Archive for December, 2007

This Old Game hadn’t updated progress on the Atari Agent X reproductions, so I thought I would email Rich and find out what was new. I heard back, and it sounds like things are progressing.

If you haven’t read anything about this set of Agent X reproductions before now, here is a short run down. Rick Ford has coordinated a project to get all of the artwork reproduced to build a complete Agent X machine. The Agent X artwork includes the marquee, speaker grill overlays, control panel overlay, kickplate, and sideart.

Originally the reproductions were going to be a very limited run, but there was some increased interest on the arcade forums when Rick made his announcement. Rich had made great progress getting each of the pieces printed, the marquee, the speaker grills, etc. But with the increased interest, he had to go back and print some more of that Agent X artwork. The films for these pieces of art are on loan from Scott Evans, so the quicker those pieces of Atari art can be finished, the better.

Once the catchup is finished, all of the final details can be worked out on the Agent X kickplate and sideart. That is exciting news, I can’t wait to finally see the Agent X kickplate artwork that I did get reproduced. The kickplate was pretty complex, and here is what Rich had to say about the Agent X sideart;

The films for the Agent X sideart were in small negative form, which I then had blown up to a full sized camera positive. I’ve also had a custom screen made to accomodate this big of a piece of artwork.

It turned out the guy I went through to make the screen worked in Atari’s production deptartment from 1979-1984. Kind of a cool story, and he had lots of insight too in regards to materials and production runs of the artwork.

The films are made for the sideart, all he needs to do is lay down the colors for the print. After the holidays are done, it would seem as the Agent X artwork could be finished sometime in January of 2008.

Here are a few of the images from ThisOldGame.com showing the screens that have been made, three images of the screen printing process of the Agent X marquees, and one photo of the speaker grill overlays.

Wow. I keep saying that “this” is the best image of the Joker to date, but truly, this first poster with the Joker and the city just speaks to my design sensibilities. Seriously, the color, the mood, everything, how perfect is this poster? I don’t know if this is fake or not, all of these images were reported on “rated-m.com”, but even if this is fake, I know I have to have a copy of this poster.

~Edit - Just Added! This Batman Poster is the perfect companion to the Joker poster. How awesome would these looked framed side by side in the movie / entertainment / game room of your house. A must have!

This is an awesome poster of the Joker also, very fitting and scary.

With some much press on Ledger’s Joker I am still kind of hoping to be surprised in regards to Two-Face. But with over 7 months to go, I am not going to be naive. If the story does set things up that this movie is about the Joker and Heath Ledger, and act 3 is about Two-Face and Harvey Dent, let’s just hope that Nolan sticks with the Batman and doesn’t get the “3 movie burnout” which seems to be so common with these franchises.

Oh yeah, and some footage and the Dark Knight trailer was leaked today. Is it what we will seen in front of I Am Legend? I am not sure.

~Edit Here is more information about that Dark Knight footage, and this is a good explanation of the two different “trailers”. Here is what John Bierly had to say ;

If you go see Will Smith’s I Am Legend at a regular theater this weekend, you’ll get to see the first trailer for the July 18 Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight.

If you go see I Am Legend on IMAX, you won’t get the trailer but you will get to see the first few minutes of The Dark Knight in glorious IMAX. It’s a prologue of sorts, featuring a bank robbery executed by The Joker (Heath Ledger) and his goons.

And though the IMAX Joker prologue won’t arrive online, it looks like the trailer will be popping up on “A Taste For The Theatrical.com” on Sunday.

What to do! The desire to see it now on IMAX is stronger than ever! But at what cost? $25 for 6 minutes of joy?

On a related note, here are two fake Two-Face images that I am seeing for the first time. The original of the first image can be seen on IMDB. (Thanks John) I am told the second Two Face image is of Eckhart from Black Dahlia.

Brian’s website had a couple of interesting goodies, check out these photos below of a rare dedicated white “extended conversion kit” Ladybug machine with sideart.

(I don’t know how else to term an arcade game like this. More experienced collectors have let me know that this technically wasn’t a “dedicated” machine, but instead a company trying to boost sales on the conversion kits produced for that game, hence “extended conversion kit”. By including a cabinet and adding artwork, they could probably sell the arcade games for more and generate more interest by being an all in one solution.)

The border around classic Ladybug arcade artwork, as well as the character design for this game tipped me off right away that the same manufacturer possibly made this machine as the white Mr. Do!. It would make sense that if someone was going to license one arcade game from Universal, maybe they’d license a couple to reproduce.

A family member spotted this Ladybug arcade game for Brian at a flea market for $5, so they bought it and brought it to him from PA. On his site he steps through what he did to “restore” the artwork a little bit, by using frisket and rejuvenating the color. Like the Mr. Do! conversion machines, the artwork had some wear in strange spots that would indicate the original painted artwork wasn’t durable. The only thing that gives me doubts, is the cutout in the lower front of the cab, where the white Mr. Do! went straight to the floor. It would seem to me that if a game making licensed games, they would use the same cabinet to save money. But who knows, maybe not.

I am in touch with Brian, but he doesn’t have much more information about the classic Ladybug arcade game and why would he considering where it came from. But it gives me one more tool to search the web. There is one post on Google Groups with an individual talking about a white Ladybug with sideart;

Saw a post on Ladybug, and while certainly not a great game, I passed on one the other day, that had what looked to be “dedicated” side art and marquee. I’ve seen many, but not one like this. Was there such a creature, and what’s it rarity? I thought they were mostly conversions.

~Edit It was suggested to me that both the Mr. Do! and Ladybug arcade cabinets were made by Rock-Ola. I looked through Klov, and there is nothing in the design of the artwork on the games listed that would make me believe this was true. But if there was a company that just dressed up conversion kits, and wasn’t a full scale production, finding information about the white side art might be more difficult than I originally thought.

~Update Darin Jacobs of Phoenix Arcade posted in the Google Forums that he had a Ladybug arcade machine like this at one time, but he gave it to his brother. Supposedly his brother still has it, but there aren’t any markings on the inside to give me any more clues to the manufacturer.

Update August 5th, 2008
I forgot to mention, take a look at the bezel on this Ladybug cabinet. It is the same one used on a couple of the white Mr. Do!s (image below or the Mr. Do! for sale in California), probably some sort of generic bezel that the manufacturing company offered for the machines. Or maybe it was the bezel for a Lady Bug / Mr. Do! and operators interchanged them. Who knows.

Today I had a chance to finish up the “eskimos” Pengo control panel overlay. Here is the small image of what it looks like;

From my original to-do list, here is what is left on this vector control panel;

1. The Upper Right Pengo and Sno-Bee are a mirror of the left side. The artwork is a touch different as well, take a look at the circled portions (Click photo for larger Pengo detail image). Mostly differences in the motion lines by the Sno-Bee. If I do a retrace, it won’t be just on the partial sections, but over the whole piece. I will have to take votes on what people think and whether I should trace the right side as well.

To me, the original intent was probably to have the Pengo artwork be the exact same, but the methods to do so were a little difficult to be exact. I would leave it if it was up to me, but you guys will be buying the Pengo reprodutions, and I want you all to be happy. I can kind of guess what your thoughts are going to be. Voice your opinion in the comments section below.

2. I think there are some color separation discrepancies from the original control panel overlay. Click on the photo below for a larger version. The Sno-Bee on the left is from the upper left on the control panel overlay, the Sno-Bee on the right is from the Pengo Bezel. I think that the eyelid on the control panel overlay (on the left) should be solid purple, just like the eyelid on the right is solid red. I want to hear what you think, leave comments below. If I don’t hear anything, I am going to fill in the Sno-Bee eyelid with purple.

I ended up matching the font used in the text on the Pengo control panel to be Helvetica. This is a pretty standard font used in many old arcade games when talking about instruction text, so I tend to do a comparison with Helvetica first before trying other methods to match the font.

Next piece of Pengo artwork to vectorize?

I would like to hear from people on what piece of Pengo artwork I should move onto next…

1. The standing version of the Pengo Marquee?

2. The “Numerals” version of the Pengo control panel overlay?

3. Or should I work on tracing the Pengo Bezel?

Leave your comments below by listing the number of the Pengo artwork you think I should tackle next.

I was surfing a collector’s website the other night (Brian Brzezicki) and I came across photos of his Mame machine. It is an old Dig Dug cabinet painted solid black, like most Mame cabs, but this particular machine caught my attention. Check out that custom side art! Isn’t that cool? It’s an illustration using some of the most popular arcade characters like Donkey Kong, Pengo, Pac-man and Dig Dug.

Tim Wann did the custom art, but you won’t find the piece on his website for obvious reasons. Makes me briefly think about doing my own custom art since I have such great illustration skills (which I may have some news about in the coming months), but at first blush, it would seem custom side art and other artwork would only work for Mame machines. Even then, it seems a lot of Mame guys like solid black, don’t have a lot of appreciation for the original art, and seem to like mid 90’s games. I find this Dig Dug Mame really refreshing.

A Depth Charge classic arcade machine came up for sale yesterday on Craigslist in Kentwood, MI.

“This is an old full size arcade Depth Charge video game. It is fully functional and ready to use. asking $225. 616-538-6060″

I didn’t have any familiarity with this game, so I went and checked it out on Klov. Depth Charge looks like a cool old machine, (check out the photo below) made in 1977, so five years after Pong debuted, but I thought it was interesting that Depth Charge has some sideart. I see a lot of these 70’s machines that have the wood grain sides, that was probably a style choice at the time, or maybe an artwork production choice, I don’t know.

Depth Charge was made by UPL, who I didn’t think I had heard of. I scanned through the list of classic games that they produced, the only one I recognized was Carnival.

I know if I had limitless space, a game like Depth Charge would be appealing to me. I don’t know the history of this game on Craigslist, but it looks as if it is in a office space, or an auction house. Either way, I can’t believe that the owner really knows it’s value or historical significance. I am sure the entertainment value on this game is minimal based on the age, but to preserve a classic arcade of this age has some interest to me.

There are also some economics involved. Surely there weren’t many Depth Charge machines made, and there probably aren’t that many left. But have the larger populous of collectors heard of this game, or want it in their collection? Probably not. Will they get $225 for this Depth Charge? Possibly depending on condition. The fact that the game works it huge. But more than likely they will not get the full asking price, and the person that buys the game may or may not be a collector with a passion. But if you look at the supply and demand of games for collectors, there are some funny trends. Not all rare games are collectible because of the quantities produced. But the larger the quantities, the greater the availability driving the prices down. But that is neither here nor there.

If the Depth Charge is still available when I visit Michigan later this month, I may go and take a look at it. I don’t have the room, but I would like to at least experience it, because it is a rare find, especially for Craigslist.

Pretty excited to come home last night after a long day and see that my Pengo High-Score Saver and Enhancement Pack from jrok had arrived.

This kit for Sega’s Pengo has a ton of goodies in it, if you are interested in buying one, here is the enhancement pack’s homepage. The main options that I wanted were;

• High Score Save - Even when game is turned off, of course I had to have this:)
• Change Music Type - Popcorn Pengo - I can’t stand the original music, Popcorn is what I have always played in Mame
• Freeplay - So I don’t have to coin up every time and increment that counter

I played Pengo last night in between studying. I had to set those high scores:) The Pengo enhancement pack is so simple,fast, and easy to install, as the instructions say (It’s also really affordable at under $50!);

1. Step 1: Remove the CPU from the socket (Z-80 Processor)
2. Step 2: With the CPU removed insert the Pengo e-pack board into the socket. Take note of the orientation and location of pin 1!
3. Step 3: Insert the Pengo e-pack into the Processor Socket (Kit Fully Installed)

I always get nervous when working with these classic arcade games, mostly for the unknown. In the case of this enhancement install, there wasn’t a lot to double check. Make sure the direction of the board is correct (Just double check the direction of the half moon cutout on the Z-80 processor) and make sure it is pressed and secure and that none of the pins were bent on install. Reattach the harness connection in the right direction, and turn on the game. I watched the Pengo PCB in back just in case something happened and I could cut power as needed.

I wanted to see my Pengo scores come back up after I turned the game off. I was running out the door, so I didn’t have a lot of time. I waited about 30 seconds after my last game, turned the game off, waited 30 seconds, and turned Pengo back on. All I got was a flashing message saying something toe extent “Eprom reading high score tables”. The same message you get after each Pengo score is saved. I said a little prayer that it was new, or overheated, or I just did everything too quick, and hoped when I returned that my Pengo high score kit wasn’t broken already. When I got back, the game played fine, so I don’t know what the problem was, maybe I didn’t wait long enough for the next screen. Whatever.

Tonight I will be looking at the enhancement pack options more, to turn off “Game Select” and turn on Freeplay.

Thanks Jrok for making this Pengo high score saver enhancement kit, it really adds a lot of value to my game.

Unlike most classic arcade collectors, I don’t have fond childhood memories of visiting arcades. I have fragments of memories of playing games in Chucky Cheese and the random on location video game at the local store, but I don’t know that I ever visited a full fledged arcade.

Funspot is one of the few functioning arcades left in the United States, and some claim it is the world’s largest arcade of classic video games. Located in Weirs Beach, NH, I doubt I will ever take a vacation that far north and east, so watching the walk-through videos of this arcade are exciting on two levels.

The videos of Funspot arcade are extensive, at over 9 minutes each. In the few minutes I watched I didn’t see many “classic” arcade games by definition, but I am sure the classics are on the third level of the building, and I didn’t get a chance to watch that far. Whether you appreciate the earlier arcade games, the mid 90’s games, or today’s complex brand of interactive entertainment, these videos of Funspot should be enjoyable to all.