Ever since I got into Japanese gaming cabinets, I've always wanted a Sega Blast City. I don't know what it was about the cabinet that just captured me. Ever since I saw this picture to the left. I knew I had to have one. I thought about ordering from Coinopexpress.com. The shipping would kill me. Well fast forward a year and two other cabinets later. Sega decided to put the Blast City cabinet in arcades across the U.S. right underneath my nose! It was in the form of Sega's Get Bass, a Model3 board based game.

    I was doing a lot random searching on eBay when I found a Get Bass cabinet (Blast City). I was like omgwtf?!? I needed to have it, it was only $300. Right as I go to buy it now, someone else beat me to it. I was a little upset, but I saw other Blasts in the background. I emailed the seller and he said he had one more cabinet for sale. He said $300, I was down. I asked for some detailed pictures. He sent a few a couple days later. The marquee's plexi-glass had been cracked. Along with that, the control panel had been cracked on the lower right side. I called him later that day, asked if I could shoot for a lower price. We agreed on $275.

    Let's again forward a week later to pick it up. It was a 14hour road trip via minivan. The guy was nice, but we didn't stick around there more than 15 minutes. Loaded it up, and headed off back home. We were exhausted when we got home, so...called it a night. The following morning, my dad helped me out with drilling the locks out on the cabinet. I was freaking out while he was doing it, I was like "Damn suckamothafucka, be gentle!" After we got the top panel off, there was all kinds of cigarette ashes and spilt beverages. It's kind of funny, it's the same in Japan for there cabs.

    The easist part was the cleanup. I used a couple different products.

-Goo Gone
-Simple Green
-Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
-Windex
-Elbow Grease (not sold in stores)

I used Goo Gone on the exterior of the cabinet, other than the bezel. It really gets rid of a lot of the scuff marks. Simple Green worked out too, when I ran out of Goo Gone :P. I then followed up with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser for some smaller areas on the exterior. The Goo Gone worked pretty well on getting the stickers off of the bezel, but there is still a trace of them even after a good cleaning.

    The largest part of the project was fixing this cracked (broken) control panel. The only thing holding it together was the Get Bass overlay panel. Once I unbolted that, it more or less fell apart. I hit up the local Wal-Mart and got some Bondo Fiberglass fix kit. I put the Fiberglass fix in the backside of the controlpanel for support. Then got some epoxy putty to fill in the front side. I didn't think the epoxy would be strong enough and it also smelled like ass. It ended up being rock solid and perfect for the job.

    Once the control panel had fully hardened, I sanded down the expoxy and the fiberglass. This was all done by hand, started with a higher grit sandpaper moved up to 220-grit for smoothing it all down. After  the sanding, I took the control panel to get cleaned. I used a power washer at a car wash. Man, the stains and dirt just melted off the cp.

    Next came the painting process. First I put about 3-4 coats of primer on the panel. After drying, came the painting. I used about 3-4 coats of semi-gloss white spray paint. It came out a bit whiter than the rest of the cabinet, but that was expected. I'm really happy with the results. If I had to do it over again, I would use flat paint and have a body shop add clear coat to it. Maybe next time.

More to come soon!!!