Atari Steeplechase Restoration

A few years back I was fortunate enough to be a part of a rescue mission that took a group of arcade collectors to France to remove multiple arcade cabinets from a run down building. If you missed that write up, check it out here. Suffice to say, the building was a health hazard, and we really shouldn’t have even gone into it, let alone drag cabinets out of loft and rooms with collapsed ceilings. Without rerunning the whole episode (but do check out the link above), I came away from that raid with an original Atari Europe Steeplechase cabinet: The conditions on the French raid weren’t ideal… The cabinet is unusual in that it is different to the USA release, which has more angular shapes. To get an idea of gameplay, check out this video: The USA version of Steeplechase. Same game, different style cabinet… The long drive back home up to Northern France and across the channel again, gave me inspiration to restore the cabinet and to get people playing it again. It wasn’t in the best of…