Arcade cabinets aren’t very solarpunk. They were huge items, heavy particle board, plastic, metal and glass and electronics, meant to be used for a couple of years and thrown away. For most of the golden age of arcade gaming, cabs were a bespoke arrangement, each one designed custom for their specific game, so when a particular model failed to sell as well as anticipated, brand new units were often dumped in a landfill rather than repurposed.

Just the same, I want to share a blog about arcade cabinet restoration (and also arcade history etc). Here’s why:

Something brushes against solarpunk, I think, in the way the collectors of arcade cabinets treat them, like the technology is a precious natural resource, discovered in old barns and garages and warehouses, carefully recovered and conserved. Still put to use, but carefully, with the intent to pass them on to the next person.

Parts are traded around, broken machines carefully fixed. Favors traded. Even cabinets destroyed by water damage or mold are often picked over for parts, for the components are part of a small and ever-dwindling supply with no modern, (or at least authentic) replacements to be had.

I think they treat this technology the way I wish everyone else would, and how I think people in solarpunk fiction, which sometimes takes place in postapocalyptic settings where society is rebuilding more carefully, might treat the working remainders of a more wasteful society.

(They’re helped of course in that technology was simpler for arcade gaming’s run from the 60’s through the 80’s. Big chunky components, simple single layer boards, something a knowledgeable person with a multimeter and soldering iron could fix. I think there are some areas (certainly not computing) where I wouldn’t mind seeing a return to simpler designs. Why is there a multi layer PCB with in-built components in my blender that works the same way as my grandparents’? But we’ll need more of a fixing culture for there to be any real benefit to that.)

This blog goes into the history of arcades and gaming, but it also chronicals ‘raids’ where collectors work together to recover recently -rediscovered, often abandoned arcade cabinets and the writer’s personal arcade cabinet restoration projects.

If you like seeing old stuff fixed up, especially around both electronics and furniture, I definitely recommend this.