The restored Red Tent cocktail seen at an angle, VS. Excitebike on the screen and three PlayChoice-10 toppers displayed on the canopy
The Red Tent — VS. Excitebike up, toppers on the canopy
Restoration Story
4 min read

The Red Tent

Nintendo built a sit-down arcade machine with a bright red canopy roof, and most people have never seen one in person. This is the story of the one in the game room — and the twin that got away.

CabinetVS. DualSystem cocktail
Year1984
SidesVS. + PlayChoice-10
StatusFully restored

In 1984, Nintendo's VS. System put NES-grade hardware into arcades a full year before the NES itself reached American living rooms. Most VS. machines were uprights — but for bars, pizza parlors, and anywhere people sat down with a drink, Nintendo built something stranger: the VS. DualSystem cocktail, a table-style cabinet with two screens back-to-back, two sets of controls, and a peaked red canopy over the top that earned it the nickname collectors use to this day — the Red Tent. Two players could face each other across the table playing two different games at once, each on their own screen, sharing one set of guts in the middle. It looked less like an arcade machine than a tiny circus tent that wandered into a tavern, and that's exactly why people love it.

Far fewer cocktails survived than uprights. Sit-down machines lived hard lives — drinks sweat rings into them, they were low enough to become furniture, and when routes retired them, a table with a big red roof was harder to repurpose than a standup cab. Finding one at all is an event. Finding one worth saving is rarer still.

This one turned up on Craigslist in Northern California — far enough away that getting it meant committing a whole day to the drive. It was beat up when it arrived: the kind of machine you buy on potential, not condition.

The Red Tent as found: faded and scuffed red canopy, worn paint, on its chrome stand
As found — the Craigslist condition: faded, scuffed, all potential
Close-up of paint wear and scratches on the Red Tent canopy and base before restoration
The damage up close — decades of route life in one photo

Not long after, a second Red Tent surfaced and got the same treatment — two full restorations, done in succession, each one the most intensive work ever done at Orlandu's Arcade. Each machine came apart completely, down to the last screw: canopy panels off, monitors out, boards on the bench, every part cleaned, serviced, and reassembled. The monitors came out burn-free — remarkable for hardware that spent the '80s running attract modes in public — and were fully serviced before going back in.

Red Tent completely disassembled: canopy shells on the garage floor, chassis stripped, monitor and boards laid out
Down to the last screw — canopies off, chassis gutted, every part accounted for
Red Tent mid-reassembly with freshly painted red canopy frame and the game board on its slide-out tray
Coming back together — fresh red on the canopy, board tray serviced and sliding home

When the second restoration wrapped, the collection held two perfect Red Tents — likely more than most collectors will see in a lifetime. Eventually the twin moved on to another collection; the better story stayed here.

Fully restored Red Tent with gleaming red canopy, clean black base, and polished chrome legs
Done — fresh paint, serviced guts, forty years younger

Back in service

The restored Red Tent with Dr. Mario on screen, a VS. Super Mario Bros. instruction card beside it and three game toppers on the canopy
Dr. Mario, insert coin — toppers up top, instruction card in the window
The Red Tent channel select menu listing ten NES games including Baseball Stars, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, Metroid and VS. Duck Hunt
Channel select — ten games on one board, and the coins buy time instead of lives

Today the surviving Tent runs VS. Excitebike on one side. The other side holds something genuinely rare: an official Nintendo PlayChoice-10 conversion kit. Starting in 1988, Nintendo sold kits to convert its own aging cabinets — Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Popeye, and VS. machines — into PlayChoice-10s, its "ten games in one cabinet" system. The PlayChoice flipped the arcade formula on its head: instead of buying lives, your coins bought time. Feed the machine, and a countdown starts; press the channel-select buttons and you can hop between up to ten interchangeable NES game cards mid-session — finish a Super Mario Bros. run, flip to Excitebike, all on the same quarter's clock. The games themselves lived on swappable ROM cards, which is why operators loved it and why Nintendo could keep a single cabinet fresh for years. Full PlayChoice cabinets survive in fair numbers; the official conversion kits, sold loose to operators and mostly used up decades ago, almost never do. Having one installed in a Red Tent makes this machine a double rarity — one table, two eras of Nintendo's arcade thinking, facing opposite directions.

Playing VS. Duck Hunt on the Red Tent PlayChoice-10 side with the Zapper light gun in hand, and three PlayChoice-10 toppers on the canopy above
The PlayChoice side — Duck Hunt off the channel menu, Zapper in hand

The instruction cards were made for this cabinet — eighteen NOS titles are on the card wall, with three still on the hunt list. The PlayChoice-10 toppers on the canopy weren’t: those were printed for PC-10 uprights, and the canopy is just where they get shown — nineteen so far, with more still out there.

Work log

What is on and in the machine today, beyond the restoration itself.

  • Full restoration — Stripped to the last screw, canopies off, chassis gutted, repainted, monitors serviced.
  • Original PlayChoice-10 conversion kit — Installed on one side, with two spare boards.
  • Two original black light guns — With holsters, both original.
  • Reproduction instruction cover panels — A pair, fitted to complete the set.

Sources & further reading: Super Mario Wiki — PlayChoice-10 · Museum of the Game

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