Pengo
Pengo CPO Scanned
I decided last night that I would be a little more pro-active about the Pengo control panel overlay scan.
I took my control panel off of my Pengo, gave it a much needed scrub down with some citrus cleaner (hadn’t been done since I purchased the Pengo game about 15 months ago) and then I scanned the artwork in and pieced it back together.
This way, if I never hear back on my email about another Pengo CPO NOS scan, I have this one, and it has great detail at 600 DPI for the original scan, downsampled to 300 DPI for tracing.
I did notice looking through my found image files of Pengo control panels that there was another version. There was a second Pengo CPO that had a numeral “I” and “II” for the player buttons, and it had Pengo pushing the ice blocks into the sno bees. I actually like this Pengo overlay version better, but don’t know how rare it is. (I will try to post the file of this NOS Pengo overlay when I can.)
Does anyone know anything about this Pengo overlay, or have a example applied to their Sega Pengo game?
NOS Pengo CPO’s surface
A topic came up on KLOV last night via Brian Koening in WI. He got two NOS Pengo control panel overlays in a bulk buy from an operator. Now, there haven’t been an overwhelming amount of people, but it seems as though there are a lot of people who like Pengo, and their control panels have some sort of damage. There have been topics in the past about whether NOS even existed.
Brian is talking about having the CPO’s done on an inkjet and then laminated. Oy! You have got to be kidding me. He has a guy he has an allegience with and wants him to do the Pengo reproductions.
Brian doesn’t answer my emails, I must have done something wrong. But as luck would have it, I was revisiting some arcade collectors websites yesterday. I was on Appolo’s arcade website, and at one time they had a NOS Pengo CPO that they were talking about scanning and vectorizing.
So, I emailed Dawn asking if I could get a scan of the Pengo CPO.
We’ll have to see what she says. From reading their site, they have a ton of turnover in games and may not have it anymore. And she may not give me a scan, or even let me buy a scan or trade for it. Who knows, they don’t know me from anyone else.
I just hope we don’t have to have the first round of reproductions for any of the Pengo artwork be inkjet laminates.
Watch for updates here.
Sega’s Pengo Artwork
I can remember playing Pengo in the mid 80’s on an early IBM computer. This computer was a huge part of my childhood, friend’s of my parents owned it and their son was a burgeoning computer nerd. He always had different games loaded on it, including some popular, to be, arcade classic’s like Sega’s Pengo. I could play Pengo for hours, so until I got it in late summer of 2006, I had never actually played Pengo as an upright machine.
I would like to build up my library of exclusively owned vector artwork of games I like, artwork I like, and rarity. I felt like the Pengo sideart fell into all of those categories, and there is some demand out there for Pengo reproduction artwork in case I want to go through the process of printing.
Most of Pengo Sideart Traced
I had emailed a contact about getting some vector Pengo art that I thought they had. It appeared to me as if they had traced the cardboard bezel at one time, and I thought it would be a good place to start to get some vector versions of the ice mountains, sno bees and the Pengo character himself.
But come to find out, the image of Pengo bezel I saw was just a nice raster scan. So, knowing that I already had some different pieces of the sideart traced from other individuals (Pengo character, Pengo Lettering, Sega Lettering), and seeing that the artwork was fairly simple, I decided to see if I could crank through tracing it in one night.
I got through all of the major sideart details except for the sno bees on the right side of the artwork.
In one more night of work I should have the sideart decal artwork traced good enough to post an image here. Now, there will be some other details to iron out. The Pengo character doesn’t fit up with my photo (which could be due to distortion because I know the tracing is very good), there is a half tone pattern to make the gradient in the letter and the mountains in the original artwork that I will need to address, and of course the color matching.
But at least I will have the Pengo vector artwork to add to my collection. If I want to get into those details later on I can, if I find that there are people out there who want a set of the Pengo artwork I can do some reproductions. I would think there would be a significant demand, I don’t think there is any NOS Pengo sideart out there. I have found 2-3 people who have expressed some interest, Tim Hill, James Hagen and a couple of other arcade collectors in online board posts looking for sideart and control panel overlays. But we shall see.
No NOS Pengo sideart exists
This week I saw someone post about wanting some NOS Sega Pengo sideart, so I got motivated to do some vectorization of the sideart of one of my favorite games.
Last night I got through 80% of the Pengo sideart. I had taken the photos, pieced them together in Photoshop and used the pieces that were already done like the Pengo lettering and Pengo himself to start my Illustrator file.
I got through everything but the sno bees on the right. Today I was having major issues trying to get a good image of the smaller sno-bees to trace. I had taken some photos close up of the sticker and I even was able to figure out my scanner with the laptop and scan the two snow bees. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t get as exact of detail as I wanted. So, I used what I had and traced sitting right next to the Pengo cabinet so I could memorize the shape and then trace it as best as I could with what I had.
Like I mentioned previously, this Pengo sideart isn’t color matched, it doesn’t have the halftone pattern, but it is a good start to work with if I ever want to have this reproduced.
~ Update May 22, 2008: Well, I ended up eating my words. A set of new, unapplied, NOS Sega Pengo sideart surfaced. I didn’t have to wait that long, and I was lucky enough to get it.
