This particular Arcade is Prototype 9, of the only 12 machines known to ever exist.

Galloping Ghost Arcade, an Illinois based video arcade and game curators, have restored a cancelled machine. Proto #9 was one of the 12 machines produced by Atari to go along the premiere of Beavis and Butthead, but the project was cancelled and all of them were sold on an MTV auction in 1999, two years after the end of the original series.

This extremely rare machine was discovered by Jeremy Fox (of Prince Arcades). Instead of selling the inoperational carcass to some collector, he took it to Galloping Ghost in order to be repaired and put on the floor for the amusement of arcade enthusiasts.

With zero ways to get the game disc contained on the cabinet working on a PC, repairing the now archaic machine required Galloping Ghost’ team to read on 3DO Multiplayers, hunting for similar machines to get replacements and play with the cables and power outlets until they finally got the B&B theme song to play.

While the process wasn’t exceedingly hard (for professionals like Galloping Ghost) and 3DO devices can still be found, there are very few records of the other eleven prototypes (some are privately owned, and the others presumably lost), so as far as we know, this one could be the only operational one.

The cabinet also contained its original sales document (this is how they knew its origin) and a second game CD that hasn’t been tested yet, but according to Galloping Ghost, it’s probably a collection of B&B minigames – the original concept for the arcade (the final game disc is a side-scroller), a proto-prorotype of sorts. Others speculate it to be Die Alien Scum, another Atari game for its 3DO hardware.

If you live near Brooklyn, you can play it and other “rescued” games at Galloping Ghost’s on 9415 Ogden Avenue, Brookylin, IL 60513.