Arcade Resources
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.
Baby Pac-man Battery on MPU
Yesterday I had the opportunity to go and play a nice Baby Pac-man here in Indianapolis. I had been trying for a number of months now to coordinate an opportunity to play a Baby Pac-man either here locally, or on one of my trips this year to Milwaukee or to Michigan, but with little success. I had never played Baby Pac, and was particularly curious about how in depth the pinball portion of the game was and equally what the video maze game portion was like.
Part of the problem was finding a working Baby Pac-man. Of the 7,000 units made by Bally Midway in the early 80’s, a lot of the Baby Pac’s are arcade collectors “Project Games”. I don’t know enough about the game to know if there are a lot of non-working Baby Pac arcade games because of the unique game itself with the pinball / video combination, but I do know that the battery on the MPU board causes problems.
The Baby Pac-man I played last night was in decent condition. The playfield had some wear, the control panel was beat up but nothing a new Baby Pac control panel overlay wouldn’t fix, and the sideart was missing from the right facing side. But this Baby Pac had been HUO for at least 10 years, if not up to 15 and beyond. The cabinet was in solid shape, and the most important fact, the game worked.
This Baby was out of my price range, (1K!) but I still wanted to investigate it as best I could. Knowing that these were general home owners who had used the arcade game without ever having issue, I was betting that the original battery was on the MPU board and had never been replaced. Being the less technical person I am, I didn’t want to assume what the battery might look like, so I did a little research.
I emailed one friend, and looked online. I asked about the color of the battery on the Baby Pac-man MPU board, the only experience I had was with my Frenzy, which had that blue battery. Here is what the friend said;
Very easy to see..it will either be white or sometimes yellow…wrapped in plastic cover like the rechargable batteries you see…
I found multiple Baby Pac-man PCB images of the group of board, and found an image of the battery still mounted. (I believe the order of the Baby Pac boards left to right and down is, the solenoid board, the MPU board and the Vidiot Board. The MPU battery that causes the acid corrosion is circled.)
When I got to the owners house and asked if they had ever done any work on the Baby Pac-man, they said no. They had mounted some clips when the control panel wouldn’t stay fastened, putting holes in the side of the cabinet 🙁 But they didn’t even know about the power button, and had never been in the back of the arcade game, let alone done any replacement work of any pcb components.
I took some photos through the Baby Pac-man coindoor, and saw that the battery was still mounted. But I couldn’t recommend to the owners what to do exactly. Should they get in back and remove / replace the battery even though the game worked? Especially since they didn’t care about collecting and only wanted to sell the game at this point.
I haven’t read enough on the subject, my understanding is that batteries on PCB’s usually are for operator settings on how they want the game to play. But, the Baby Pac-man MPU battery also saves high scores, which isn’t a big deal, but if it prevents battery acid damage on the MPU or Vidiot board, it is probably wise to record those game high scores by hand.
So what is the solution? From Marvin3m.com, a great Baby Pac-man repair and troubleshooting resource;
MPU Board Battery Corrosion.
There is a rechargeable nicad battery on the MPU board which often leaks. This can cause all kinds of problems with the MPU board, and even the Vidiot board (which is mounted right below the the MPU board and the battery).Remove this battery ASAP and discard. Aside from ruining the MPU board, it can also spread its corrosion down the center section of the Vidiot board, all the way to the lower sound section of the board! Of course the .100″ connector pins will be ruined in the process, not to mention the Vidiot board traces and its components.
A remote mounted three “AA” battery pack with a blocking diode is suggested as a good MPU board battery replacement (Show Above).
This is what I learned about the Baby-Pacman MPU battery and acid damage in less than an hour of research. Have any feedback? Need to correct me? Leave a comment below, would love to hear from you.
World’s Largest Arcade Machine
The World’s Largest Arcade Machine, verified supposedly by the Guinness Book of World Records, was a video I came across on the Klov forums tonight.
More ludicrous than anything else, I think that building the largest coin-operated machine in theory is pretty cool, but in reality it just looks stupid. You have to stand on a stool to play it, with hand sized buttons and a screen so large your retnas are fried before you can say “Sammy Davis Junior only got one eye.”
The World’s Largest Arcade Machine measures 14 feet tall, has a 75 inch screen, weighs 1300 pounds and I think in the video they say it’s 9 feet wide. What a colossal waste of space. They have a tiny little motherboard in it that plays 150 games and the style arcade game makes most of us collectors, with a taste for true art, die a little inside. The World’s Largest Arcade Machine is fashioned after the popular Mame machines of today, with the artless sides, and the generic lightning bolt, fire storm, or other combination of black veneer details that makes us think, “Big black waste of space anyone?”
It’s like all of the entertainment value of a season of American Idol, 1 minute stretched out to make a year of shows and you wonder where the time went. My favorite part was the real “Coins”, and the fact that although the largest game ever takes up more space than your guest room, the machine isn’t capable of freeplay.
Circus Charlie Sideart on ebay
A friend brought this post on the klov forums to my attention. He knew that I had started to do some vector work on some Circus Charlie sideart. What the hell though, seriously! Why did this guy destroy multiple machines to scrap off old sideart?
This is original side art set off the video game Circus Charlie. It is fairly good condition. It was peeled off the cabinet and still has some adhesive backing.
The one side could probably still be scanned in and used as great reference. But I know that I am not paying much for this sideart, already the initial bid with shipping is a little high for my tastes. The Circus Charlie sideart project is a fun one, but not for a coin-op machine of my own. I’ll just have to watch it. If the sideart doesn’t sell, maybe the seller will come down in initial price.
Atari’s I, Robot Monitor Bezel Sticker Reproductions
I came across Classicade.com this morning, Bret Pherson’s website about his arcade games. Apparently he reproduced I, Robot monitor bezel stickers / bezel decals / bezel artwork, whatever you want to call them. He did both versions of the self adhesive bezel sticker, one was yellow and red, and the other bezel sticker was blue, red, and yellow, measuring 5-1/8″ x 15-1/4″. Visit Bret’s writeup and website here.
I am sure most collectors know about this I, Robot artwork, the reproductions sold out. I would expect as much if Bret was the first person to ever do “I, Robot” reproduction artwork. But there were only so many Atari I, Robot machines made if you base the demand solely on collectors who would apply the artwork. I would guess if another run of artwork was done, more arcade collectors would buy it just to have it. But it is good to know that Bret has the artwork if he ever wants to do another run of I, Robot decals.
Now I wonder, what other pieces of the artwork for I, Robot have been reproduced? Does any other collector out there know? Do you have any links to sites?
Moon Patrol Bezel Reproductions
I had to give a shout out to Jamie and his “Noise Land Arcade” who is in the final stages of making some reproduction bezels for the classic arcade game Moon Patrol. Jamie started this project because he could never seem to find a bezel in good condition.
The vector artwork on the Moon Patrol bezel was pretty straightforward, but the lightning type pattern in the background night sky was the real achievement. Jamie separated out the vector pieces and the raster pieces and worked on them separately. The raster artwork on the bezel was intense, I don’t know how he struggled through touching that up to a point where the Moon Patrol bezel could be reprinted, but he did an awesome job. Here is what he says on his website;
I’m getting very close to finishing my Moon Patrol restoration. I got the cabinet back in December of 2006. Since then I have been looking for a decent bezel on eBay, and was having a hard time finding one. They just don’t seem to turn up for some reason. I finally found one recently, which was in horrible condition.
I contacted Rich from ThisOldGame.com. He makes great repro art for Space Invaders, Burgertime, and other games. He said he would reproduce these if I can get him a good vector drawing of it! So, I’m now in the process of working on the redraw/cleanup for this using Photoshop and Illustrator. It’s coming along good so far.
Above is a larger view of the whole completed Moon Patrol bezel, and here is a smaller view showing the detail put into both the vector and raster portions.
Good job Jamie. Can’t wait to see the final product. Rich at This Old Game is doing the repros. Knowing his great work, I am sure they are going to be great. I can only imagine there are a ton of other collectors out there with their partially completed Moon Patrols who are going to be geeked to get one of these
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.
