with the non-working one, she says "Some of the graphics are missing. It plays, but the player planes aren’t there". I ask how much they want for them. "He wants $100 for the non working one. $400 for the working one". Strikers isn't worth anywhere near $400, but I offer $80 for the broken one 'cause hopefully a chip just needs to be reflowed or something. She accepts $80. I pull up to his place (very nice place complete with massive white lifted truck in driveway) and a middle-aged guy crawls out from under his half-open garage door like gollum smelling like 8 strains of weed, clutching a filthy Strikers 1945 board and asks for $100, saying his wife made a mistake and "their communication isn't so good". I told him I only withdrew the $80 in cash he asked for, which was true. He sighed, scratched his head and said ok, but then mentioned "If that game was working, it'd be worth $700". I don't know if he's confusing it for some other Capcom shmup or if he's just smooth-brained cause that's $300 more than the asking price of his other "working" one, so all I can really say is "uhh, you sure?" and he responds with "oh yeah, definitely. I'm really into these arcade games, I got a ton of these in the back" and rattles off his box of Mortal Kombats and Street Fighters. I tell him if it's actually worth that much he should keep it and fix it himself because I was over this entire interaction, but he said "you won't just resell it, right? If you're actually going to play it then you can have it" which was unexpected but thoughtful.
Anyway, I took it home and it works fine. Maybe he gave me the good one by mistake. Thank you for reading my Strikers 1945 story.