Archive for August, 2007
Jr. Pac-man in Santa Maria, CA
At least this one was so far away that I didn’t worry too much about it.
But a nice looking machine. I bet Michael in Sunnyvale, CA is kicking himself that he had that one shipped from Traverse City when this one is obviously closer. The one in Traverse was nicer looking, but this one in Santa Maria is really good too, and I hate it that it is in my price range but all the way across the country.
I emailed the guy to see if I could get a serial, and hoping for a response that I could later contact to find out the buyer. But I haven’t gotten a return email.
Maybe I’ll email Michael and see if he already shipped his or not. Maybe we can work something out:)
Jr. Pac-man dedicated in Arkansas
One collector had told me that when you have a hard to come by game pop up on ebay, and go for a lot of money, all of a sudden you will see more of that game come out of the woodwork, usually operators looking to cash in.
Lately it seems like there have been a good deal of Jr. Pac-man’s on ebay that are dedicated but have Mappy sideart.
When we got back from Gatlinburg I saw that there was a Jr. Pac-man in Arkansas that was up for sale. It had been in storage for awhile, and the town was out in the middle of nowhere.
I asked for more photos, the three on ebay weren’t the best, and from I could see it seemed pretty beat up. I did get more photos, and the machine is beat to hell. I don’t think it would get much more than $200-$250 from a local collector and less from me since I would need to drive so far to get it.
I have been in touch with the lady who is selling it, she says she isn’t going to take less than $500 for it and is going to relist on ebay.
Good luck. I have been wrong before. The Jr. Pac-man in Marion, OH with painted black sides finally sold for $695 after being on ebay for a year, so you never know. Sometimes it just takes that buyer that just “has to have it.”
Movies, vacation, Mr. Do! artwork and Mr. & Mrs. Pac-man Pinball
Today was one of those days that you feel like you are having a permanent brain fart.
I felt like I had been really productive all week on my week off. I didn’t work on all of the things I pictured, but you know, I never do. Things always come up, and you have to address them when you are married, own a home, and have a dog.
In the morning I had the option to go in and do my first practice for ensemble (singing in front of church). I am still on the fence about committing, I still have a lot of decisions I want to make about other things about committing. But, if someone keeps asking, I would probably cave.
Sarah was going to be at Wheeler all day, which made me sad. Instead of going anywhere, I sat around and watched a movie, Last Kiss with Zack Braff. Pretty decent…
Then, I took the dog for a walk. I got to call Emily and see how things were going for her and wedding planning.
When I got back, I got the resolve to do the remaining tracing I could do on my Mr. Do artwork. I added it to the blog and moved onto something else.
I knew I had to make a call to an arcade contact, we hadn’t talked in awhile and I had to talk to him about some artwork and other stuff, so I took an hour to do that.
Then, I just had my brain fart. I knew I wanted to watch some baseball on tv, but I also knew I could work during that time. But, I didn’t. I even took a little nap since the dog got us up so early.
Later on Jessica called, so we talked for a little bit. I uploaded some new galleries, and managed the ones I had on my Picasa album, adding my photos of the Mr. Mrs. Pacman Pinball and our vacation photos.
I don’t remember what I did after that. I know I relaxed, maybe played some Ms. Pac-man, read some RSS feeds, probably worked on adding more content to the WordPress blog. I got some photos later on that helped me trace a couple more pieces for my Mr. Do artwork, so I did that too and updated the image on the blog.
Sarah came home just after 10. We hung out together watching some tv for a little bit, and ate the popcorn she brought home. I missed her today, wish she could have been around.
We got to bed at a decent hour, I watched part of SNL with Shia Lebouf, but that was it.
The History of Jr. Pac-man & it’s Sideart
Even with the past successes of Pac-man and Ms. Pac-man, most sites will tell you that the downturn of the arcade industry in the early 80’s prevented Jr. Pac-man from obtaining worldwide success. As such, the production of dedicated machines were halted and a number of conversion kits were made available instead. One kit was for a Pac-man conversion, and one was for a Super Pac-man conversion.
Below is the back of one of the flyer’s from the game. You can find this at Arcadeflyers.com.
You can see that it lists what you get in your conversion, a Jr. Pac-man Logic Board, Header Glass, Monitor Overlay Glass, Control Panel Artwork Overlay, and Front Cabinet Artwork Overlay (kickplate). No mention of full size sideart.
Since most Jr. Pac-man’s were conversions it is quite a challenge to find the original game that was produced in the unique Mappy cabinet. I have heard rumors that only 500 total were ever produced. (Heck, Mappy is a hard enough game to come by, and those go for decent prices as well.)
The conversion kits didn’t come with a set of the original sticker Jr. Pac-man sideart, only the “text” sticker. There were two different versions of this text sticker (both with rounded edges). One that said “Jr. Pac-man” with Jr. riding his bike which was meant for a Pac-man conversion, and one that just had the “Jr. Pac-man” text in a curve that was meant for Super-Pac-man conversions. The curved text Jr. Pac-man sticker would fit at the space at the top of the cabinet just above Super Pac-man’s head.
So with potentially only 500 dedicated style Jr. Pac-man’s ever sold, and counting the possible number of those destroyed or converted or whatever else, that makes the original sideart sticker on a Mappy cabinet pretty hard to come by. Hell, I wouldn’t have even known it existed if I hadn’t seen a photo of this Jr. Pac-man machine on the KLOV site (Image to the right). I would have thought that there was only the conversion artwork available.
Why I like the artwork for Jr. Pac-man
The Jr. Pac-man sideart has been a piece of artwork that I have known about for awhile, but in late 2006 through early 2007 I developed a true fascination for it. The reason I am facinated with the artwork is that I love the Pac-man character / history, I love the gameplay for this particular game and the tweaks they did to make it a new twist, and the fact that the Jr. Pac-man is really rare to find in it’s entirety with little damage (Most commonly in rips to the sideart) also makes it desirable.
Check out the image below. What I really loved about the original sideart on any games is that it was a composition with the
shape of the cabinet, and some of the coolest artwork was stenciled on the cabinets. (Now, in this case, Jr. Pac-man is a little different because the original sideart is a sticker that was applied to a Mappy cabinet, sometimes right over top of the Mappy sideart sticker. When there are rips in the sideart, you can see the original Mappy sticker underneath.)
Early on I got a large format digital .jpg image of the Jr. Pac-man “text” sticker meant for a Pac-man conversion. Since it held little value to me I checked one of the larger websites for arcade art, Localarcade, and they didn’t have a source to trace this artwork yet. So I sent the guy this Jr. Pac-man text image and have been working with him to produce a nice piece of digital vector art.
Looking for an original Jr. Pac-man
As of late 2006 I know of two original Jr. Pac-man’s that are within a reasonable driving distance of me. One I have seen in person, and another one I have only seen in photos, but both have the sides painted over in black. This makes my drive that much stronger, being frustrated that there are two Jr. Pac-man’s in Mappy cabinets that are so close to me, but either have no sideart, or it is painted over and if potentially uncovered would have tears anyway.
I went back and forth on what to do. The painting on these two Jr. Pac-man machines was all over the game, even the top sides of the marquee header. I know what a pain paint can be to remove from a machine from experience. And even then, there are no guarantees on how it would look. So, I decided that I would start to look for images of the Jr. Pac-man sideart that I could trace and potentially have to reproduce if I ever figured I wanted either one of these two, or if I wanted to buy a Mappy and convert it.
I had spent a lot of time searching online for photos of the cabinet sides, but with little luck. Then in early 2007 I found a website that had photos of the game with sideart that were a little bit bigger in resolution than the photo on KLOV. Nonetheless, both of these sets of images were still too small to even think about reproducing the artwork in vector format by tracing. (On the left is one of the images I found.) With such little luck I just figured there was no way I was going to find enough instances of the Jr. Pac-man machines and collectors with them to get some photos to work from.
But then, I found a listing on GGDB of a collector who had a really nice looking Jr. Pac-man, and a photo of it in a line of other arcade machines showing that it had great sideart. Finally! Someone I could contact for help. (It wasn’t until later that I figured out later he was the same individual who had submitted the first photo I saw on Klov. I used the network of collectors I have been building to get an email address, because at the time I didn’t know his profiles on the Arcade forum websites, and started a line of communication to get the Jr. Pac-man artwork reproduced.
Jr. Pac-man Registry
I have started a registry for all of the dedicated Jr. Pac-man owners that still exist. There aren’t many, and its hard to confirm the real ones because of the shared Mappy cabinet. So, this list also considers whether the cabinet has the original dedicated sideart or not. Check out the Jr. Pac-man Arcade Game Registry.
New photos of Noksie
Added a video of Nokes as a younger puppy and four new photos to his photo album.
Update on composite Mr. Do! Bezel vector art
Love this bezel, this Mr. Do! artwork is valuable to me. But as we’ve seen, one of these bezels is worth about a whopping total of $2. That’s not private sales, that’s eBay! The fact that these bezels are about worthless doesn’t change my motivation to vectorize the artwork.
Last night and earlier this morning I finished what cherries I could on the bezel that goes to this rare “white” Mr. Do! with sideart. There are five sets of cherries on the upper right, two on the middle right, and one in the top middle. Two of the sets in the upper right repeat, which is great because those cherries are on the bezel piece that bends, that I don’t physically have.
So, as of right now, I don’t have good enough photos to trace the middle cherries on the top right, and the cherries in the top middle. I bent one of the photos I had for the top Mr. Do! bezel portion to help me piece together some things, but I again have to wait until something else comes up.
The Mame guys have the Mr. Do! scans and photos I do, so I am hoping that maybe they can do something with the top that I don’t know how to do. Here is what it looks like.
Later in the day I got additional photos that were hi-res enough to trace the missing cherries on the upper right. They also showed a sixth set of cherries I hadn’t noticed before at the very top, so I traced those too and included them in the artwork. Now all I am missing are the cherries at the top!!
Final Day Off
Sarah found out in the morning that she didn’t have to go into Wheeler, and much like me, she was pretty excited about being able to be at home to do whatever she wanted. She spent most of the day cleaning around the house, but that made her feel good so more power to her.
I spent my early morning getting ready for a lunch meeting. I organized files on my laptop and get some other materials together. We met at 11:30 with a friend from church and talked about a website for her father and his fish fry. We had some of the food, very good, especially the corn hush puppies.
On the way back we ran a couple of errands, including up to the vacuum store to get a replacement belt for the cleaner. The guy there said you should change the belt every 9 months, we don’t think it has ever been changed, so probably a good reason why it was stretched 25% larger than it should be. We also hope it starts to clean better now as a result.
When we got back, I took a couple of hours to writeup my proposal for the website since I knew I didn’t want to have to worry about it later on during the weekend. It was then just after 5, and I sat down to try to finish the tracing on the Mr. Do Bezel that I had been putting off all week.
Sarah made some dinner, so I took a short break. Around 7:45 Jeff and Sarah arrived and Patrick and Katie right after.
Of course, we weren’t ready. Always embarrassing. So, we gathered up drinks, chairs and popcorn, and all carpooled over to the Drive In’s. On the way over, Sarah realized she left a candle burning, so she came all the way back to blow it out and barely made it back in time for the opening.
We saw The Bourne Ultimatum, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Bourne was very good, Chuck and Larry just so so. I laughed at some parts, but there was a lot of humor that was trying too hard.
During intermission I went and played the Austin Powers pinball in the concession stand. I enjoyed that one quite a bit, and may like to own it. I didn’t care for the color pencil illustration on the backglass though. The gameplay was fun, there were some characters and the whole machine was very colorful. I like the theme, but I am a stickler for artwork, so I don’t know if I could get it just for that backglass. I need to try to find someone who owns a Batman pinball close by and try that.
The Drive-In was packed, I was pretty surprised. The commercial at intermission said they are planning on continuing to operate, even though they don’t make much money off ticket prices. They make most of their money off of concessions, and we brought everything in. But seriously, again, way too expensive for one night out if you ask me if you do concessions too, so I don’t know where I fall in that grey area of saving the theater and paying too much.
