Gyruss / Time Pilot
Manufactured by Konami (c)1983
Licensed by Centuri
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Condition When Purchased:
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C-
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Current Condition:
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B-
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Gyruss is one of those games that I really have been wanting for the gameroom since almost the moment I started collecting… but I’d not had the opportunity to buy for any kind of reasonable cost up until recently (Feb. 2015). Sure, there were at least two times one came up in neighboring states for what I consider “reasonable” prices, but when you factor in gas and time costs, those reasonable prices quickly elevated to not-quite-so-resonable, and since the MAME version plays reasonably well, it just wasn’t in the cards.
Lucky for me a friend who lives in Utah decided to put one up for sale. Not only was the price reasonable, but he actually dropped the price a bit in order to help me make it work. Sure, I was looking at 6 hours each direction… and about $100 in fuel, but even with those two expenses factored in, the price was reasonable. It looked like, after nearly 9 years collecting, I was getting a Gyruss.
The following weekend I went to bed somewhat early Saturday and got up at 3:45AM the following morning. I was on the road by 4:15AM. Plenty of coffee, a couple Micky-D’s breakfast burritos , and a WHOLE LOT more coffee and I arrived in the outskirts of Salt Lake City UT around 10:30ish. After checking out the rest of his collection I handed over the dough and we loaded Gyuss up in to my Durrango. Being that there was an In-n-Out Burger locally, we hit it up for a Burger and some fries. I also picked up a few burgers to go for my wife & mom and back on the road I went. I made it home just about 5:20PM or so… it was a long day and it wasn’t over just yet… I still had to unload the game.
After unloading and putting it in it’s temporary home in the garagecade, I fired it up to make sure it worked… it did. GREAT! Time to go to bed!
The next day I worked so the next chance I had to check out the game was later that night after work. The game pretty much was what I expected… a player’s game… working… but needing some attention. The first thing I noticed was that the joystick, while operational, was VERY loose. So loose that I questioned that it was a Monroe stick until I had a chance to see the undersides. The second thing I noticed was that the monitor looked like it would soon need a cap kit installed. The caps weren’t blatantly shot, but when trying to adjust it was quite apparent that they were on their way out. Red was very faint and when I attempted to adjust the black level jail-bars would appear. After checking my cap drawer and noting that I had a K4900 kit sitting there, I decided a cap kit needed to be installed immediately.
Another MUST was a joystick rebuild. A Monroe stick isn’t supposed to be sloppy and loose. After pulling the stick and disassembling it I determined that the cause of the sloppiness was the spring. It was broke about 80% down from the top. The stick was also pretty rusty and dirty as one would expect for an old stick likely not cleaned in 20+ years. Out came the CLR and alcohol. After cleaning up the nylon actuator I put the metal bits in to the CLR and went back to looking over the cabinet. Using a flashlight I look down the control panel opening as the panel was open and what catches my eye? HOLY CRAP, it is a complete… rebuilt… and greased up MONROE STICK along with cleaned up buttons and a harness… all just sitting there in the coin door area to the right of the door! What are the chances of finding a RESTORED and prepped joystick sitting in the cabinet? While waiting for the CLR to do it’s job I installed the new stick and MAN did it make a hell of a difference in gameplay! A couple days later I pulled the metal parts from the CLR, cleaned them up, stretched the spring I have a little and now the 2nd stick feels much better (albeit a little looser than it should, I do need to source another spring, if you have know or know of where to find one, please let me know!)
Now it’s down to decision-time… and I’ve still not decided where I am going with this cabinet. Currently it’s a VERY good player’s game. The control panel overlay is in 8.5/10 condition or better (it’s cracking at the corner, but not bad) and it’s solid. I could leave it as-is and enoy the hell out of it or I could take the time necessary to sand down the sides, re-paint and restencil the cabinet. As for “worth”, putting the $120+ to paint and re-stencil the cabinet surely wouldn’t pay off in the end. Unfortunately Gyruss cabinets aren’t “top dollar” machines regardless of the condition they are in… but rarely do I make decisions 100% based on finances. I suspect that eventually I am going to decide on the full restore. As for now, I am quite happy with the fantastic gameplay and awescome controls of this machine.
The last thing I did to this cabinet was add a Mattosborne high score save kit (www.scoresaves.com), so now the top 5 are saved on NVRAM and not lost at power-down. I also adjusted the DIPS to not play the attract sound or music… while I love the music/sounds in the game, the attract mode gets real old real fast. I suspect you’ll find that I will be updating this blog post sometime in the future… until then, game on!
Updated: May 16th 2016
Finally, after a number of attempts to acquire a Time Pilot PCB, I finally acquired one thanks to a KLOVian… Some of you may be wondering, “What does that have to do with Gyrss?”. For those not aware, Time Pilot (as well a a number of other titles) has the same Konami pinout as Gyruss. Since Time Pilot uses a single fire button, and the same Monroe joystick as Gyruss, it’s a direct swap. What I did was mount the Time Pilot PCB to the Gyruss cage. To switch games, all I have to do is swap edge connectors. Unfortunately at this time that requires pulling the cabinet out, opening the back, and manually swapping the edge connectors, so I can’t really call it a multi-game, but it’s close. 🙂 One negative is that when playing Time Pilot, you can see the Gyruss burn-in on the monitor which is all but invisible playing Gyruss. I’ll live.
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