Vapor TRX, one of the last great games produced by Atari in 1998 before they closed their doors forever. Atari is best known for their Atari 2600 home entertainment console in the early 80's, where every home with expendable cash had one. However, Atari began in 1972 with the very first stand-up videogame, Pong. Through the years, Atari's best games were always those produced for the arcades, not the cheap home versions on the Atari 2600. Of course I love Atari games and own a nice lineup myself with such titles as Star Wars, Tempest, Crystal Castles, Xevious, Paperboy, Digdug, and STUN Runner. I also previously owned Radikal Bikers and Road Riot 4WD made by Atari. What I didn't have in my collection was one of Atari's last games, one made with innovation, the latest in 3D graphics and sound. A game like that has finally found its way into my collection. That game is Vapor TRX.

Rewind many years ago, when I had stumbled upon one of these in an arcade. I was awestruck by the graphics and sound and knew someday I had to have it. Over the years I have been watching for one of these, but always let them go due to distance and price. This game is so awesome it is still earning money on location which keeps the price high. Never did I imagine I would find one in my own backyard at basement arcade prices. Enter Craigslist, a killer price on a Vapor TRX, and 10 miles of drive time. I contacted the guy and he said he was still hauling it back from Mark Twain Lake Water Park where it was on location. The next morning he contacted me and told me the game was working but now it was coming up with an error, and if I still wanted the game. I shot him a new price and with that a deal was made.

The moment I get off the phone my father-in-law pulls up with his truck to visit. I told him about the game and he said lets go pick it up. We drive to a restaurant and bar called Cliff N Ellas, because that is where the game is at. I give the owner cash and we start to move it out of the place. This game is so heavy the owner offered to use his truck lift to get it into my father-ini-laws truck. So he gives us a lift and off we go. We get back to my house and realize one thing. We used a lift to get the game into the back of the truck, but we didn't have a plan to get it off. I've moved a lot of games, but this thing was heavy, huge and awkwardly shaped. On top of that while we are getting ready to unload the game it just started to snow. Lovely. We decided to slowly start to tilt and slide the game backwards off of the truck with both of us on the ground to lower it. Unfortunately while getting the game out the game started to tilt in my father-in-law's direction and he lost his grip. Next thing we know we are watching the game come crashing to the ground on its side with a large thud. This kind of thing has never happened before to me and it was quite shocking to watch, it was more like in slow motion. Anyways, we stand the game up and give it a once over. Monitor looks like it is in one piece, nothing is broken, side art doesn't even have a scratch. I plug the game in and it comes up to the same error that it had at the sellers house. That is a good thing and means nothing new is broken. In the process of dropping the game I heard a lot of rattling inside the cabinet which I mistook for something broken. I opened up the cabinet and much to my surprise I found 102 game tokens inside and $1.05 in change. Too bad those tokens weren't quarters, that would have been $25.50 in cash. I look through the tokens and they tell a bit more history of this game. The tokens were from Namco arcade, Cross Creek Entertainment center in Independence, MO, and Pizza Street from Kansas city, MO. I love knowing the history of these things.

Next thing I do is order a replacement drive from ebay. It shows up 2 days later...2 days later?!?! Yes 2 days later after purchase the new hard drive was delivered to my house. God bless that post office delivery man, I have never received anything through the mail that quickly. Now to get that hard drive installed. I barely had that hard drive out of the box and quickly ran it down to The Basement Arcade. Waiting for this hard drive was his Avatar, and he was the brains. Without him, the Avatar, umm videogame was just an empty shell. I plugged in that hard drive and turned the game on. It had been many, many years since I played this game. I ran around to the front monitor and looked. I see lines of code starting to run and much to my shock the game booted up within 10 seconds to the demo screen. YES!

I coined up the game and started to play. The subwoofer was rumbling a deep bass sound through the seat of your hovercrafts engines. It was way cool. I start to race and start playing with the trigger buttons. I come to realize I am racing my hovercraft but the weapon buttons are not working. Ugggg... Furthermore, the marquee light is out, one start button and start light were not working and the force feedback for the flight stick isn't working. I put the game in test mode and start testing the flightstick. 3 out of 4 buttons in the flightstick aren't working. OK. I've played this song and dance before. At least the main game is now playable.

So now onto repairs. First thing I do was fix that marquee light. They are ALWAYS burnt out. It is either the bulb or an FS-2 fuser. In this case I popped in a new fuser and now I have a nice lit up marquee. Next I move onto the start button on the left and right. Both had bulbs that were burnt out. I remove the buttons but couldn't figure out how to pull them apart to get to the crunchy bulb inside. Needless to say I handed them to my wife and 5 minutes later she had them apart. I put in new bulbs and reinstalled the buttons. They are nicely lit up now. At this point I realize one of the start up buttons aren't working. I look inside the machine and it was unplugged back to the main harness. Ah, easy fix. I hook it up and we are good to go. The part I was most concerned with was the buttons not working on the flight stick. These buttons are hard to come by if broken, and could get expensive if there was a board problem. So I go head and disassemble the flight stick and much to my surprise and relief the wires inside were broken. They were broke in such a way that it didn't happen naturally, someone (probably a kid on location) managed to unscrew the handle apart and pull on the wires. Then some knowledgeable tech just shoved the wires back inside and screwed the handle back together. WAY TO GO GUYS, EARNING YOUR PAYCHECK. Anyways, it took an extra hour with the soldering iron to disassemble, cut, solder, reassemble and test. Now we have a fully functional flightstick. Finally I start to check on the force feedback motor for the flight stick. Everything looked good and intact, so I trace it back to the power board. Ah, blown fuse, could it really be that easy? I put in a new 4amp fuse and next thing I know the force feedback motor is working like a dream. All repairs were finished within 1 day.

So there we go, an awesome late technology sit-down game is now in the basement arcade and fully functional. Other than trading for my Baby Pacman, this was the shortest distance I ever had to drive to pick up a game, 20 miles round trip. I'm a happy camper now, so I think I'll go play some more Vapor TRX.

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