Monitor woes, monitor woes...I'm so tired of fixing broken monitors. So I jump at the chance to pick up a broken arcade listed as "Not getting power". Now certainly if it was a monitor issue they would mention something like "Game plays blind, can hear sound, etc.". I never heard of Danger Zone, never played it, and pretty much planned on scraping the parts and torching it. Ok, I call the guy and bring cash with me. I am a bit shocked when I arrive to find out that the guy is not only stoned but the game is in at least 100 different pieces. Literally. Every single screw was taken apart in this thing. Even the coin door was in little pieces. What were you thinking? So you take this thing apart, realize you can't put it back together and sell it to me. Brilliant. I had to ask for a Wal-Mart bag to put all the little pieces in. After getting it home I decide to put this thing partly together so I know which parts are good, which parts are bad, and which parts I can sell for profit. The first thing I notice is there are 2 different locks in this Halloween bag of parts with 2 different sets of keys. And somehow...SOMEHOW not one of those keys fit in any of those locks... I proceed to download the schematics and start to screw everything back together again.

Much to my surprise, everything worked EXCEPT the monitor and an infrared slotted switch. I wired up a temporary monitor and come to a conclusion. This game is fun! You are an anti-aircraft gunner. You tilt the monitor in the direction you want to shoot. Literally the whole monitor moves with you, and the screen scrolls the background in the direction you move the monitor. Nice! A little research also showed that the movie Top Gun with Tom Cruise and the popular song Danger Zone came out in 1986. Coincidence? So this piece of antiquity is a wonderful cold war relic as the cold war with Russia didn't end until about 1989 with the fall of the Berlin wall around the same time. So I decided I'm going to keep it. I replace the monitor with another used one, fix the slotted switch...and there you have it. A nice rarity on the cheap. On an additional note the guy emailed me a few days later and said he had the manual and original flyers to the game and would mail them to me for free. When I received them I checked the postage and he had paid $2 to ship. Also, there were 3 flyers in pristine condition. OK....maybe he's not all that bad..