What to do with two Mr. Do!’s?

I am not sure just yet what I will do with this cabinet, I’m just happy I got this rare Mr. Do! that less than five people on the planet actually want. My collection has grown by 33% in a week. I really would like to turn this into a Mr. Do! Run Run, I have all of the correct original bezel artwork vectorized, the potential is there to reoriented the graphics and have a horizontal piece of artwork printed to mount on plexi.

It’s not an April Fools joke; big thanks to Chris for taking his time to get me some photos.

I only bid because the sideart was still in such great condition, and I’ve heard that the artwork on these strange bootleg style cabinets was more of a water base and tended to just rub off with any amount of force. Granted, the left side doesn’t look so hot, but considering how bad the artwork has been on some of the other cabinets I’ve seen, I’m fine with it. No plans to redo it, I’ll just leave it as is, but I will scan the artwork and probably finish the vectorizing the other Mr. Do! characters as time permits.

I only know a little bit of how this cabinet came to be in Chicago. The last owner placed the machine in a restaurant that eventually folded. He had bought the Mr. Do! machine on eBay four years ago in Oklahoma and somehow got it to Illinois. I hope to find out some more about the history now that I own one, however facetious that may be. But now that I have it, I made some other decisions about my collection.

I immediately sold my empty Midway cabinet that served for awhile as a converted Mr. Do!, and which I had plans to finish the sideart, print it, and mount it to this cabinet (hence the stripping and sanding). I also have made the decision to give up on my neverending Pac-Mame project and sell the Pac-man cabinet to anyone who is interested in surrounding Indianapolis area. As a substitute for some sort of multi game machine I may just end up Jamma-tizing this Mr. Do! and adding a 48-1 to it or something.

If you are, I’m probably going to ask $200 OBO on it. The artwork on the cabinet is original, and really nice and comes with the bezel, marquee, and control panel. I have other mame items in the cabinet that I plan on keeping unless a higher price is offered to offset those itmes. There is no longer a Pac-man harness in it and there never was a PCB, even when I bought it. Drop me a line if you are interested.

You're reading Finally got my ‘White’ Mr. Do! is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

First blush the Mr. Do! instructions seems simple

But like I said before, with all of the text instructions letting new players know how to play this classic, and with the different enemy characters and other tiny illustrations this piece of vector artwork really took a long time.

The fine detail even at a 300 DPI scan is hard to differentiate. In particular the detail in the Mr. Do! characters, throwing the ball or running, seemed to kind of bleed together. The piece is verty strange, with the thick round yellow dots printed on top of his clown suit, and not necessarily resembling the black spaces left open for those dots.

The text was problematic in a couple of areas, in particular the ‘How to Play’ text. I asked a couple of people to help find the font, and I didn’t get any suggestions that exactly matched the original font. I used Helvetica as a base and then redrew or used the vector offset tool to recreate the characters.

Plus, there are the good old burn marks on the plastic panel. My scan of the instructions wasn’t too bad, just one section really that was marred and could have been guessed to recreate the squilly artwork lines that are supposed to represent a dug hole. However, wanting to be as exact as possible, I took another lower resolution scan, drew the section I was missing, and combined the two pieces of vector artwork into one.

Mr. Do! Reproduction Artwork – Just Beginning

I wouldn’t say that this artwork will absolutely be reproduced, and that all of the artwork for an original Mr. Do! will be reprinted at some point. There probably isn’t too much of a need for reproduction marquees, and I have done some poking around and I am not sure that the original side pattern can be reproduced because of the thick glossy lacquer finish. But, the Mr. Do! bezel / backdrop artwork has been half completed already so beyond the sideart the piece of artwork in highest demand are ready to roll.

Separations still need to be done. They’ll be a blast I am sure.

You're reading Mr. Do! Instructions Artwork Finalized is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

Arcade company’s like to tease

It’s pretty standard that when I get a new piece of arcade artwork to vectorize and that piece has text the first font I check against is Helvetica. Over 10 pieces that I have had my hand on used Helvetica, and this Mr. Do! instruction artwork is no different.

However, some of the bigger font pieces like ‘How To Play’ and ‘Copyright’ may use some weird variation of Helvetica but from what I can tell, it is more like Universal’s artist used the Helvetica font for the base and then distorted it in some fashion, outlined it, smashed it a little bit, whatever made sense to give the text a flow through the piece.

Anyway, most of the artwork is done, as you can see. I would say the largest piece left is matching the weird font items. And I have to fill the colors on the right, otherwise you’d be able to see that all of the Mr. Do! characters over there are finished. I am just glad all of the instruction text is done, that took entirely too much time for me to kern it all. That is one of the main differences between this progress and the initial Mr. Do! instruction artwork progress, beyond the color fills that is.

Hopefully I will be able to finish this piece in the next two weeks.

You're reading Mr. Do! Instructions Artwork Progress 2 is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

Mr. Do! in New York is closer than California

Other than the sideart Mr. Do! in California, this one side of character artwork on this cabinet is one of the better I have seen.

Most of the artwork is still there, and there is a possibility I could get some good straight on photos to work on finally piecing together what I don’t have. Since this is my pet project, and there are so few of these machines, photos will be fine. They will have to be good photos, but the Mr. Do! characters on the side of the arcade machine are the same as the ones on the bezel, and with the basic pattern I should be able to reproduce the remaining artwork fairly easily. Either way I will have to adept it if I want the Mr. Do! art to fit on my blank Midway cabinet.

I took a look back through old posts on klov as I was researching and trying to contact ‘alphamonster’ about his Mr. Do! and I found a post on Klov from 2002 where he might have picked up this machine in a bulk arcade game buy. From what I was told just last month, these Mr. Do! machines towards the east coast were a pretty common thing. Eric also has a simple arcade website where he is currently trying to sell a few games like Frenzy and Gravitar if you are in the area and looking.

Thanks to Eric for the photo and hopefully I’ll be able to get some more images soon as time allows.

You're reading White Mr. Do! in New York is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

I just took a screenshot of the keyline view of the Mr. Do! instruction card artwork to date. The most time consuming and tedious piece for me is replicating each piece of text on the card and kerning the characters correctly to match.

There have been some difficult portions, like the individual characters and artwork within the text. Even at a 300 DPI scan, the detail is so fine that a best guess on intent is most appropriate when vectorizing. I am dreading tracing the running Mr. Do!, he seems to be the worst.

There was one burn and a couple other trouble spots that I had to work around that I will try to spotlight when the rest of the instruction artwork is finished. I imagine another hour, maybe two should complete the tracing and coloring portion, not the separations of course. But that doesn’t need to be done unless the piece is repro’d.

You're reading Mr. Do! Instructions Vector Progress 1 is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

I checked Xmission for photos of the cabinet without any luck. I also posted on the Klov forums looking for better photos of the Crazy Kong cabinet. It was not surprising that I got little help. But I did find one other decent photo and I can see some of the similarities in the cabinet design. Here they are.

Falcon Industries, Zaccaria and Gleeb

Is Gleeb for real? I don’t know. I find it hard to believe that with all of the great websites out there like klov.com and arcadeflyers.com that there would be some minor mention of this company. This isn’t an absolute, I am sure there are some arcade game kit makers that just fell to the gaming history wayside, but you would think that if Gleeb did exist it would be likely to find at least a small reference.

On the other hand, I have done a lot of reading online about the white Mr. Do! and licensing and have seen a couple of passing references to Zaccaria making a Mr. Do! cabinet. But Zaccaria was a European game maker and there were enough of these sideart Mr. Do!’s to make me think they were produced in the USA.

Falcon Cabinet Comparison

Here is the comparison of the dedicated Crazy Kong(s) (Regular and Jr.) produced by Falcon out of Texas vs. the white Mr. Do! that until earlier this week I thought was produced by the mysterious company named Gleeb. (Bezel and cabinet shapes outlined in red)

The profile of the cabinets and the strange bezel is indeed the same. On these cabinets the bezel artwork went about half way up the back wall. This is a cool idea to display more artwork, similar to Universal’s Mr. Do! – the bezel comes in two pieces. (I own the lower bezel piece with the Mr. Do! character artwork). From what I can tell from the Crazy Kong photo the coin door does look the same on both cabinets – rounded edges with over under style doors.

I think I read somewhere that Zaccaria could have even designed / produced the art for Falcon, but that would also seem unlikely to me that a European based company would make artwork for a small company in Texas.

The Crazy Kong Jr. cabinet front is different. While the cabinet profile looks the same, the two piece bezel goes a little bit higher up the back of the cabinet and the coin door looks more like a Midway, a rounded square.

I’ve contacted Crazy Kong owners on VAPS

So far I’ve heard back from one of the 5-6 people I’ve contacted, and two of them are overseas. I could still use some detailed high resolution photos of either Crazy Kong or a Crazy Kong Jr., or heck, any other Falcon cab of the era to help me do a little more comparison.

The part that I am most interested in is the sideart, to see the style of artwork and the wear. If Falcon did indeed make these Mr. Do! cabinets, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that they had a license for multiple Universal games including this Ladybug with similarly styled sideart and cabinet. It was easy to identify the similarities in the Mr. Do! to the Ladybug, and I am guessing the same would be true for the Crazy Kong.

If anyone can shed some light, or point me to some links to help with my accuracy of information I am always grateful.

Update with Crazy Kong images

Here are some better photos showing the artwork on Falcon’s, or is it actually Orca’s Crazy Kong.

Same cabinet shape, and although there is no similarity in the illustrative style of the sideart on Crazy Kong, the sideart has worn in a similar fashion to the Mr. Do cabinet. I know people would have put their hands on the side and that is where the artwork has worn off, but you can see that the sideart looks like it was printed onto the cabinet, not necessarily stenciled, certainly not vinyl. I am also starting to notice the exact same speaker cutout right under the marquee. Circular pattern with circle holes, this is consistent across Crazy Kong, Mr. Do! and the Ladybug.

Other artwork similarities

Also of note, some other similarities between the cabinets. On both the Mr. Do! and Crazy Kong the control panel is bent plexi that wraps around the front of the cabinet. The artwork is screened on the backside of the plexi, how did they do that? They must have bent it after it dried.

I was wrong about the monitor bezel, but I had wondered about this. The monitor bezel artwork is also one piece & bent at the back and of course the artwork is screened on the back. The Mr. Do! bezel must have been from a conversion kit for this artwork version for other cabinets. Apparently, the marquee is lit by several indicator bulbs, small bayonet bases like #44s. Since I haven’t found any markings in any of these cabinets this might be another good source of comparison.

Steve mentioned that he saw one of the white Mr. Do!’s in a warehouse in Connecticut. The same warehouse had several of these Crazy Kongs, fueling the idea that an operator might have bought different games from the same manufacturer. But again, more mentions of Mr. Do! cabinets seem to come out from the east coast.

Who is Orca the arcade manufacturing company?

I am now trying to find information about Orca, at least there is some. There are some 14 games by Orca listed on Klov, only one or two have ‘true’ cabinet images which make me think that either a. the games were in such small production we’ll never see a dedicated unit, or b. Orca sold conversion kits which some of my previous research supports.

However, Crazy Kong is hardly a conversion kit. I really like the artwork, minus the fact that the base color is pink. But it has depth, showing the character imitating a little bit of the gameplay and I like that in my arcade artwork. Is it better than the original Donkey Kong artwork? Donkey Kong is iconic, so no. But this Crazy Kong isn’t terrible. Well thought out and composed, obviously some money went into this knockoff.

You're reading Falcon made the sideart Mr. Do!? is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

Yesterday I started vectorizing a scan of an NOS Mr. Do! control panel overlay. Today I finished that artwork.

Do collectors who don’t like Mr. Do! like the art?

I like the Mr. Do! artwork, mostly because I love the game. I wouldn’t choose an overlay that has pink, blue, orange and yellow by default, the artist in me would run screaming the other way. But the nature of the criss crossing lines that compose the non descript design is intricate and interesting.

Like many other pieces of arcade artwork, this particular piece has a couple of weird oddities to it, but there is only one worth mentioning. The ‘straight’ lines that span the horizontal width of the plexi are not ‘straight’ at all. This may not seem like a big deal at first blush ‘Why not straigten them?’ you ask. The problem is, there are a number of other lines that run parallel to the non straight lines so one change effectively modifies all of the artwork. The most obvious detail is how the rounded corners butt together right under the joystick.

You can really only see the differences in the line thickness at an extreme zoom like this (I really like the bleed over of the blue and pink to make a violet color. Necessary but not exact, each of these lines are a different thickness which is just sooper);

Kind of the irony of the whole thing. I will make the lines more uniform and straight, but they are so small and thin, no one will even notice. However, looking at these overlays, I felt Universal’s intention was for them to be straight, so I am straitening them. This is a small detail in the overall scheme, if you look at your own Mr. Do! overlay you probably wouldn’t even be able to notice those lines. They are pretty thin as it is.

Mr. Do! copyright font

Knowing that the most common font for arcade artwork is Helvetica, I started there to match the copyright text. I have seen Helvetica used on Bally, Stern and Sega artwork, but Helvetica just wasn’t flying here.

I ended up finding a fairly close match in a font called VAG Round. It’s not an exact match, but at this size, will be more than adequate. As noted in the comments, a reader with much more skill in identifying fonts, or more resourceful in their identification tools has corrected me. The font used for the Mr. Do! copyright is a much more standard font in Futura Bold. I figured it had to be an old mainstay font, but I am just really bad at eyeballing text.

What’s next for the Mr. Do! reproduction artwork?

The artwork is done for the left side of the Mr. Do! overlay. I didn’t do any extensive research for hours on end to find out if Mr. Do! reproductions had ever been done, but I haven’t seen any information cross my path. However, I will be checking to see if the instruction panel on the right side has ever been vectored. That is the next piece to do to get this Mr. Do! artwork ready for reproduction.

Sidebar – I knew these items weren’t repro’d by Arcade Renovations, even after I got a new list of reproduced items from an individual close to AR this week. I will be getting those online soon at the ‘finished list of reproduction arcade artwork‘.

You're reading Mr. Do! control panel overlay artwork is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

I got one the other day from a guy in NY who says that at one time a buddy of his bought 15-20 of the rare white character sideart Mr. Do! machines in an auction.

The email mentioned that this individual also had a sideart Mr. Do! but like the 4-5 I’ve heard of or seen, the characters are badly worn, or indistinguishable. But here is the really interesting part.

He says about 20 years ago in Amsterdam New York, there was and still is a chain of mini marts called Cumberland Farms. Apparently their corporate decision makers must have bought a lot of the Gleeb Mr. Do! arcade machines and placed them in their convenience stores. Eventually, Cumberland had an auction and this guy’s friend bought about 15 white Mr. Do’s from that auction. He claims they were all over upstate NY, which would make a lot of sense. Bruce Kubu, Walt Glasset, and Mark Deroller are all on the east coast, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland and Delaware area.

Exciting to think that there were 15-20 of these arcade machines floating around somewhere. Now, I did find out that the buyer sanded off the remaining artwork on the cabinets when they started to deteriorate, effectively dropping the value of the games. Even partial artwork is better than none, at least to me. Once the artwork is sanded, then what? What could one man have use for 15-20 Mr. Do! games in today’s market. I am guessing they’ve been sold to other private collectors who could have done anything with the games, converted them and sold the parts, trashed them, but there is hardly any guarantee that those cabinets still have all the original pieces in tact.

We’ll see where this goes. For the tiny audience that is interested in this rare Mr. Do!, stay posted. I hope to get photos at least from the individual who contacted me. Of course, for those arcade collectors who are interested in my crazy research into this rare Mr. Do! version, check out my Mr. Do! artwork section for the long history of people and spottings of this game.

You're reading Another White Mr. Do! Mention is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

I know there were multiple companies making reproductions for Mr. Do! because it was such a popular game, but still in all of my searching to own an original Universal Mr. Do! I haven’t ever seen this artwork. I don’t like it as much as the true dedicated original, but I do like character artwork on my games and like this version with Mr. Do! himself bouncing his ball towards the monsters and the apple in the middle.

Does anyone know anything more about this overlay? Was this Mr. Do! artwork made by Willis? Maybe this artwork actually went with one of these Mr. Do! marquees from a conversion kit? (I have seen the overlay that goes with the red Mr. Do! marquee. I also own the fourth one down)

Update Sept. 9, 2008
The new owner of this Mr. Do! conversion machine came forward on the Klov forums. Currently the game is in Ashville, New York, I don’t remember where the auction originated but I would assume the Mr. Do! was close. Here’s the link to the short Mr. Do! overlay topic on Klov.

The new owner looks like a new collector based on the number of posts to the arcade forums, who knows, maybe he’ll commission to have the artwork reproduced.

You're reading Mr. Do! Conversion Control Panel Artwork is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

How cool! At one time one of the white sideart Gleeb Mr. Do!’s was in Michigan. Maybe this Mr. Do! is one of the two that made their way out to California (Mylstar) or Massachusetts (Rob Carroll), who knows. The auction house, owned by his aunt and uncle, closed in 1997-98, so I doubt there is anyway to go back that far in time, and even track final arcade game auction sales and the individual winners. Still cool to me to hear of another sideart Mr. Do!

If you know anything more about the history of SkyRocket Amusements, I would love a comment. EVer buy a game from their auction house? Have any photos from a SkyRocket auction? I’d love to post them here.

You're reading New (old) White Mr. Do! Mention is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.