Students in Mr. Stalter’s engineering classes have been adding the final touches to a creative ongoing project:

the revamping of the hallway arcade machine, a project started several years ago and built entirely by students. “It was created here by that first group of students, and the second group of students are, instead of dealing with the quarters, we’re changing it up, bringing it up to 2025 stan-dards,” Stalter said. The machine is an ongoing collaboration between students, spanning several years. “Originally, it was two, and now we have, I think, three or four working on it to update the games, and change it from a quarter operation, where it’s taken quarters or tokens, so now it’s going to scan ID badges,” Stalter said.

Engineering student Kora Gillham (10) shared the repair process.

“First, we had to figure out how to turn it on and why it wasn’t even turning on in the first place. Turns out, kids had stuffed two or three coins in the coin slot, and it got jammed completely. So we had to remove the backing, take out all the mechanics, and recode it so the games would work,” Gillham said.

The crew is working hard on many aspects of the machine to get it up and running. “We’re trying to get more games on the arcade machine, figuring out coding stuff, and we’re also trying to make it so the joysticks work again.”

The team is also adding several new games. “A lot of people want to come help, so they have everything from people working on graphics, somebody redoing the controls, or adding but-tons so they can get games like Street Fighter and Tekken on there. They’re adding a trackball for games like Centipede,” Stalter said. The project is expected to be completed and reintroduced around Thanksgiving break.