Archive for November, 2007
On the road home again
I got to spend some time with Justin in the morning before they went to church. We watched another couple episodes of Scrubs, we said our goodbyes, and I waited for Sarah to return from Grand Haven to get me. I had some breakfast, watched a few more episodes, and then just before noon we were on the road.
The trip was long and arduous as usual. It didn’t help that we got pulled over, but nothing came of it fortunately.
We got back to the Indianapolis area just a touch before 4. I was going to stop at a friend’s house on the northside, he had a switching power supply he was going to give me. We waited for awhile and listened to the beginning of the Colts game before I figured out that I hadn’t communicated as well as I thought I had and the friend wouldn’t be back home for awhile. So we left.
I thought for sure that Indianapolis was going to beat the Patriots yet again. We were up 20-10 at the half, Tom Brady looked sloppy, and our running game looked awesome. But the much maligned Colts Achilles heel is our inability this year to stop the return. The Patriots held us back in our territory a couple of times forcing a number of kicks they returned for great field position. Tom Brady was intercepted twice in the game, but in the end, they won it 24-20. We had great defense for most of the game, but our passing game just wasn’t up to snuff without Marvin Harrison. Manning did good, he threw one interception, but looked poised for the most part, as long as the defense kept him safe.
We knew one team would leave with their first loss of the season (Patriots 8-0, Colts 7-0). Too bad it had to be the Colts.
There wasn’t much left for us the rest of the night after that. I wasn’t feeling motivated, so I just watched my cartoons and did a couple little things on the computer before calling it a night. At least I am not going to work tomorrow. I feel bad for Sarah, after such a short weekend she was back at it on Monday.
Pac Gentlemen Custom Arcade Toy
Saw this on the KLOV forum the other day and I couldn’t resist trying to share it with a larger audience.
Here is a custom made piece of coin-op toy / art as a tribute to Pac-man, one of the pioneering video arcade games of the 80’s.
I didn’t think the joystick detail in particular added anything to the classic arcade game tribute to Pac-man, but I did like a number of ideas about it. The artwork on the side is kind of a low tech way of expressing turn of the century illustration, although the style may not fit. But the little mini “Pac-Gentlemen” marquee did show a little bit of that, with some Art Noveau influences in the intricate detail.
I like the wood finish arcade cabinet, with the metal framing and bolts, giving it that hand crafted feel and the idea of a crank to power the coin-operated machine. A cool little piece of art, reminded me a little bit of my ceramic Pac-man project I did in college, but this one was crafted by an expert.
I left a short little comment on the Urban Retro website about the Pac-man art.
U of M vs. Michigan State Football
The big game was a big part of the point of going to Allendale, Michigan this weekend to see Justin and Jennifer. University of Michigan vs. Michigan State game is a time honored rivalry between two college football teams dating back 100 years. They invited friends from both sides to cheer on their school of alliegence, so we knew today had the potential to be interesting. But before I get ahead of myself.
In the morning Justin and I watched a couple more episodes of Scrubs until the pool at GVSU was open. At just before 11 we headed out, Gary Goosen drove, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen him. It will be like old times in high school.
I was really looking forward to getting back into the pool. It has been quite awhile, if I have even done freestyle since we have moved to Indianapolis at all. But it wasn’t meant to be. We got onto the pool deck and the coach told us that they had a meet today. We could swim for 10-15 minutes if we wanted, but they we had to head out.
So, we managed to get into the gym so I did some lifting and the other two did some stomach work and whatnot.
When we got back, Justin and I watched a couple more episodes before the game, we’re moving right through them. The game was to start at 3:30, and people started showing up around 2:30.
It was a fun evening. They had an amazing amount of people there, all close friends. That was really cool for them, to see those people show up that the have been building relationships with. When they had their house warming party, they had a ton of people show up, but there were a good portion that weren’t close friends, just people from work.
Sarah came back from Grand Haven with all sorts of news from her fun day with the dog and both of our parents. She fixed Nokes collar, took the dogs to the beach, made carmel corn, and did some shopping.
The game was pretty pathetic on both ends. State had a ton of penalties, and all Chad Henne did was air out a whole bunch of Hail Mary’s and hoped Mario Manningham caught them. The percentages were there for long passes to possibility of catches, so we were bound to get a few and in the end Michigan won the game 27-23. The best part of the game was possibly when the cameras showed Henne running out. He did this little jump to hit the field goal pole, and totally bit it face first. It was awesome.
People left pretty soon after the game was done. About half of us stayed around, had some more beer, started up a fire and had some smores. Everyone called it a night pretty earlier, most people crashing around 10. Sarah left at that point too, knowing that Nokes would need some attention before bed. I was wide awake until midnight. Justin and I got in a few more episodes together, and then I watched a few on my own before hitting the sack.
Mr. Do! History Topic on KLOV
Interesting topic going on right now on the klov forums. One user was looking at the Mr. Do! entry on klov.com, and wondering which of the three versions there was the original dedicated. The correct answer is that there is more than one Mr. Do! that is “factory” dedicated, but only one directly from Universal.
Here is an exerpt from one user;
The other “dedicated” units were done by ops who wanted the games to look as good as possible. I have an old Play Meter article that talks about a lot of vending companies going out of their way to make Mr. Do! kits look like dedicated games… some even making cabinets just for them.
Lost in the collecting world is the fact that, in 1983, Mr. Do! was one of the biggest hits. 7th highest earning game that year, meaning only 6 dedicated games in 1983 out-earned Do!. 30,000 legal Mr. Do! kits were sold, roughly 10 times more than most Golden Tee kits sold nowadays. Only about 2,000 dedicated Do’s were sold.
Opinion or not, pretty interesting information of how many Universal Mr. Do! units were sold vs. conversion kits. Even more interesting is a quote from another member here in Indiana (Shacklefurd) that actually investigated into my coveted White Mr. Do! cabinet with clown artwork;
A had series of E-mails with the former CEO of universal from the 80’s a while back and here is what he said. The white one with the red yellow and orange strips came from Japan. The wood grain and the white with the clown side art were factory built by smaller companies on the east and west coast that bought the rights to release Mr. Do and other Universal games. So they are all “Dedicated”, but the Universal from Japan is the one collectors think of as dedicated.
I should get in touch with Shackle and see if he has the CEO’s information still and try to track down the company that made the White Mr. Do!
Until this forum thread surfaced, I had posted here that I was thinking it was a company by the name of Gleeb who made the cabinets and that Gleeb was also based out of Japan, not here in the USA.
Update: July 2013 I now have photos from inside two different Ladybug machines, machines that have very similar painted illustrated artwork to the white Mr. Do!, that show Universal serial numbers. Check out this post on two different factory Mr. Do!s.
The joys of driving US31 to Michigan
I finished off my week with three days off. They were productive days for sure, it is always great for me to be at home, get to things that I never seem to have time for during the week, and reach a certain level of satisfying productivity.
I have been able to spend some time in working on the blog this week, getting some advertising setup and getting some more of that great content added. Not to mention add some reciprocal linking which should help get the site higher in the rankings and bring in more revenue as well. This morning I tried to figure out what to post in the arcade section, so I worked on some vector stuff.
I was actually killing a little time. It was freezing outside, and I knew that today was our day off from the gym so that meant I needed to take Noksie on a walk. It wasn’t that much warmer when I went out around 10. It was the best walk I have had with him in recent memory. Granted, he is a very good dog and obedient in general. But today he just seemed to heel the whole walk and not pull me in some odd direction with all of his nearly 70 lb might.
On the walk I had a lot of time to think, and when I got back I wrote down those thoughts concerning my future in the rough form of a plan.
Then I worked on a layout for a potential client, which was actually really fun. It was a gift for a part that he will be giving me for an arcade game on Sunday.
Soon after it was time to get things ready around the house. I took care of some of the small things I knew Sarah would want done and put in a pizza for a late lunch / early dinner.
Sarah had a half day in service, so that meant we should be able to leave the house at a reasonable time. She got home at 3:30, and most everything was ready to go but load up the car. We loaded Nokes up, got some gas, and we were on our way.
Or so I thought. Driving up US31 through Indiana is always like a never ending screeching child. It’s tries your patience until you feel like you’re about to break and you have finally made it to Michigan. I knew we would hit rush hour traffic by Carmel because of the time, but today was particularly bad up north of Westfield. So we jogged over to 421 and went north parallel to US31. It was a nice drive. But by the time we actually arrived, with a quick stop to let the dog eat and fill up a tire, our total travel time was somewhere close to five and a half hours.
Sarah couldn’t stay, she was going back to her parents house. She dropped me off, said a quick hello, and headed out. We knew that Nokes would probably be crazy the rest of the night and the earlier she could get over to the Chapman’s the better.
Justin and I didn’t do much, we watched about 4-5 episodes of Scrubs and then hit the sack.
Dig Dug Slot Machine
One of my friends and fellow local collectors here in Indianapolis, IN has a (Atari’s) Dig Dug slot machine. It is pretty wild, all of the colors, the whole presentation is like “BAM!” You can imagine seeing it in person, it plays little automated clips as well as the classic
coin operated Dig Dug music.
I was looking for something arcade related to post about today, and came across this photo I took in April. I imagine these Dig Dug slot machines aren’t too common, and that is what sparked the idea to post this photo.
I would say this is the first in the series of “Collector Meetups – My Favorite Games“. Granted, this may or may not be a game. But it seems that with each video game, or arcade game collector I meet I learn about a classic game I had never heard before. Or in this case, some other rare arcade game oddity.
I may never post another one of these again. But who knows, if I need another idea, at least I have this arcade topic to turn to.
