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…
Former CEO of Universal & Mr. Do!
Before we went to Michigan the first weekend of November, there was a post in the Klov forums about the versions of Mr. Do! I had mentioned one member had a couple of email exchanges with the former CEO of Universal, the company that made Mr. Do!
I emailed that member this week (shacklefurd), another coin-operated arcade game collector in Indiana. He emailed me back saying he wasn’t sure he still had the email address for the former Universal Games CEO, but he would check.
Here’s crossing my fingers. How cool would it be to find the company that made the Mr. Do! with white sideart and in finding that company discover that some of their former employees still have some of the white Mr. Do!’s in great condition. No sideart flaking at all. I can dream:)
If Shacklefurd doesn’t still have the email address for the former CEO, does anyone else have any leads? This Mr. Do! is becoming a little bit of my collecting grail. Shoot me an email if you can help me with any information about Gleeb or Universal.
Update – 4.15.09
Wow! Quite a bit of time has passed on this one. But, Jason S. was able to track down an email and more importantly a name for the former CEO of Universal and apparently he worked with other companies such as Exidy and Data East among others.
The original email he had bounced, and the new email I found got rejected, so I am going to keep digging. But I hope to finally find some answers to the white Mr. Do! character artwork license, possibly to a company on the east coast.
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.
Final cherries for rare white Mr. Do! bezel
I got the photos for the final Mr. Do! bezel cherries late last week, and I traced the artwork in Illustrator tonight and added them into the original bezel. I am really pumped that I am finally finished with the Mr. Do! bezel and can focus on finding other examples of this machine.
Thanks to Bruce for the final photos of his prized rare white Mr. Do!.
Updates on Mr. Do! leads
I finally heard back from Mark Deroller, and after a lot of searching through years of past emails, he can’t find contact information for the people that bought his Mr. Do! over five years ago. So as of right now, I consider that white Mr. Do! lead dead. I am back to looking through links of arcade collectors sites, hoping to find a collector who has a website with photos of this Mr. Do! that hasn’t made a predominant profile on one of the major coin-op collecting databasing sites.
As for the white Mr. Do! that Rob Carroll auctioned on ebay, the buyer finally came and picked it up. His name is Bruce Kubu, and I have gotten his contact information from Rob. Bruce and I have been in touch, and after a couple of follow ups, he sent me some photos of the remaining Mr. Do! cherries at the top of the curve of the bezel, the last piece I was missing. I hope to trace that before the week is up, and finally finish the white Mr. Do! bezel nearly 5 months after I started piecing it together.
So what is next in finding out more about the rare white Mr. Do! with sideart? I am not sure. Wait for an ebay auction of the machine to pop up? Check with Walt Glassett again to see if he has any leads? Call Universal Games directly to see if I can track down exactly what Gleeb was? I don’t know. I will cross that bridge when I get to it, and I get the motivation.
Update on composite Mr. Do! Bezel vector art
Love this bezel, this Mr. Do! artwork is valuable to me. But as we’ve seen, one of these bezels is worth about a whopping total of $2. That’s not private sales, that’s eBay! The fact that these bezels are about worthless doesn’t change my motivation to vectorize the artwork.
Last night and earlier this morning I finished what cherries I could on the bezel that goes to this rare “white” Mr. Do! with sideart. There are five sets of cherries on the upper right, two on the middle right, and one in the top middle. Two of the sets in the upper right repeat, which is great because those cherries are on the bezel piece that bends, that I don’t physically have.
So, as of right now, I don’t have good enough photos to trace the middle cherries on the top right, and the cherries in the top middle. I bent one of the photos I had for the top Mr. Do! bezel portion to help me piece together some things, but I again have to wait until something else comes up.
The Mame guys have the Mr. Do! scans and photos I do, so I am hoping that maybe they can do something with the top that I don’t know how to do. Here is what it looks like.
Later in the day I got additional photos that were hi-res enough to trace the missing cherries on the upper right. They also showed a sixth set of cherries I hadn’t noticed before at the very top, so I traced those too and included them in the artwork. Now all I am missing are the cherries at the top!!
Vectorizing Rare Mr. Do! Bezel Pieces
Continued working on the rare “white” Mr. Do! bezel today. I got the main large yellow portions of the Mr. Do Bezel drawn with the blue diagonal lines included. I was also able to finish the base of the ice cream dish, and I also realized that there is a slight difference in the artwork for the apples, so I made another file for that. Pretty exciting to be further along.
I can piece most of the Mr. Do! bezel together today, and will probably finish up tomorrow by drawing the cherries with the new great photos I have. After almost a year of searching, I almost have a really accurate Mr. Do Bezel in a vector artwork format.
