Archive for November, 2007
Mr. Do! for Sprint Cell Phones
Came across an article on the Iquirer by chance today about four new video game releases for North American Sprint phones. The four games are Mr. Do’s Castle, Mr. Do!, Popeye and Atlantis: Sky Patrol. I am not familiar with the last game (and a quick search on Klov turned up nothing), but the other three are classics from either Universal or Nintendo.
Namco is publishing these classics with new enhancements. Apparently there are regular, and enhanced game modes. Enhanced mode can add more levels, powerups, and things to do. That is pretty cool to think that there are some new variations on old classics. I don’t know if new levels and powerups are available on other portings of Universal’s Mr. Do! to other platforms, but this is the first I have heard of it. Hell, I didn’t know that Namco owned the rights of distribution for the Mr. Do! properites.
Would I want to play Mr. Do! regular or Mr. Do! Castle on my cell phone…mmmm, probably not. I tried to send my first text message today and couldn’t figure it out. But I am a different general, and if Mr. Do! and Popeye can live on with a new generation I am all for that. It is weird to think about the original full size upright coin-op versions of these famous games, and to see the games now on a cell phone. I don’t need to comment on how far technology has come.
Mr. Do! didn’t have a screenshot on the inquirer for the Sprint cell phones, only Castle. Mr. Do! is available now and Mr. Do! Castle should be available later Quarter 4 2007.
Jr. Pac-man developed by GCC
I was surfing tonight, trying to come up with an idea for an arcade related post, when I came across this arcade history.
On arcade-history.com, I saw a snippet of information on the history of Jr. Pac-man that I did not know;
Jr. Pac-Man was developed by ‘General Computer Corporation’ (GCC) for Bally/Midway and is essentially an enhancement to “Ms. Pac-Man”
I thought to myself, isn’t General Computer Corporation the company that made Super Missile Attack back in the day, a hack enhancement board to Missile Command and was sued by Atari? I thought that the lawsuit was settled, GCC went under, but before they did they had to build three games for Atari as part of the settlement. Food Fight and Quantum were two of those games, and the third was never made.
I took a look at General Computer Corporation on Wikipedia, and this is what I found;
The General Computer Corporation was an early video game company started by Doug Macrae and Kevin Curran.
The company started out with the game Super Missile Attack, which was sold as an enhancement board to Missile Command. Atari sued them for this, but the suit was soon dropped after Macrae and Curran agreed to develop games for Atari and stop making enhancement boards without permission. Their next project was Ms. Pac Man, which they developed as an enhancement kit for Pac-Man. They took the game to Midway who sold it as a sequel to Pac-Man.
They made other arcade games for Atari, such as Food Fight…
So, GCC was a third party that development coin-op games for the big arcade companies at one point in time. It looks like GCC development Ms. Pac-man, and more importantly, Jr. Pac-man.
I would assume that developed means they designed, built, programmed and fabricated the arcade machines themselves. Which leads me to believe that maybe an artist at GCC would have done the sideart and other artwork / stickers for Jr. Pac-man.
I am going to have to explore this a little more. At the very least, I still believe the famous pinball illustrator Margaret Hudson may have some contacts to lead me to the original Jr. Pac-man artist. I just need to find her contact information, hopefully an email. It almost seems like she does freelance work for Stern Pinball now, or works directly for Stern in their art department.
Re-useable Arcade Game Stencils
I was excited to see this post today on the Google Arcade Forum.
After tons of trial an experimentation I have landed on a solution for those looking for reusable stencils for their games. Stencils can be cut from 1/8 inch Sintra material which is basically a dense PVC foam. The resultant stencil is rigid, resistant to temperature and liquid, cleans off with a hose and scrub brush, lightweight, thick enough so pieces won’t easily break off and lays nice and flat on the surface to be painted.. and oh, each layer is color coded to the paint needed 🙂
These are still experimental for a few more weeks, and will add 80.00 to the cost of most stencils and shipping won’t be cheap as they must be shipped flat but the option will be there at last. Some games these stencils make tons of sense such as Defender and Robotron, others like Taito they just wouldnt look as good as vinyl.
I have spoken with Brian a number of times since I started collecting arcade games. He is the authority on artwork, especially stenciling arcade cabinets to restore them. He has an arcade restoration business where he sells a lot of great stuff at Oleszak Creative.com.
There is always a fair amount of discussion on restoration and stenciling arcade games on the forums, and there are some collectors who would like to buy re-useable stencils. I know I would like to buy a set of re-useable stencils. I would like to restore my Ms. Pac-man, and if possible, would like to recoup some of the cost involved in painting it. For a three piece stencil set, it could cost as much as if not more than $150. Then, add in paint and buying / renting the equipment, and it gets expensive fast.
The $150 is just the cost of the vinyl in that amount. The cool thing about Brian, he is nice enough to do the arcade stencils right around cost. If it was a big coin-op business, the markup would make the stencils astronomical.
But not only getting some of the game restoration cost back, but for me, it would be my first time. What if I mess up the coin-op game artwork I am restoring on my first try? I could do some test spray pieces, but that isn’t the same and painting a whole cabinet. If I do it wrong, and the vinyl stencils are one time use only, then I have to pay another $150 for another set?
It is a tough decision for me. Brian would have answers for all of this, and has had some great advice for the klov forums on why acetate, metal, and other plastics don’t work well for stenciling games. Mostly because they aren’t tight to the surface.
He did mention that it won’t work on certain games, and it may not work for my Ms. pac-man arcade game. But I am going to email him and see.
Update July 23rd, 2008
Checked back with Brian today to see what ever happened with re-useable arcade game stencils.
Brian did find a solution that in theory should be shippable. However, vinyl stencils with a backing and a pre-mask allow for floating pieces in the artwork. The plan was to use Sintra Board, a dense PVC Foam that could then be used to stencil multiple machines. The problem is that it will only work with certain artwork, and is highly suitable for Williams games because they didn’t have any floating pieces of artwork.
But that is just one challenge. Not only do you rule out some of the popular Pac-man games like Ms. Pac and regular you are talking about shipping multiple boards that usually measure somewhere around 3’x5′. Shipping is pretty expensive, upwards of $50 depending on where you are located.
When it is all said and done usually the cost for the materials for the multiple use stencils would be about double the cost before shipping. But, if you happen to do multiple machines, or have enough swagger to think you can resell the stencil for someone else for 75% of your cost with shipping, then these would be perfect for you.
Brian does make these stencils using a CNC router and takes custom jobs, he just doesn’t push the service because 90% of the arcade collecting community will only use them once and can’t justify the extra cost. If you are still interested, hop on Gamestencils.com and send Brian a message to see if your chosen artwork can be done and how much it would cost.
White Mr. Do! with Sideart for Sale!
Late last week, an arcade collecting contact pointed out to me that another collector had a white Mr. Do! with the sideart, the one I have conveted for over a year now, was up for sale. Not to mention, this Do! was cheap cheap. Only $200. Check out the photos.
I couldn’t believe how great of condition the classic game is in. It’s like this white Mr. Do! was different than the others ones, because the artwork on the side had little to no flaking.
I thought briefly that this Mr. Do! machine was the one that Mark Deroller once owned. It had some ruboff on the side artwork of the machine, where you would place your left hand when playing the game. I also knew how far about Mark was in MA area to the current owner, and the current owner had posted total mileage each year he traveled to add to his arcade game collection. But, then I noticed the Mr. Do! control panel was different between the two different white machines. So, this makes it official that I have now seen three “white” Mr. Do!’s with sideart, possibly all made by Gleeb.
Only catch, the coin-op collector who owns it is all the way across the United States. I started to check into UShip, which is pretty cool, but it didn’t appear that even at such a low price I would be able to get the Mr. Do.
I told my fellow collector who turned me onto the Do! that we had to do something about it. He is within two hours of the game, and I have emailed the owner in the past about other arcade games. At the very least I was hoping he could make a deal to get out there and scan the Mr. Do! sideart.
But as of right now, he is considering the idea of just outright buying the Mr. Do! Watch here for updates…
My Special Day
Started the morning off with my first “Run” outside probably since we went on vacation this summer. It felt good to have new shoes and to be able to do that. I opened a couple of presents, I got a Transformers calendar and a book about Tony Dungy from her parents, and Sarah got me a Garmin GPS. Pretty awesome present, and expensive. But she did a good job of researching it some and getting it here without me knowing what it was. I was very happy.
We went to morning bible study, and met Christine before hand. She gave me a cool present, a Batman Jersey from the now defunct Warner Brothers store. Very cool, now I have something to wear on the other six days the Colts aren’t playing:)
The plan was to go to Bob Evans after church. The Durkin’s were there when I arrived, which I didn’t think too much of, but then Kate showed up and I knew something was going on. Sarah had planned a surprise lunch since the birthday party for Wes and Brian went south. Very awesome. 11 of my closest friends showed up, including John and Keri, who I hadn’t seen for about a year and a half.
Afterwards, Dave, Paula, John and Keri came over. Sarah made poke cake for my birthday desert, and we all had some and watched the Colts vs. the Chiefs. The Colts barely won, 13-10, it was really bad, Peyton Manning looked terrible for a second week in a row. But we have a ton of injured players and lost a couple more this game including Aaron Moorehead.
After the game, I got a quick game of Jr. Pac-man in with John, and then everyone took off.
The rest of the night was pretty much spent on the phone. I talked with my parents, my sister, her parents, and my aunt Janet. I also just started a huge, new, really time consuming project, kind of inadvertently. It’s a secret, and it is going to be hard to balance with my test stuff too. I haven’t figured out how I am going to be able to accomplish both with success, but we will see.
Wizard of Wor, Dig Dug and Tetris Sold!
For a month or so I had been responding to the common Craigslist ad looking to “buy” games. Usually people put out these ads looking for freebies, but I knew it couldn’t harm me any to try to sell some of my non working games. I wanted to try to reduce as many distractions as possible to focus on studying, and fixing up the Midway Wizard of Wor, Atari Dig Dug, and Dynamo cabinet Tetris were time suckers to say the least.
The Tetris was the only one I was seriously considering keeping in my game room, but the black cabinet was so ugly. The original intention was to resell these once they were working to help pay for gas, or take down the paid cost on one of my other games. But the motivation for selling a game to make a small amount of money waned for me. I got my holy grail, the Jr. Pac-man. I had originally wanted to use the money I made to help pay for my trip out to PA to pick it up. But thanks to DanOfEarth, that wasn’t an issue anymore.
Finally, last Tuesday I found some people who weren’t looking for free games, and were interested in the three I had to sell. I just wanted my itemized costs back in total for the games, and the price was more than fair, great if you intended to keep one of the games. Dig Dug is too slow of a pace for me, Wizard of Wor holds no interest for me other than the fact that it is a two player game, and Tetris, again, ugly cabinet with no sideart.
Here are some photos of the games being taken away.
I made a whopping $10 on my sale after all of my costs were added up, but I learned a lot. I originally bought the Dig Dug as a Land Sea and Air Squad, painted solid black on the sides. It was my first game that I brought back from the brink of oblivion, and restored in some sense of the word. It was a lot of fun, bargaining for the deals, but it was a lot of work, and without knowing much about electronics, it was hard work for me to constantly figure out all of the problems I was having with any given game.
In the end things worked out great. I didn’t lose anything but time, and that is debatable when compared to what I learned and the contacts I made hunting down the arcade parts. The games found a good home where they should be reused in a family fun center, and I can park in my garage again:) Just in time for winter. Not to mention I can keep the other two cabs in case I need a fix, my empty Atari Food Fight and Atari Xevious.
Acquired Sinistar Marquee
Not a lot of time today to do my daily arcade post, so I thought I would show off my acquisition from last week.
Met with another collector, and he gave me a Williams Sinistar marquee as a trade of sorts for some web services. He got a stack of Sinistar’s marquees earlier this year at one of the Indianapolis, IN USAmusement arcade auctions for a pretty great deal. Made me wish I had paid attention to those opening auctions where they sell of that pile of stuff on the folding table.
I really like Sinistar, but I have only ever played it on playstation. I haven’t ever played a real Williams UR Sinistar at another collectors house. Still looking for an arcade collector that is fairly close by that I can try Sinistar out as it was played in the day.
