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.
Ms. Pac-man Separations Update
I had some downtime where I couldn’t use the internet last night so I spent about 25 minutes or so working on the separations for the stencils. I got through a good portion of Ms. Pac-man herself.
I am trying to decide how to make a rule for how much the pink should bleed underneath the black, or if every piece should bleed according to what is around it. If I can make the pink larger underneath a surrounding black part, like on her gloves and such, I think I am just going to go ahead and make it as big as possible. This will give me more coverage in some areas in case the registration is off.
I did find out that the stencils are a one time use though. So, even if I finish the separations for the Ms. Pac-man sideart, there is no guarantee I may get some because of the cost. I don’t have any of the tools, the mask, the airbrush, or the paints, so above the cost for the three colors of stencils I will have to invest in the other supplies. I will have to make some sort of decision of whether or not I will use that equipment again or not.
Ms. Pac-man Stencil Separations
I bought my Ms. Pac-man last October, and even when I bought it I knew that someday I wanted to either redo the sideart or get a cabinet that had more pink in the sideart.
I have thought about checking around for how much stencils would be, but hadn’t gotten around to it. I have monitored buying another Ms. Pac-man machine and switching cabs, but a deal hasn’t fallen in my lap yet, and Saturday I took the time to email a prominent collector who also does repro art and is well known for his quality stencils about making up a set.
He said he didn’t have the artwork for Ms. Pac-man separated. There is a vector set on localarcade.com, but it needs another set of processing to be ready to produce stencils.
Brian Jones (Prok) said he would work with me if I could get the separations done. I don’t know any printers that I feel like I could go to and have the stencils done for some sort of barter, so I have decided to start on it myself.
Brian has given me some basic instructions and I have an understanding of what he needs. He needs each color in different layers in Illustrator in the order that the color would be laid down on the cab. In the Ms. Pac-man case for stencils, it would be the base blue color, then the yellow, then the pink and finally the black.
Since I have not done this before, I am relying on my sense of 3d and general graphic experience to visualize how the paint would need to be laid out and in which order. I did a sample piece of the artwork, and Brian said I had the right idea so hopefully I can crank through and get it done.
We are still talking about how much it would it would cost to make them. I need to keep it cost effective just in case of a bad situation where I have to sell the game, I can’t get too much into it for that reason.
Picked up my first Ms. Pac-man
Exciting day, very short and tiring night, but it was worth it.
There were a number of arcade cabinets in Marion, as I mentioned, and I was looking to buy one of the Midway’s that has the same shape as a Ms. Pacman so I could build my own.
But this week I had been watching a local auction on eBay for someone selling a Ms. Pacman that wasn’t working. I looked at the photos, the cabinet appeared to be in good condition, artwork was good and the problem sounded like a simple fix. The Ms. Pac-man was in Columbus, which was the closest one I had seen to this point and for the amount of money he was wanting as an opening bid I decided to see if he would sell it offline. I made the guy an offer, and a couple of hours later he took it! That was the first time I had did that, and it worked, and now I had my favorite game!
So I took the van down to Columbus and picked the machine up and brought it back. I was so pumped, when I first started collecting a Ms. Pac-man was what I really wanted, and I didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg to get it like I had anticipated I might. This Ms. Pac-man has a little bit of a cool back story.
The guy I met was involved with the youth ministry at a church in Columbus. When I pulled up with the van he opened a large freestanding garage that was fairly empty except for this Ms. Pac-man and a Tron (also on eBay, also not working). He started to tell me that these were the last two. He had liked both Tron and Ms. Pac-man growing up and since he had some electrical knowledge the plan was to try to fix them up.
But he could never find the time (shocker!) so it was time to sell them off. He said that the church has purchased an abandoned storage unit in the area of an old operator. Apparently this huge freestanding garage was at one time full of classic games that they had ebayed a number of years back! So at one time he had about 20-30 games, all classics just waiting to make their way into collectors hands.
Obviously I would have liked to have been looking for a Ms. Pac at that time, but it wasn’t in the cards and he didn’t really have any other information about that old operator for me. He just kind of vanished and defaulted on his storage payments.
What to do about the faded sideart?
As I researched and researched, I didn’t feel great about making my own with reproduced artwork, it would just never be the same, but I couldn’t pay the outrageous price that the machines go for, they just were too high. This kind of fell into my lap, and I was glad I didn’t go to Marion, it would have been a ton more work. Check out photos in the Photo Diary section of the machine, and keep posted here and I will try to mention when I get it running.
