Arcade Resources
Sega Pengo Bezel Vector Progress 1
Over the past two nights I have made some progress vectorizing the Pengo Bezel for reproductions. Here is an image of the vector progress so far;
As you can see, I pretty much have the background ice Pengo landscape finished. The artwork is pretty simple, but there is a halftone pattern over the blue to white gradient that I haven’t done yet. All that is left now is to trace the Sno-Bees and Pengo himself. I would imagine I would start with Pengo and work out from there. Hopefully I will be able to finish this piece of artwork right after Christmas to add it to the list of completed artwork for the Pengo reproductions.
Agent X / Cloak Dagger Jacket
Yesterday I got an interesting email from another collector interested in Agent X information. His name is Alan, and he was looking for photos of an Agent X machine.
After an email exchange, he told me that he knew Dave Comstock, who was the Atari programmer that was supposed to port Cloak and Dagger over to the 5200. Dave Comstock owns one of the original Agent X machines, from the limited run that were produced. (That information is readily available on the internet.) Alan also mentioned that he owns a Cloak and Dagger jacket, only two were ever made. I thought that was kind of interesting and obscure, so here are two photos of the jacket below.
I haven’t asked him yet, but depending on his relationship with Dave, maybe he bought one of the jackets from him. I am sure Dave has a ton of old Atari stuff since he is a former employee.
~Edit Alan had the Cloak and Dagger jackets made, so this particular arcade item wasn’t made by Atari. But it is definitely something you don’t see all the time.
Atari Agent X / Cloak Dagger Reproduction Artwork Update
This Old Game hadn’t updated progress on the Atari Agent X reproductions, so I thought I would email Rich and find out what was new. I heard back, and it sounds like things are progressing.
If you haven’t read anything about this set of Agent X reproductions before now, here is a short run down. Rick Ford has coordinated a project to get all of the artwork reproduced to build a complete Agent X machine. The Agent X artwork includes the marquee, speaker grill overlays, control panel overlay, kickplate, and sideart.
Originally the reproductions were going to be a very limited run, but there was some increased interest on the arcade forums when Rick made his announcement. Rich had made great progress getting each of the pieces printed, the marquee, the speaker grills, etc. But with the increased interest, he had to go back and print some more of that Agent X artwork. The films for these pieces of art are on loan from Scott Evans, so the quicker those pieces of Atari art can be finished, the better.
Once the catchup is finished, all of the final details can be worked out on the Agent X kickplate and sideart. That is exciting news, I can’t wait to finally see the Agent X kickplate artwork that I did get reproduced. The kickplate was pretty complex, and here is what Rich had to say about the Agent X sideart;
The films for the Agent X sideart were in small negative form, which I then had blown up to a full sized camera positive. I’ve also had a custom screen made to accomodate this big of a piece of artwork.
It turned out the guy I went through to make the screen worked in Atari’s production deptartment from 1979-1984. Kind of a cool story, and he had lots of insight too in regards to materials and production runs of the artwork.
The films are made for the sideart, all he needs to do is lay down the colors for the print. After the holidays are done, it would seem as the Agent X artwork could be finished sometime in January of 2008.
Here are a few of the images from ThisOldGame.com showing the screens that have been made, three images of the screen printing process of the Agent X marquees, and one photo of the speaker grill overlays.
Ladybug with Sideart – Artwork style similar to White Mr. Do!
Brian’s website had a couple of interesting goodies, check out these photos below of a rare dedicated white “extended conversion kit” Ladybug machine with sideart.
(I don’t know how else to term an arcade game like this. More experienced collectors have let me know that this technically wasn’t a “dedicated” machine, but instead a company trying to boost sales on the conversion kits produced for that game, hence “extended conversion kit”. By including a cabinet and adding artwork, they could probably sell the arcade games for more and generate more interest by being an all in one solution.)
The border around classic Ladybug arcade artwork, as well as the character design for this game tipped me off right away that the same manufacturer possibly made this machine as the white Mr. Do!. It would make sense that if someone was going to license one arcade game from Universal, maybe they’d license a couple to reproduce.
A family member spotted this Ladybug arcade game for Brian at a flea market for $5, so they bought it and brought it to him from PA. On his site he steps through what he did to “restore” the artwork a little bit, by using frisket and rejuvenating the color. Like the Mr. Do! conversion machines, the artwork had some wear in strange spots that would indicate the original painted artwork wasn’t durable. The only thing that gives me doubts, is the cutout in the lower front of the cab, where the white Mr. Do! went straight to the floor. It would seem to me that if a game making licensed games, they would use the same cabinet to save money. But who knows, maybe not.
I am in touch with Brian, but he doesn’t have much more information about the classic Ladybug arcade game and why would he considering where it came from. But it gives me one more tool to search the web. There is one post on Google Groups with an individual talking about a white Ladybug with sideart;
Saw a post on Ladybug, and while certainly not a great game, I passed on one the other day, that had what looked to be “dedicated” side art and marquee. I’ve seen many, but not one like this. Was there such a creature, and what’s it rarity? I thought they were mostly conversions.
~Edit It was suggested to me that both the Mr. Do! and Ladybug arcade cabinets were made by Rock-Ola. I looked through Klov, and there is nothing in the design of the artwork on the games listed that would make me believe this was true. But if there was a company that just dressed up conversion kits, and wasn’t a full scale production, finding information about the white side art might be more difficult than I originally thought.
~Update Darin Jacobs of Phoenix Arcade posted in the Google Forums that he had a Ladybug arcade machine like this at one time, but he gave it to his brother. Supposedly his brother still has it, but there aren’t any markings on the inside to give me any more clues to the manufacturer. 🙁
Update August 5th, 2008
I forgot to mention, take a look at the bezel on this Ladybug cabinet. It is the same one used on a couple of the white Mr. Do!s (image below or the Mr. Do! for sale in California), probably some sort of generic bezel that the manufacturing company offered for the machines. Or maybe it was the bezel for a Lady Bug / Mr. Do! and operators interchanged them. Who knows.
Pengo CPO Vector Update 3 – Tracing Complete!
Today I had a chance to finish up the “eskimos” Pengo control panel overlay. Here is the small image of what it looks like;
Cool custom Mame side art Pengo, Pac-man, Donkey Kong and Dig Dug
I was surfing a collector’s website the other night (Brian Brzezicki) and I came across photos of his Mame machine. It is an old Dig Dug cabinet painted solid black, like most Mame cabs, but this particular machine caught my attention. Check out that custom side art! Isn’t that cool? It’s an illustration using some of the most popular arcade characters like Donkey Kong, Pengo, Pac-man and Dig Dug.
Tim Wann did the custom art, but you won’t find the piece on his website for obvious reasons. Makes me briefly think about doing my own custom art since I have such great illustration skills (which I may have some news about in the coming months), but at first blush, it would seem custom side art and other artwork would only work for Mame machines. Even then, it seems a lot of Mame guys like solid black, don’t have a lot of appreciation for the original art (ie lighting bolt or fire themes), and seem to like mid 90’s games. I find this Dig Dug Mame really refreshing.
Update – September 16th, 2009
Here is a larger version of that custom arcade illustration with Dig Dug and Pengo. Thanks Tim for the link.
UPL Depth Charge for sale on Craigslist Kentwood, MI
A Depth Charge classic arcade machine came up for sale yesterday on Craigslist in Kentwood, MI.
“This is an old full size arcade Depth Charge video game. It is fully functional and ready to use. asking $225. 616-538-6060”
I didn’t have any familiarity with this game, so I went and checked it out on Klov. Depth Charge looks like a cool old machine, (check out the photo below) made in 1977, so five years after Pong debuted, but I thought it was interesting that Depth Charge has some sideart. I see a lot of these 70’s machines that have the wood grain sides, that was probably a style choice at the time, or maybe an artwork production choice, I don’t know.
Depth Charge was made by UPL, who I didn’t think I had heard of. I scanned through the list of classic games that they produced, the only one I recognized was Carnival.
I know if I had limitless space, a game like Depth Charge would be appealing to me. I don’t know the history of this game on Craigslist, but it looks as if it is in a office space, or an auction house. Either way, I can’t believe that the owner really knows it’s value or historical significance. I am sure the entertainment value on this game is minimal based on the age, but to preserve a classic arcade of this age has some interest to me.
There are also some economics involved. Surely there weren’t many Depth Charge machines made, and there probably aren’t that many left. But have the larger populous of collectors heard of this game, or want it in their collection? Probably not. Will they get $225 for this Depth Charge? Possibly depending on condition. The fact that the game works it huge. But more than likely they will not get the full asking price, and the person that buys the game may or may not be a collector with a passion. But if you look at the supply and demand of games for collectors, there are some funny trends. Not all rare games are collectible because of the quantities produced. But the larger the quantities, the greater the availability driving the prices down. But that is neither here nor there.
If the Depth Charge is still available when I visit Michigan later this month, I may go and take a look at it. I don’t have the room, but I would like to at least experience it, because it is a rare find, especially for Craigslist.
