Jr. Pac-man developed by GCC
I was surfing tonight, trying to come up with an idea for an arcade related post, when I came across this arcade history.
On arcade-history.com, I saw a snippet of information on the history of Jr. Pac-man that I did not know;
Jr. Pac-Man was developed by ‘General Computer Corporation’ (GCC) for Bally/Midway and is essentially an enhancement to “Ms. Pac-Man”
I thought to myself, isn’t General Computer Corporation the company that made Super Missile Attack back in the day, a hack enhancement board to Missile Command and was sued by Atari? I thought that the lawsuit was settled, GCC went under, but before they did they had to build three games for Atari as part of the settlement. Food Fight and Quantum were two of those games, and the third was never made.
I took a look at General Computer Corporation on Wikipedia, and this is what I found;
The General Computer Corporation was an early video game company started by Doug Macrae and Kevin Curran.
The company started out with the game Super Missile Attack, which was sold as an enhancement board to Missile Command. Atari sued them for this, but the suit was soon dropped after Macrae and Curran agreed to develop games for Atari and stop making enhancement boards without permission. Their next project was Ms. Pac Man, which they developed as an enhancement kit for Pac-Man. They took the game to Midway who sold it as a sequel to Pac-Man.
They made other arcade games for Atari, such as Food Fight…
So, GCC was a third party that development coin-op games for the big arcade companies at one point in time. It looks like GCC development Ms. Pac-man, and more importantly, Jr. Pac-man.
I would assume that developed means they designed, built, programmed and fabricated the arcade machines themselves. Which leads me to believe that maybe an artist at GCC would have done the sideart and other artwork / stickers for Jr. Pac-man.
I am going to have to explore this a little more. At the very least, I still believe the famous pinball illustrator Margaret Hudson may have some contacts to lead me to the original Jr. Pac-man artist. I just need to find her contact information, hopefully an email. It almost seems like she does freelance work for Stern Pinball now, or works directly for Stern in their art department.
Here are some similar arcade posts
- A photo glimpse inside GCC – Quantum & Food Fight
- The creaky, dusty Atari vault door is showing signs of life
- Buy Some Jr. Pac-man NOS Artwork
- General Computer Corp’s Crazy Otto hits Mame in 2010
- Interesting Arcade Links – 2008-05-04
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Comments
I looked for awhile for a Mappy here locally to convert to a Jr. Pac-man. There were a couple, one too expensive, one I could never get photos of from the guy, Todd Bailey in KY. Would still like to do a minty fresh conversion, since I have almost all of the Jr. Pac-man artwork vectorized.
Pinball artists are easy to come by. I know the name of the art director for Bally pinball at the timeframe that Jr. Pac-man was built…but I don’t have an email, and I don’t know if he would even know the artists in the Bally video game division.
That’s interesting that you couldn’t find a Mappy in your area. I saw 2 on Craigslist this year in New England, one for free. That free one was posted after I had already gotten mine, and I saw it so late that I didn’t bother calling. For me, I’ve taken the approach of just letting the games find me. I keep an eye out on Craigslist and eBay all the time. Most of my games lately have come from Craigslist…some really great deals too. I figure if I wait long enough most of the games I want will turn up.
I have seen a number of Mappy’s on the east coast, probably the ones you are referring to, and a couple that seem to keep popping up down south in the Florida area…but both too far to do much.
Hey, you got some facts wrong again…
“I would assume that developed means they designed, built, programmed and fabricated the arcade machines themselves.”
Wrong. Developed means PROGRAMMING, As in “Game Developer”. Midway did the manufacturing and would have handled the cabinet art too.
@Arby
At the time, I did not know this, but have come to understand this as I did research later in the summer of 2008. Thanks for the input, wish you would have found the post earlier when I wrote it in 2007, would have been even more helpful then.
Hi, Midway did do the cabinet art, but sorry I don`t know the name of the person. I did the music for Jr Pac and Food Fight and a number of other games (chiefly home arcade versions) as an full-time employee of GCC.
Patricia,
Your timing is great / interesting. Maybe you know about the panel of former GCC employees that was out on the east coast just a weekend or two ago. I was going to write a follow up post to this one, from way back when, very soon.
Thank you for the input. So Midway did all of the cabinet artwork, the bezel, marquee, cpanel overlay and sideart I assume. How did GCC interact with Midway on the implementation of the game in relation to working as a field kit, and then fitting it into an existing cabinet (Mappy) ? What challenges were there?
The two PAL chips on the Jr. Pac-Man pcb have a “(C) 1983 GCC” and not the usual “(C) 19xx Bally Midway” silk screened onto them.
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November 22, 2007
Hey Jeff,
That would be very cool if you could track down the original artist. It wouldn’t surprise me though if the art and cabinet were made by Midway and GCC only developed the game. I have no idea however….just rambling. 🙂 Jr. Pac-Man is a great game, and the art is very cool IMO. I’d love to get my hands on one. I have a project Mappy which is the same cabinet, but I love Mappy too much to convert it to a Jr. Pac.
Nice job keeping your site up to date. It’s difficult to post everyday. I try but occasionally lapse. I’m heading over to my site to write a couple of posts now.