Arcade Resources
Great Craigslist deal on a Ms. Pac-man with vibrant pink sideart!
I hear a lot on the klov forums of different collectors who have awesome luck picking up some nice arcade machines off of Craigslist for great deals. The closest I have come to that myself, in this area, is an individual who was giving away a complete Gottleib Q-bert in Anderson, IN two or three months back. The key about Craigslist is, you have to monitor it all the time. It is a time consuming thing, and not something that fits into my daily schedule. If I sit down in front of the laptop, I will bring up my RSS feed reader with all of my saved arcade related searches. But if you aren’t sitting in front of a computer the instant that new arcade deal post hits the web, and are caller number 2, you don’t get the deal.
Well, last week Friday, I got lucky. At lunch I was lucky enough to see this posting on Craigslist for Michigan actually (arcade machines in Indianapolis seem hard to come by at jaw dropping deals);
For sale 3 arcade games for parts. Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man & Centipede. $100.00 each. Call (Number removed) for more information.
I thought I would call, that was an excellent price for those machines. The first thing that popped into my head was that this was an individual who wasn’t sure on the value of the machines. It just so happened, I was the first caller! I asked if they had some photos, and she said they did and she’d try to send them to me by the end of the day. That is usually a bad sign for me, because I was so far away in Indianapolis, if another person offered to come get the coin-op games that day sight un-seen, there was nothing I could do.
But luckily, in 5 minutes I had some files in my email. I say files, because they were a Microsoft specific file format type, and not anything I could view. After a chain of calls and emails, I was able to help the owner get the photos changed to .jpgs and sent to me.
I was blown away, and I told them this on the phone. The Ms. Pac-man had a lustrous pink left in the one side of the sideart I could see. I only had one photo to go from, but I had to assume that the sideart on both sides were close in color. I started to get really excited. But what ensued was quite a struggle.
I was the first caller by about 15 minutes, and then the calls just came streaming in. A collector posted on Klov about the machines and then all of the great arcade collecting community in Michigan on the west side was abuzz. Here I sat, down in Indy, with my hands tied a little bit. I knew I was possibly only interested in the Ms. Pac-man, and not the other machines. Gone are the days for me when I was to mess around with reselling arcade games for between a hundred and two hundred dollars. If I resell an arcade game, I want $300 plus to make it worth my while. The other frustrating aspect was, a lot of these collectors who are local, can make a little more money off reselling these arcade games, and that is what they intended to do. I wanted this Ms. Pac-man for my personal collection, having looked for one of this quality for two years at an affordable price, and I didn’t want it to slip through my hands.
After talking with the seller some, it sounded like they only wanted to sell them as a lot. Understandable. At the time they didn’t know about the forum post, and thought that if they did a piece meal with the games, they would be stuck with one, two, or all of them in the end. Not to mention all of the time dealing with a bunch of different individuals and their schedules.
So, I had first priority, but the second person who called said they would come up, by Saturday, and get the games sight unseen, or that is what I was told. I now had a number of things working against me, availability, location, transportation, and time.
I was honest through the deal, and kept the owner’s best interests in mind, knowing that if this was meant to happen, it would. I won’t go into detail, but we worked out a deal. I think in the end, I communicated really well on this deal except for one minor piece. I got what I wanted, the Ms. Pac-man, so that was all that mattered, but the ex-owner is getting a really great deal from me.
Here are the photos I got tonight, and more to come later. First off, I wanted to post photos of my current machine to show the drastic contrast!
~Update 12/22/07 I got to see the Ms. Pac-man in person for the first time today. The Ms. Pac-man marquee has vibrant color with little scratches only on the black portions covered by the marquee brackets. The marquee was secured by non tamper torx screws, which I found odd. I’ll probably replace those.
The Ms. Pac-man glass bezel has just a tiny bit of flaking on the left side and the biggest surprise was the amount of flaking in the sideart. I can just brush off parts of the sideart with my finger if I wanted. The Ms. Pac game is dirty, so I will need to scrub it down, but I am not sure how to do that without taking off some of the sideart. Preserving the artwork will require some research.
I got to the back door through the marquee, checked the connections, powered Ms. Pac-man up, and surprise! It’s a working game! I got a working Ms. Pac-man with great pink sideart for $100. Thanks Craigslist. Hopefully it keeps working after transport.
I need some tips on cleaning the game. Can anyone give me any without ruining the sideart? I have heard of giving arcade games a clear coat to make the sideart shine and protect it, but I don’t want to put that over the dirt. Can anyone help me?
Ms. Pac-man Stencils on BYOAC
When I first got into the arcade game collecting hobby, the one game I wanted was a Ms. Pac-man. A common game that is easy to come by, but one I grew up with and have the fondest memories playing. (more…)
Rare HUO Bally Journey on ebay!
Located in Channahon, IL, this “Home Use Only” Bally/Midway Journey is truly a rare find for someone, and that arcade collector will be more than eager to dole out a premium to snatch it up. From the different views of this classic game, it looks pristine. Here are the photos of the Journey arcade machine.
Here is the description about the Journey game that was posted by the seller;
Original Bally/Midway JOURNEY Arcade Game
-1982 Vintage
-Was won by wife at Journey concert in Chicago in 1982.
-Set up for home use.
-Have schematics and manuals for machine
-Everything powers up except for the screen
A pretty amazing but not surprising classic game to come up for sale. My perception of Chicago and surrounding cities in Illinois is that collectors will continue to find treasures throughout the city for years to come. With so many arcade game companies with operations in Chicago, I have to believe that there are machines out there that are yet to be found.
~Edit 4.11.08
Turns out ZF Camaro out in Maryland was the individual who won the Journey arcade game auction on ebay (Klov thread with much better photos), and it just arrived this week! Wow, almost five months later. That is a long time to wait for an any game, but when it is a Home Use Only collectible game like Journey, it is worth the wait.
My arcade experiences with Wagner Gameworks in Greenfield, Indiana
When I first made the decision that I was going to collect dedicated original arcade games instead of having one big ugly black Mame machine in March of 2006, the first call I made was to Wagner Gameworks in Greenfield IN. (more…)
Sega Pengo finally working!
Today a fellow Indianapolis coin-op collector came over to help me take a look at my Pengo. Sitting in my basement now for over a year, and not working for about 15 months, Pengo has been the bane of my existence. The last thing I did on my Pengo, was I installed a switching power supply. I made a rookie mistake, however, and forgot to check my voltages before plugging my Pengo PCB in. After I turned the game off because the game reset and went to a screen of yellow bars, only then did I find that my +5v was at +5.83.
Convinced I had friend my pcb, I was distraught at potentially costing myself more money and unsure how to check for sure if the board was the problem.
So, today, my friend Robert took a look at the game with his accumulated knowledge. He first looked over the pcb, to see if there was any visible damage, fried parts, etc. He didn’t see anything that seemed problematic on the Pengo pcb. He noted on the backside that there had been some touchup at one point, because there was a dark discoloration on some of the solder points. He said that was flux, which I didn’t know until today. He also reminded me that the components on the pcb were meant to withstand higher voltages, just not for any extent of time. So, he was thinking that since I had only powered up my Pengo with the high / wrong voltages for a couple of minutes or less, that the board might still be ok. The newer boards were a little less sensitive, he said, to being damaged by incorrect voltages.
He plugged the harness connection onto the board, unplugged the coin door, and powered Pengo up. It appeared to work fine. So, we powered Pengo down, plugged the coin door back in, and tried again. Still, no issues. I wasn’t seeing the yellow bars when I had last used the game or anything.
It was like Robert had magical powers. I drilled out the bottom coin door, because there were some wires that we assumed went to the counter. Sure enough, there was a counter in the coin door, with about 9,100 plays. Not too bad, but I think that this Pengo was Home User Only (HUO) for most of it’s life. Robert also messed with the sound, adjusting the sound control on the board and finding that it was the base control and that the sound control inside the coin door would adjust the sound louder or softer from there. Another thing, that I know I tried and it didn’t do anything.
So, I played Pengo. We both had some beer, played a number of games. The game had no issue. It was like it was never broken. The coin up didn’t reset the game like it had for me, nothing. I left the game on periodically played it over the next 10 hours, and there were no issues at all. Well, I noticed that Pengo wasn’t keeping high scores after a little while, but you know what? I was just so happy I had my third working game that I didn’t care.
Thanks so much Robert, what a great guy to come down and check things out. I feel bad that it seemed like the Pengo problems that plauged me didn’t exist at all, but I was just happy that it works. The most important part.
Pengo CPO Vector Update 2
Been really looking forward to doing a Pengo control panel vector artwork progress update for over a week. It has taken me forever to find a few minutes here and there to work on tracing the remaining Pengo characters on the overlay. But here is the progress to date;
One glance and a collector knows, well, it looks like the Sega Pengo control panel is almost done. But, here are my notes so far;
- I traced the “left” direction Pengo and mirrored him. The “right” is slightly different, just enough that I will have to trace Pengo again.
- The Upper left Pengo and Sno-Bee are a mirror of the left side. They are a touch different as well, but that character artwork is a little more complex. I will have to take votes on what people think
- I think there are some color separation discrepancies from the original control panel overlay. I will also have to take a vote on what to do about that.
- Of course, the “Pengo” logo has to be traced.
I will probably post blown up raster images of the Pengo overlay details in question above, so keep posted here. But first things first, trace Pengo going for the right joystick direction and go from there.
~Edit 12/13/2007 I have now crossed off some of the completed items above on the Pengo control panel overlay. Check my new updated post “Pengo CPO Vector Update 3” – Tracing Complete! to see the current progress.
Ms. Pac-man Kickplate Dimensions
For awhile, I have been meaning to post about the three seriously long topic thread on BYOAC and KLOV about Joymonkey, and his quest to make licensed Ms. Pac-man stencils. He produced a set of Ms. Pac-man stencils, complete with videos, the whole works. There are a ton of images of the stencil development in the BYOAC thread which give a ton of great content and information.
For now, posting the Ms. Pac-man kickplate dimensions will have to suffice. Here they are. I could have measured my own Bally Ms. Pac-man, and drawn this diagram out, but why re-invent the wheel, and this is a nice kickplate diagram.
Any time you have a thread related to dimensions of Midway arcade cabinets you have talk about the “slope” of the Midway cabinets. (Ms. Pac-man, Pac-man, Galaga, Galaxian, etc. etc.) But in the case of the kickplate, there was some discussion of how accurate the Midway cabinet plans on Jakobud are, and this diagram puts all of those questions to rest.
