Arcade Resources
Got my Pengo High-Score Saver and Enhancement Pack
Pretty excited to come home last night after a long day and see that my Pengo High-Score Saver and Enhancement Pack from jrok had arrived.
This kit for Sega’s Pengo has a ton of goodies in it, if you are interested in buying one, here is the enhancement pack’s homepage. The main options that I wanted were;
- High Score Save – Even when game is turned off, of course I had to have this:)
- Change Music Type – Popcorn Pengo – I can’t stand the original music, Popcorn is what I have always played in Mame
- Freeplay – So I don’t have to coin up every time and increment that counter
I played Pengo last night in between studying. I had to set those high scores:) The Pengo enhancement pack is so simple,fast, and easy to install, as the instructions say (It’s also really affordable at under $50!);
- Step 1: Remove the CPU from the socket (Z-80 Processor)
- Step 2: With the CPU removed insert the Pengo e-pack board into the socket. Take note of the orientation and location of pin 1!
- Step 3: Insert the Pengo e-pack into the Processor Socket (Kit Fully Installed)
I always get nervous when working with these classic arcade games, mostly for the unknown. In the case of this enhancement install, there wasn’t a lot to double check. Make sure the direction of the board is correct (Just double check the direction of the half moon cutout on the Z-80 processor) and make sure it is pressed and secure and that none of the pins were bent on install. Reattach the harness connection in the right direction, and turn on the game. I watched the Pengo PCB in back just in case something happened and I could cut power as needed.
I wanted to see my Pengo scores come back up after I turned the game off. I was running out the door, so I didn’t have a lot of time. I waited about 30 seconds after my last game, turned the game off, waited 30 seconds, and turned Pengo back on. All I got was a flashing message saying something toe extent “Eprom reading high score tables”. The same message you get after each Pengo score is saved. I said a little prayer that it was new, or overheated, or I just did everything too quick, and hoped when I returned that my Pengo high score kit wasn’t broken already. When I got back, the game played fine, so I don’t know what the problem was, maybe I didn’t wait long enough for the next screen. Whatever.
Tonight I will be looking at the enhancement pack options more, to turn off “Game Select” and turn on Freeplay.
Thanks Jrok for making this Pengo high score saver enhancement kit, it really adds a lot of value to my game.
Videos of Funspot Arcade, NH
Unlike most classic arcade collectors, I don’t have fond childhood memories of visiting arcades. I have fragments of memories of playing games in Chucky Cheese and the random on location video game at the local store, but I don’t know that I ever visited a full fledged arcade.
Funspot is one of the few functioning arcades left in the United States, and some claim it is the world’s largest arcade of classic video games. Located in Weirs Beach, NH, I doubt I will ever take a vacation that far north and east, so watching the walk-through videos of this arcade are exciting on two levels.
The videos of Funspot arcade are extensive, at over 9 minutes each. In the few minutes I watched I didn’t see many “classic” arcade games by definition, but I am sure the classics are on the third level of the building, and I didn’t get a chance to watch that far. Whether you appreciate the earlier arcade games, the mid 90’s games, or today’s complex brand of interactive entertainment, these videos of Funspot should be enjoyable to all.
Arcade Game Buy of the Week: NIB Space Panic and Zero Hour
This could become a fun daily classic arcade topic if I could find a game a day.
Hats off to Richard Ford. This past week he scored two “New In Box” (NIB) Universal arcade games, Space Panic and Zero Hour. Where he manages to find NIB box arcade games over 25 years after they were released boggles my mind. I know he had told me in the past of a NIB Joust he got in a trade, and a NIB Rally X. Plus, he just bought the NIB Pengo Mountain Dew Pepsi Machine a couple of weeks ago. His collection is truly top notch, and although some of the games themselves might not be rare, he has a ton of classic games that are almost mint condition.
Here are the photos he posted, the Universal games look really nice;
The forum topic on Klov mostly discussed whether or not these two Universal games had sideart on them. There are photos on klov showing the classic games having sideart, but the images look like they were scanned from a catalog. Finding a Space Panic or Zero Hour with sideart is nearly impossible. Here is what Richard had to say;
Both the Space Panic and Zero Hour are in the Generic Universal Cabs like you see for Mr Do! The dedicated cabs were extremely rare and I have one the coolest ones for Cosmic Alien. Universal did some interesting things with their games, they seemed to have no rhyme or reason to what they put in what cab. You’ll see some cabs with Devil front kickplate art and then some with plain black, and the some like mine with universal artwork
Richard’s Space Panic and Zero Hour came with the Universal cab that has the red strips on the side, like Mr. Do! and Ladybug. Here is one image of the Space Panic that I took from Klov. You can see it had some cool sideart, which is news to me, because I personally hadn’t seen any of their classic games that had anything but a generic cab. I thought the minimal success of Universal were related to Mr. Do!, and that all of their other games saw minimal production quality.
I’ll update this topic as I see more photos once he gets them moved into his gameroom. You have to be careful with these old games and the weather conditions.
Contact buying rare white Mr. Do! this weekend…
I am waiting with bated breath to hear if this arcade deal actually happens. A contact of mine is supposed to be driving to Santa Maria, CA to buy the white Mr. Do! that was for sale.
Last I heard, the purchase was supposed to happen this weekend. That is when I last heard about the Mr. Do! deal back three weeks ago. But I haven’t heard anything more.
Either way, I could have full size scans of the rare white Mr. Do! sideart by the end of next week:) Check out my original post on the “White Mr. Do! with Sideart for Sale!” to learn a little more.
~Update 12/18/07 Sounds like things didn’t work out for a pickup of the Mr. Do! machine on the 16th of December. Things got pushed back until February of 2008.
Scanned Both Versions of Sega’s Pengo Marquee
Tonight I got around to finish scanning both of the Pengo Marquees that I have, version 1 where Pengo is standing, and version 2 where Pengo is pushing an ice block.
I’ll be checking the artwork off of Arcade Art Library against my scan to see how accurate it is. I plan on vectorizing both Sega marquee versions eventually, possibly over Christmas, but will probably only reproduce the Pengo standing version of the marquee.
The standing Pengo marquee version was given to me for free when I stopped to visit an arcade operator in Ohio. The marquee is pretty sad, you notice the brush stroke type section of the print that is missing. The back of the marquee has some residue on it, and it appears as if someone put some sort of cleaner on the marquee, wiped it away, and didn’t think that by putting it on the artwork side would wipe away some of the Pengo artwork.
The Pengo pushing the ice block version of the marquee is what was in my game. I think this is the less common version, so I found it interesting that my mostly HUO Pengo had this version and not the standing version.
Pac-man Christmas Tree!
Check out this photo of the Pac-man themed Christmas tree in Madrid Spain. All of the big blogs are reporting on it.
Here is the video of the classic arcade tree in action. You can see that it is loaded up with some festival themed Pac-man imagry, but it has all of Pac-man’s old enemies, and they even move a little bit.
Here’s the static image of the tree.
Lots of users commented on how cool it would be to be able to play the Pac-man tree. Possibly I am sure, but complicated. It is awesome to see how much of a global force Pac-man is and how much that character line is recognized and appreciated. Wouldn’t it be cool if these guys in Madrid who made the Pac-man tree took some tips from my hometown lighting expert with the Trans Siberian Orchestra guy!
Some music a little more 8-Bit themed would be in order for the Pac-man tree, just as long as it didn’t keep repeating:)
Got the “Numerals” version of the Pengo Control Panel Overlay
There was a post in the Google Arcade Group by a collector by the name of Troy Akey. Troy has a number of NOS pieces of arcade artwork that he is guaging interest to do reproductions. One of listed pieces of artwork was Pengo, but he failed to mention whether it was a control panel overlay or the sideart. I am assuming it is the CPO.
I posted that the Pengo control panel overlay is about 90% vectorized already, as well as the Pengo sideart. I have a great scan of the bezel, and that shouldn’t be that hard to vectorize. I also own both of the marquees, and as of tonight have scanned in the pieces of the standing Pengo marquee. (The “numerals” CPO is the only piece of artwork I don’t own.) I hope Troy just lets me make my kit and focuses on one of the other six to eight pieces of artwork he listed. Besides, you can already purchase a numerals version of the Pengo overlay from Mamemarquees.
But, with my post, I was fortunate to find a bunch of other collectors who are interested in the Pengo kit of artwork I want to reproduce. One collector in particular has a couple of NOS Pengo control panel overlays with the numerals. He has a good network, and was fortunate to get the original NOS Pengo artwork from an operator’s warehouse. Really awesome and nice guy, and we made an agreement on the Pengo reproductions that I am doing in exchange for what he has. The main idea is I am hoping his work will save me some time.
The fact that he has the NOS artwork is pretty cool, but he has also scanned in one of the overlays at 600 DPI, 24-Bit color, and to take it one step farther, he has already vectorized the whole CPO in Paint Shop Pro. Pretty amazing.
We spoke a lot via email over the last 24 hours, and I got the three pieces of the Pengo CPO scan with the numerals, as well as the Paint Shop Pro vector file he made. Here is a small image of what it looks like;
From what I can tell he didn’t finish the Pengo lettering with the halftone pattern overlaying the red to blue gradient. But other than that, he artwork looked pretty good. But I’ll tell you what. Before today, I had some pre-concieved notions about Paint Shop Pro. I thought, “It’s a dumbed down former -freeware made by Jasc that is good for the most basic image manipulation, but nothing else”. Well, PSP has a new name, Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, and a much cooler looking interface. Oh yeah, and Corel Draw owns it now, and it isn’t free, but pretty cheap. But the fact that they combined a raster and vector program should make most designers run screaming in the other direction, and for good reason. From what I could find, there is absolutely no way to get vector artwork out of PSP as a vector format. It will save artwork out as a .ai, or .eps, but it is a flattened raster image and nothing more. It also doesn’t save as a .svg, only reads that particular file format.
I researched their “message” boards, which are so old and antiquated…I searched the web finding only indications that what I wanted couldn’t be done, and I emailed their custom support which let me know that the trial version of the software doesn’t merit troubleshooting from their staff.
So, what I have is, a nice vector traced file of the Pengo control panel overlay numerals version, with no way to manipulate and add to it. (Unless I want to learn PSP…no thanks.)
So, does anyone out there know anything about Paint Shop Pro and what I need to do here? Can anyone help me?
~ Edit: I posted on the Klov forums, the BYOAC forums, Google’s Arcade Group, and rec.photo.digital. I got some good ideas on things to try to export or save vectors out of Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. The one comment I got twice, was to try exporting the file as a .wmf. Well, a .wmf was the only suggestion I got that worked in some sense. But the vector lines that came out as a .wmf were terrible, the curves were angular and it would have taken more time to correct the original vector trace from Paint Shop Pro than it would take to redraw it.
I ended up trying ImageConverter Plus to try to convert the .psp file to a .pdf. (Paint Shop Pro can’t export as a .pdf) I installed the software fine, opened a file, set my presets on what I wanted the output file to be and everything else. I hit start, ImageConverter said it was converting the Paint Shop Pro file…but it never made a file. Like there was an error.
I tried copying the vector artwork to the clipboard in Paint Shop Pro, and then pasting it into Freehand, Illustrator and Corel Draw. All of the software interpreted the PSP vectors as .bmp images.
I checked to see if Paint Shop Pro would save as a .cdl, Corel Draw file. But it doesn’t. Funny, since this Photo X2 is a new release, and both software are owned by Corel now. I even registered and posted in what looked like a well traffic’ed Paint Shop Pro forum (http://pspug.org). But no reply posts. What a piece of crap software, seriously. This isn’t that hard.
So, as of now, I am giving up. Unless someone out there with a licensed version of Paint Shop Pro wants to contact Corel for me and see if there is a way, I don’t think there is.
I zipped up the file and sent it to another collector to see if they could have any more luck. We’ll see.
~Edit 12/13/2007: I never did get a solution figured out on how to convert the vector art of the Pengo “numberals” control panel overlay from Paint Shop Pro into Illustrator. I haven’t heard back from the other collector, so as of right now I am assuming it can’t be done. I will be re-tracing this Pengo artwork soon, check my “Pengo CPO Vector Update 3 – Tracing Complete!” post to vote on whether you want this to be the next piece of artwork done or not.
