Jr. Pac-man’s in the basement ‘gameroom’
After we got back tonight, Sarah and I moved the Jr. Pac-man into the basement. Before we left on Friday the monitor connector had arrived, so the only thing left to do is put in the monitor in the cabinet.
It was really hot this weekend, after looking at the Jr. Pac cabinet closer I felt like it had warped a little bit. I had to put that out of my mind, there was nothing I could do about the cabinet now, just that much more important to get Jr. Pac inside tonight.
Jr. Pac-man was the hardest game we have moved so far. The unique Bally cabinet was just a touch wider than the base of the steps where the turn is always hard, so it took some fancy maneuvering to keep the game and walls safe and get it to the back room.
But, looks cool either way. Pretty basic and less than special when it comes to some of the gamerooms I have seen, including one this weekend, but that is going to have to do for now.
This is also the first photo with the new Ikea stools. Never liked round stools much, and after visiting Chris Moore’s gameroom this weekend, I saw a couple of different stools he had that he got from Ikea. Sarah loves the store, I had never been, so it just made sense to go and I am really happy about the choice and that I waited.
Now all I need is a real Mr. Do, a Galaga cocktail out in the main room somewhere, and, well, I’ll still sit on the pinball. I don’t even know how that would work.
Missing Monitor hookup for Jr. Pac-man
Sent payment for the Jr. Pac yesterday, so I felt comfortable asking Rick how to hook up the monitor. After a series of emails, it came out that the monitor hooks into the top of the PCB on the right side. There is another connection on the left side as well that attachs right into the harness. There was no connector on the right side, and I looked inside the game in case it came loose, wasn’t there either. So it sounds like he is going to send it to me in the mail today so I have it by Wednesday or Thursday of this week. I was really hoping to play it sometime before Friday for sure.
Plus, I had forgotten about the monitor brackets. He had mentioned that original Jr. Pac owner had taken them out with the monitor before Rick bought it. The Pac-man ones I have won’t work, just a little too short. I am going to try to go to Home Depot this week and try to find something that will match, I have read in the forums that people have found things. I also need some tinted plexi, but I am less worried about that right now…
Other info about the game…The swelling that I mistook for water damage towards the back of the cab can just be caused from heat he said. He said he sealed it off, hopefully preventing any more swelling. That makes me glad it is sitting in the garage now that it is a little cooler out. I also identified the serial no. #333, it’s stamped on the back of the cab above the back door. The Mappy serial is stamped there too. The Serial is in the cab still too on a piece of paper, A29-00333, and you can see where the old Mappy tag was on the harness.
Rick also said that the tracks that are in the bottom where the new switcher supply is are for the old linear power supply board that almost always fails in these games.
Started scanning Jr. Pac-man marquee
I got my Jr. Pac-man game last week Thursday, and while I am waiting to pay and complete my transaction, I thought I would take the time to start scanning the marquee.
My scanner took a crap, so I had to scan the pieces of the Jr. Pac-man marquee that I could with the printer / scanner combo that a friend just gave us. But because of the control panel, I can’t scan all of the oversize marquee flat, so I will have to wait to get the middle sections scanned meaning I will have to wait to start the artwork vectorizing process.
Jr. Pac-man has arrived
It finally came on Thursday, as smoothly as planned. The truck came, they dropped off the game wrapped up tightly and well protected, they took some photos of my “gameroom” which was a small disarrayed mess, and they headed out. They didn’t want a drink, food or anything.
I will try to post some photos of it, it’s still sitting in the garage as I wait to have a little more space hopefully after Tuesday. I haven’t figured out how to hook up the monitor just yet either, but I am sure that won’t be too hard.
Thinking more about artist for Jr. Pac-man machine
I have made a reminder on my calendar to research into the Jr. Pac-man arcade game artist eventually, but right now I have so many arcade related projects to do that I keep waiting to do the research.
But yesterday I found the artist for the Baby Pac-man machine by Bally. Now, the Bally/Midway pinball division was probably totally separate from the video division, but they may have still had some cross over and members of the arcade game art direction units may have known each other. I may try to research the artist’s name some and see if they can help point me in the direction of eventually finding the Jr. Pac-man artist.
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.
