The key to these amazing stories is things like this:
In the late half of the 80's most of these games were being hauled away to the dump, as no one was playing them..., Not Donkey Kong... let alone Night Driver or Maneater... Even if these games were still at the arcade, most went unplayed... So arcade operators either converted what they could, the rest put in storage or simply thrown away.
My evidence of this is in 1988, when I was in the US Coast Guard, were were temporarily station in Portland, Oregon while our ship was in DryDock... With nothing for me to do (no where to relax etc.), I explored Portland on my 10speed bike.. I came across an old movie theatre that said "Arcade" on the outside.. I went in and they had a sign "Play all the games you want for 5 Cents each with a 2.00 entry fee. No problem... I went and paid my 2.00 and got 20.00 worth of nickels...
Inside was hundreds of classic games, as well as new games.. All games were there, ALL of them, except any laserdisc games, (understandibly) Every game in these videos were there, even Star Fire.. I knew this game for sure, if you've seen Midnight Madness.. You know what I'm talking about.. (Greetings Earth People, Congratuations... The finish line is somewhere.......... In the Bonadventure Hotel)
On the other side of town was a similar setup... small fee, 5 cents credits... Operators were trying to squeeze the last money out of these games that no one wanted to play... I was 19 at the time, and kids were playing Super Mario Bros on their NES instead. So over the next several years, the last of these games went back into storage where they would later be uncovered in some fortuante one's warehouse raid, the rest went into private hands or the city dump.
That is how I believe these games survivied. One other exception, The arcade operator who actually loved the games, and took care of them, even when they no longer made money.
