Arcade Artwork
Mr. Do Illustrated Sideart History
Mr. Do is quite a popular, classic game. Play it once and you will be hooked. For that reason, it appears that any original versions of this game are hard to come by. The popularity of the game drove it to have one of the most popular and successful conversion kits ever made and as a result, most of the Mr. Do games you come across and conversions. I have seen a ton of them in the cabinets with the presidential wood siding venire. They have everything, the marquee, the control panel artwork, but they have nothing on the sides, which, for a guy who loves sideart is really disappointing.
Here’s a little other bit about the game’s history. Apparently even what I thought was the original cabinet from Universal, isn’t even true. If this is even true (skeptical) the original Mr. Do had a black joystick, and came from Japan. Most of the common ones were made by Universal in a very similar looking cabinet, but were actually conversions from another game called Lady Bug, and had an orange joystick. Therefore the true-true original Mr. Do’s out there are even that much more scarce. Check out photos below of the most familiar Mr. Do cabinet.
Which brings me to the “White Sideart” version. I found out about this version / artwork in October of 2006. A friend of mine forwarded me an auction on ebay for a Mr. Do with some strange artwork on the side that I had never seen before. I didn’t think much of it, kept an eye on it, but it was about in Mass., so that would be quite a distance for this game.
Now, like I mentioned above, there were some conversion kits out there, possibly for both versions of the game, the white sideart and the regular version that most commonly had the green marquee. Some of the white conversion kits were more thoroughly applied than others, because the kit came with sideart but finding a machine with it applied is difficult. The artwork was printed on white with Mr. Do and his enemies in a maze like pattern with the cakes and fruits from the game. It is pretty different looking but I do like sideart, and in a way, I like this just as much as the original because the original was void of any real artwork other than the red lines on the side of the cabinet.
These are the photos that I have found so far of this cabinet. They are a little more plentiful in photos then they are in finding actual owners. Right now I know of none.
Please Contact Me With Information
If you own, or know anyone who owns one of these, or just know some more of the history of this particular version, I would love to know more. I would look to buy, but that is not the main idea. Most people who have rare, or hard to find games aren’t looking to just sell.
What I am looking for, is someone who would be willing to take some hi-res photos of the different pieces of artwork so that I can trace them in Illustrator and reproduce them for my own machine, and only my own machine.
However, as of this writing in February of 2007, I haven’t found a site that has the art, or anyone who is talking this much about this one piece of artwork. If you know that to not be true, please, drop me a line.
Update: July 2013 I now have photos from inside two different Ladybug machines, machines that have very similar painted illustrated artwork to the white Mr. Do!, that show Universal serial numbers. Check out this post on two different factory Mr. Do!s.
Worked on Ms. Pac-man separations
Got through miscellaneous pieces of the seps. I started on the large ghost, I worked on the middle ghost at the bottom, and I also worked on the little Ms. Pac at the top. I also deleted some of the extra layers and separates out the easy patterns.
Sega’s Pengo Artwork
I can remember playing Pengo in the mid 80’s on an early IBM computer. This computer was a huge part of my childhood, friend’s of my parents owned it and their son was a burgeoning computer nerd. He always had different games loaded on it, including some popular, to be, arcade classic’s like Sega’s Pengo. I could play Pengo for hours, so until I got it in late summer of 2006, I had never actually played Pengo as an upright machine.
I would like to build up my library of exclusively owned vector artwork of games I like, artwork I like, and rarity. I felt like the Pengo sideart fell into all of those categories, and there is some demand out there for Pengo reproduction artwork in case I want to go through the process of printing.
Professor Pac-man Control Panel Reproductions Finished!
My first reproduction work that has physically been made! The Professor Pac-man control panel overlays came in, and Rick sent me some photos. They are at an extreme angle, but that is good for obvious reasons for the two of us and it shows anyway how cool they look. Check out one of them below.
Circus Charlie Artwork Update
Well, Brian Koening has been pushing on the forums to see if the party who had the Circus Charlie sideart reproduction was serious or not. But as of right now, things have come to a halt. I haven’t followed up just yet on photos, I may try to do that this week and see what I get.
If you want to read some of the forum threads, here is the follow up thread on KLOV and the original thread on KLOV about the Circus Charlie Sideart.
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.
NOS Circus Charlie
On the klov forums there was a poster that claimed he had a NOS set of Circus Charlie sideart. This got posted in the forum that got start in 2006 about a guy looking to reproduce the sideart from another set of NOS sideart.
He basically hinted at the fact that it was for sale, and he was taking offers. I posted that I wanted to get some photos of it before he sold, but I am not holding my breath. Ideally I would like scans if it is NOS, but the chances of having him do that are slim to none.
There has been a lot of activity about Circus Charlie in the last two days. One of the collectors who originally spurred me on to think about reproducing it decided to put his machine up for sale instead of finding artwork for it.
Oh well. I have 2-3 guys already that have said they will take photos of the sideart for me. So, if I want to still pursue tracing it, I can and then find out who might want a set. Hell there is a thread already containing the names of those interested from when the guy who was going to produce a set had asked on the forums.
