Another missed cocktail deal!
I think that I must be cursed from picking up on any great deals involving cocktail table top arcade games in Indianapolis. Late last week I stumbled across a new classifieds website that contained the following ad;
TABLE PAC MAN GAME 1980 BALLY CO. NEEDS MONITOR GOOD CONDITION SELLING FOR $ 80. CALL FOR INFORMATION ASK FOR ED
Twice in one month I missed great deals on table top arcade games. I called and left a message, figuring for sure that the pac-man cocktail had sold and the seller had forgotten to take the listing down. That was Thursday, and finally on Saturday I got a call back saying, sure enough, that pac-man arcade game sold last month soon after it was listed. (more…)
Craigslist Pac-man Cocktail Deal
It was about 11:30 last night, and I checked my feeds for Craigslist. As anyone who hunts Craigslist for classic arcade games knows, and I have experienced this first hand with my Ms. Pac-man win in Michigan, 99% of the time it’s junk and spammers but that 1% of the arcade findings are a great deal, and then it all comes down to timing.
Somehow I totally missed a post for northern Indianapolis at about 1:10 (I can’t remember what I was doing other than working at that time of day);
Moving and must sell many items. Antiques include; Armoire, buffet, secretary, marbletop end table, marbletop corner table, marbletop hall piece, carved walnut pedestal and Louis side chair. Reproduction queen ann desk, chippendale bench, and federal table. Old Pac Mac arcade table, needs repair. Do not want to download all the photos. Please call to set appointment to see if you are interested. Location NW side if Indy between Carmel and Zionsville.
I emailed late last night, figuring some other collector or worse in Indianapolis got to the pac-man cocktail first. Sure enough, it was gone. (more…)
Sinistar in Joystik Magazine 1983
Note: Some of the following content is directly from Xmission. As best I can tell, Xmission were the original online publishers of this content, and you can find all of what I have here at the above address. Also, a short nod to Joystik magazine who originally published the arcade content in paper form.
I have visited a lot of arcade sites since I started collecting, and it can be challenging to keep them all straight. Xmission is a great arcade website, although not that user friendly, for a wealth of old arcade information and resources.
It wasn’t until today that I realized that Xmission has a section on their website for scanned pdf and jpg images of arcade related books, magazine and literature.
One such magazine was “Joystik” magazine, published in the 80’s, that focused on classic arcades, reviews, strategies, etc. etc. Most of the articles talk about the arcade games as they were still new, or newly released, from Pac-man and Tempest to Pengo and Robotron. Here are just a couple of the covers;
I love the artwork, they did the best with the clunky printing technology available in the early 80’s. Especially some of the inside magazine graphics of Pengo (upper right cover) are strange Monty Python-esqe direct translation instead of interpretive illustrations of the game characters.
I decided to read through an article on Williams Sinistar that was released in the Joystik magazine back in September of 1983 (Sinistar Cover above). At the time it was released, I may have started to read, but judging by my mental capacity today, I doubt it. I would have been almost four years old when it was published. Sinistar had just been tested at the AMOA in Chicago in 1982 and got mixed reviews from players and critics.
I love Sinistar but would not have heard of it if it wasn’t for the beauty of classic arcade game collections for the modern systems, in this case – Playstation. I got hooked on Sinistar in the Williams collection, but have never actually played it in person as an Upright Machine. I would love to. I have played Food Fight with the analog joystick, and assume the 7×7 joystick in Sinistar would be a similar feel and make controlling the ship a little bit easier. Surprising as it may seem, opposable thumbs may separate us from monkeys, but they aren’t great for collecting sinibombs.
Either way, I thought the article on Sinistar gameplay, although straightforward, had some interesting tips in it that I will employ. I pieced together the pages with the tips, click on the image below for a larger version. (2 MB+)
Here are the tips I picked up on – Originally written by Doug Mahugh;
Once a Planetoid has absorbed enough energy from your shots, it will being emitting crystals and then continue emitting crystals as long as you keep the total energy of the Planetoid above a certain threshold. there is no limit to the number of crystals that can be mind from a single Planetoid, but the Planetoid can be accidentally destroyed if you fire into it too rapidly; it will simply absorb too much energy and shake itself apart.
If you do recover it, (crystal from a blown up Worker) you’ll receive 200 points, but following a single crystal all around the universe – when you could be mining many more – is definitely a rookie move.
(Referencing strategies to gameplay from design team leader Noah Falstein) Start out by mining crystals like mad. Then, use a bomb to find the Sinistar (drop a bomb and watch which direction it goes).
The idea of chasing down an errant crystal isn’t a great insight, but couple that with the idea that a Planetoid will keep emitting crystals as long as you don’t blow it up and I have a new method of destroying Sinistar. I chased down bombs because I thought there were limited amounts emitted per planetoid. Plus, the idea of dropping a test bomb to discover Sinistar’s location is a good one. I hadn’t researched strategies before now, most collectors who play this game a lot or own a Sinistar probably already know all of this. Heck, some of them may have this issue of Joystik and read it when it was released.
But it was a fun trip back in time for me, and hopefully I will be that much better when I finally do play Williams Sinistar in person.
Any of my readers have any other great Sinistar gameplay tips that weren’t listed in Joystik?
Local Arcade Pac-man Sideart Illustrator File Inaccurate
Brian Jones at Oleszak Creative picked up on my post the other day on the small inaccuracies in the Pengo Marquee vector artwork available on Local Arcade. As most classic arcade collectors already know, the Ms. Pac-man and Pac-man sideart Illustrator files available for download are also inaccurate, but until today I hadn’t dug any deeper to identify the inaccuracies of the artwork.
Brian sent me a Photoshop file showing just one small piece of the Pac-man sideart that is so wrong, I feel embarassed for tbombaci who originally traced it. A baby jacked up on meth could have done a better job.
The Pac-man artwork area in question is circled here (click on the image for a larger view);
The circled piece of detailed artwork is right below the curving “N” in Pac-man, where there are some black shapes that have the appearance of brush strokes. (You can download the Pac-man sideart Illustrator file here) The Local Arcade Pac-man file looks like this;
At first glance, any artist with a sense of detail should run screaming. If you are considering whether or not to take the Pac-man Side Art file from Local Arcade and print it, or makes stencils from it for your own project, this post is for you. Unless you want to throw the potential resale value of your machine into the toliet, listen up. Here is a detailed scan of that same area on the Pac-man sideart and I have also provided a photo of the same section from my own machine (just in case your a “Doubting Thomas” on the accuracy;
Wow! Seriously. I have frequented the BYOAC and Mame forums, and tbombaci (Tom) is actually very good at tracing classic arcade sideart, so, I don’t know what happened with this particular file. It was uploaded in 2004, so maybe this was one of Tom’s first forays into tracing sideart, maybe he didn’t have an accurate scan to work from, or maybe he just provided an auto trace version quickie for the Mame guys who didn’t really care how true this artwork was to the original Midway Pac-man. But if this single portion was so lazily reproduced, you can just imagine how wrong the rest of the Pac-man artwork is.
I don’t know the original circumstances, hopefully Tom will find this and fill us in. (I just wish that Local Arcade had more of a community, with collectors rating and commenting on the artwork. The usability of that site, including the search, is horrendous. Thank you to Mahuti for starting it, but we as a collecting community need to get more involved to make it a better resource. But that is another topic entirely.)
Here is a good vector trace of the same artwork, and you can see the richer detail that is more true to the original Pac-man artwork;
Like I mentioned in the Pengo marquee post, there is some line irregularity that makes any arcade artwork more interesting.
The point of my post is not a new one, do your research before using any of the artwork on Local Arcade. But in the case of the more popular arcade artwork files, there are no short cuts. You are better to start from scratch and know it is accurate than to take any shortcuts.
Cool custom Mame side art Pengo, Pac-man, Donkey Kong and Dig Dug
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 (ie lighting bolt or fire themes), and seem to like mid 90’s games. I find this Dig Dug Mame really refreshing.
Update – September 16th, 2009
Here is a larger version of that custom arcade illustration with Dig Dug and Pengo. Thanks Tim for the link.
Pac-man Christmas Tree!
Check out this photo of the Pac-man themed Christmas tree in Madrid Spain. All of the big blogs are reporting on it.
Here is the video of the classic arcade tree in action. You can see that it is loaded up with some festival themed Pac-man imagry, but it has all of Pac-man’s old enemies, and they even move a little bit.
Here’s the static image of the tree.
Lots of users commented on how cool it would be to be able to play the Pac-man tree. Possibly I am sure, but complicated. It is awesome to see how much of a global force Pac-man is and how much that character line is recognized and appreciated. Wouldn’t it be cool if these guys in Madrid who made the Pac-man tree took some tips from my hometown lighting expert with the Trans Siberian Orchestra guy!
Some music a little more 8-Bit themed would be in order for the Pac-man tree, just as long as it didn’t keep repeating:)
Purchased a 96 in 1 Multi Pac Kit
There was a reason, that I can’t disclose right now, that I wanted to get Mike Doyle’s 96 in 1 Multi Pac kit for my Ms. Pac-man. I have been wanting this for a number of months because although I love Ms. Pac-man, it was always been one of my favorite arcade games, I need to breathe some new life into the gameplay.
The 96 in 1 Multi Pac Kit is just the way to do it. A lot of collectors get multi-kits for their coin-op games because it gives you some variety in gameplay. Most arcade game collectors don’t seem to like MAME either, and this is a way to get around having a MAME machine.
This particular kit comes with every darn possible variety of the Pac-man maze style arcade game you can imagine. Most are variations on the originals, Ms. Pac-man, Pac-man, etc. etc. But there are some video games on the kit that you wouldn’t expect and are completely unrelated.
- Ms Pac
- Ms Pac Plus
- Ms Pac Attack
- Piranha
- Mr. & Mrs. Pacman (new!)
- Pengo
- Pac Junior1-4
- Pac Baby1-2
And the game list goes on and on. 96 total variations and games. But probably the coolest part are the features of the multi pac kit. I will list the kit features I am most interested in;
- High Score save in NVRAM
- Selectable Speed
- Start on any level
- Difficulty
- Screen Saver
I love the high score feature, and I can’t wait to use the start on any level feature on some of the games, especially Jr. Pac-man. I have only beaten level 6 in my dedicated Jr. Pac-man once, and could use the practice on the last three levels.
Plus, I know a lot of people who play the games will want to set the difficulty and change the speed of gameplay.
The 96 in 1 Multi Pac kit should arrive hopefully sometime on Thursday or Friday and I hope to get it installed in my Ms. Pac-man right away. Thanks Mike Doyle.
