Classic Arcade Games

Another missed cocktail deal!

I think that I must be cursed from picking up on any great deals involving cocktail table top arcade games in Indianapolis. Late last week I stumbled across a new classifieds website that contained the following ad;

TABLE PAC MAN GAME 1980 BALLY CO. NEEDS MONITOR GOOD CONDITION SELLING FOR $ 80. CALL FOR INFORMATION ASK FOR ED

Twice in one month I missed great deals on table top arcade games. I called and left a message, figuring for sure that the pac-man cocktail had sold and the seller had forgotten to take the listing down. That was Thursday, and finally on Saturday I got a call back saying, sure enough, that pac-man arcade game sold last month soon after it was listed. (more…)

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Atari Quantum Reproduction Artwork

Atari’s famous Quantum is a highly collectible game among arcade gamers for many different reasons. One of those reasons is that, like most Atari games, Quantum has some great artwork giving a idealized illustration of the gameplay. Most hardcore collectors may know that artwork for most of the game has been reproduced, or is in the middle of reproduction. But for those new collectors out there with big dreams of completely remaking their own Quantum, here are some resources in one place for you to find all of the artwork you need.

Joe Magiera’s reproduction Quantum marquees

Which Quantum marquee is the reproduction and which is the original? It’s hard to tell isn’t it?

Joe had a relationship already with Scott Evans, who just one year prior in 2003, went to the old Atari location (renamed to Midway West and later shut down) and saved artwork films, production artwork, and many other goodies from destruction. Joe got with Scott to borrow the original film for the Quantum marquees to print up a small run. The original Quantum marquees were silk screened on glass, and Joe chose to make these repros out of plexi for two reasons; cost and preserving the value of the original marquees. On Joe’s repro, the light blue color used in the main body of the text is a lighter shade of blue than the original. It’s kind of hard to tell in a .jpg image but if you compare an original with the reproduction you can see the difference. Joe went through so many different blues trying to match it as close as possible, and this was the best possible color choice.

Joe Magiera did an awesome job contracting this reproduction job in 2004, and as of this writing (March 2008) he still has some Quantum marquees left. If you are interested in purchasing a marquee, you can contact him with his email from the Google Arcade Collecting Group.

Quantum Marquees Related Links

Google Groups RGVAC Marquee Development Thread
Additional marquee photos on Joe’s site

Reproduction Quantum Control Panel Overlays

A little history – The vectorlist collectors had been looking for an unapplied NOS CPO for a long time. When one popped up on ebay, Tom McClintock, Noel Johnson and Joe Magiera formed an agreement and bought the control panel overlay togther. At this time in 2000, Atari was still in business so it wasn’t possible to use any original artwork films. They enlisted Roy Kaplan to vectorize the Quantum artwork. Roy had a great reputation from previous work he did on Gravitar, Tempest, Black Widow and Major Havoc.

Tom McClintock did most of the leg work from there getting the control panel overlays printed. But the bad thing was that the printer he took the Quantum artwork to, after they delivered the final CPO’s, went bankrupt and didn’t return any screens or artwork back to Tom. The artwork is lost and would have to be recreated from Roy’s original vectorized file.

Screen printed on 10mil Polycarbonate Velvet Lexan there was only a limited number of control panels available and have long since sold out. I am sure a number of die hard collectors got their hands on one, and if you can find out who owns one, you might be able to pay a premium for theirs. You might also contract one of the original guys involved in the reproductions (Tom McClintock, Noel Johnson and Joe Magiera) to see if they have any extras left. Or, you could make another small run of reproductions yourself, but the demand would probably be very low based on the number of original Quantum’s produced and this run of control panel overlays.

Quantum CPO Related Links

Pre-Planning for the Quantum CPO’s on Vectorlist – March 2000
Original Quantum CPO Order Page

Quantum Kickplate and Sideart Artwork

Archer is also in the process of re-creating the Quantum sideart and kickplate artwork. I can’t find an image on his home website of his progress, but here is a proof of Archer’s Quantum sideart from 2006 that I got from Francis Mariani of Ataricade.

Archer has established himself as one of the most accurate in classic arcade reproduction artwork, up there with any of the printers today like Phoenix Arcade, This Old Game and Prok. However, his artwork is produced with a high end inkjet which makes traditional collectors spew obscenities like Adam Sandler in a McDonalds. Some collectors may not be interested in his inkjet artwork, but when you compare the game’s original artwork with the reproductions side by side, I wouldn’t have any arguements about putting inkjet artwork on my classic cabinets.

Here is a thread from last year on the Klov forums. We see reproduction Red Baron and Black Widow sideart that another collector purchased, and Archer comes in to defend himself and his great work. Here is an image of that Black Widow artwork comparing the reproduction vs. the original, it’s amazing;

Archer is a busy man, but eventually he’ll finish off the Quantum kickplate artwork. I wouldn’t suggest emailing him and bugging him about his projects, but here is Archer’s homepage, and the main directory of all of Archer’s work hosted at Ionpool (in case something isn’t linked up from the previous link. Great way to kill some time and drool on your polo as you look at all of the great classic arcade artwork he has produced / is producing. Apparently there was some work that still needed to be done to finish it, and ready to be printed.

Related Quantum Archer Artwork Links

Archer’s Directory of Quantum Images and Goodies

Additional Quantum Oddities

If you take a look through the Quantum directory on Ionpool, you will see a piece of pre-production kickplate artwork. I don’t know if Archer owns that, or owned it and sold it, but here is that kickplate image. Louissurfer on Klov has a photo of this same piece of pre-production Quantum artwork, or has another copy of it.

There are two different versions of Quantum machines floating around. You will probably try to remake the original, but if you are interested in what the pre-production models looked like, Francis at Ataricade (great resource for this post, thank you) has an awesome webpage with photos showing both sets of Quantum artwork, check it out if you are curious (screenshot below).

Quantum artwork has been done, what else?

So, Quantum marquees have been made, sideart is probably in some stage of production, kickplate artwork has been vectorized and is on it’s way, and there is no artwork on the bezel, Atari just had smoked tempered glass in front of the monitor.

All you need to do is find a cabinet, and all of the electronic parts including a pcb (photo), and well…no one said this was going to be easy or even possible. If you manage to find a Quantum pcb and are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for it, you can contact Mark Spaeth to get one of his Quantum / Tempest harness adapters work with the board until you have your reproduction cabinet up and going.

Differences in Quantum and Space Duel / Gravitar cabinets

You will find information on the internet saying that Quantum had the same Atari cabinet as Space Duel and Gravitar, but this is actually not true. Although the cabinet ‘looks’ the same as Gravitar/BW and Space Duel, it’s actually not, in spite of what’s erroneously reported on various websites.

The Quantum cabinet was modified to allow for the extra bend in the control panel (See photo below). That extra bend was needed to allow space for the trackball, which needs more room than allowed in the Gravitar/BW and Space Duel control panels. (Gravitar/BW and Space Duel all use a button arrangement, which takes up very little interior space).

Also, the smoked monitor glass is longer in Quantum than those found in Gravitar/BW and Space Duel, because Quantum uses a vertically orientated monitor (Gravitar/BW and Space Duel all use a horizontally orientated montitor, and thus the monitor glass used on those cabs is smaller).

Back in August of 2004, Hans O had reproduction Quantum control panels and glass brackets produced. Here is a link to Vectorlist talking a little more about those repros. It appears as if Hans O sold out of the control panels, but if he had enough interest, he might be willing to do another run. Here is a photo of one of those reproduction cpanels; (Thanks Lou)

Good luck with your big dreams, you might be best to track down another collector and try to make an exact replica of the Quantum cabinet.

Know anything else about the Quantum artwork?

So, have any of the collectors heard updates on the Quantum artwork from Archer? Who prepaid for a set of sideart / kickplate artwork? Who bought one or more of the Quantum control panel overlays when Archer produced them a few years back? Anyone have a proof image of the Quantum kickplate reproductions? I would also love to have a photo or two of the reproduction control panel and glass bracket, if you would be willing to submit a photo.

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Pengo High Score!

I was taking a break from reading my economics tonight, playing my favorite game Pengo and trying to decide what my blog entry for tonight would be. I have a list of items I want to write about, but before I realized it, I had made it to level 14 in Pengo without dying and I was racking up quite a score and I knew what my topic would be.

I swore when I played Sega’s Pengo in Mame, that the levels and the difficulty rolled over at some point back to level 1. I was thinking Pengo rolled over at level 14, but as you can see below I had proven this wasn’t the case. Tonight I beat level 16 and got a nice surprise, I was back at level one, with the less aggressive and lesser quantities of Sno-Bees and all sorts of opportunities to easily line up the diamond blocks. By the time I was done, I had trashed my previous high score with a score of 226,610! Check out my high scores list;

Before that point, I had given up on returning to easy levels, and couldn’t fathom how all of the top Pengo players on Twin Galaxies lasted long enough to get scores higher than 400,000, 600,000 and even a score of over 1,000,000 (Rodney Day). My Pengo score in theory would put me at 11th place! I was hoping I cracked the top 10, but now I know to concentrate harder on beating level 16 to really run up that score.

I checked my dip switch settings (set for freeplay on Jrok’s Pengo enhancement pack), here’s my configuration;

Switch Bank 1

• 1 – On
• 2 – On
• 3 – On
• 4 – On
• 5 – Off
• 6 – Off
• 7 – Off
• 8 – On

Switch Bank 2

• 1 – Off
• 2 – Off
• 3 – Off
• 4 – Off
• 5 – On
• 6 – On
• 7 – Off
• 8 – Off

According to my switches, I am playing Pengo on the “hard” setting, and I am setup for three lives. The settings for Twin Galaxies Tournament Settings are for medium difficulty with five lives. I don’t want to erase my Pengo scores and start over, but I know for sure that I would do that much better with more lives and an easier difficulty.

Can anybody out there informally challenge my high score? Meaning, a higher score played on an actual Pengo machine? A score not submitted to Twin Galaxies because it’s a little self indulgent and because it can be difficult to submit.

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Craigslist Pac-man Cocktail Deal

It was about 11:30 last night, and I checked my feeds for Craigslist. As anyone who hunts Craigslist for classic arcade games knows, and I have experienced this first hand with my Ms. Pac-man win in Michigan, 99% of the time it’s junk and spammers but that 1% of the arcade findings are a great deal, and then it all comes down to timing.

Somehow I totally missed a post for northern Indianapolis at about 1:10 (I can’t remember what I was doing other than working at that time of day);

Moving and must sell many items. Antiques include; Armoire, buffet, secretary, marbletop end table, marbletop corner table, marbletop hall piece, carved walnut pedestal and Louis side chair. Reproduction queen ann desk, chippendale bench, and federal table. Old Pac Mac arcade table, needs repair. Do not want to download all the photos. Please call to set appointment to see if you are interested. Location NW side if Indy between Carmel and Zionsville.

I emailed late last night, figuring some other collector or worse in Indianapolis got to the pac-man cocktail first. Sure enough, it was gone. (more…)

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High Score Save for Konami Gyruss

Through a series of links this week, I came across another individual that does “High Score Save Kits” for arcade games other than Jrok. Most collectors probably already know Matt Osborn, he has developed a high score saving kit for Konami’s Gyruss and Time Pilot.

I decided to email Matt and learn a little bit more about his background, and see if he could give me some more information that isn’t listed on his “Score Saves” website. Really nice guy, this is the great response I got back!

Here’s some background info on me:

I went to MIT for graduate school, where I studied Nuclear Physics. I was an experimental physicist working on particle accelerators. So I’ve been tinkering with electronics and computers for a long time. But it was as an undergrad at UNH that I learned the most about electronics. In the Physics program there we were required to take a full year of electronics, one semester of analog and one of digital. The course involved extensive lab exercises.

For the digital labs we each got to build our own computer from the ground up on a breadboard. IIRC, it had a Motorola 6800 with an 8K SRAM. We learned a little assembly language and programmed our computers manually by loading machine code directly into RAM with a hex keypad. Our lab assistant (a grad student who apparently had too much free time) went as far as to make a Pong game with his computer that used an oscilloscope for a display.

My days as a physicist are long behind me… I’ve been working in software engineering for over 10 years now. I still love to tinker with electronics though. So when I started collecting arcade video games I just had to take them apart and see how they worked. Actually, most of the games I’ve picked up were not operational, so figuring out how they work was somewhat of a necessity. Fixing the games is half the fun for me.

For the most part, each game board is its own custom computer. It’s neat to see how they were designed and how they evolved through the 80’s. In the late 80’s and 90’s they started using more and more custom ASICs, and the schematics for the boards were not made publicly available, so working on or hacking those systems is usually not fun at all. But the classic arcade boards from the early to mid 80’s are fairly well documented and usually easy to follow. Luckily, those are the ones I remember playing as a kid, and hence are the ones I tend to collect.

But the one thing the later games tend to have but the early ones typically lack is the ability to remember the high scores after the machine is powered off. And I found myself playing the games with the saved scores more often simply because I had a clear goal when playing them (sometimes I’ll play for hours just to get a new score up on the table). With the old games, that incentive just wasn’t there. Sure, I had a rough idea of what my personal best was, but it just wasn’t the same.

I had seen that people like JROK had added high score saving ability to classic games like Frogger. So I figured I’d give it shot with some of my favorite classic games. I started with Time Pilot, and quickly realized that I could exploit the same trick I used there with Gyruss, so I combined the two score saves into a single EPROM that works with both. I’ve done score saves for a dozen or more games since then, as well as adding freeplay mode to games that either lacked it or had a poor implementation of it.

My arcade collecting first started with pinball machines. The greatest Christmas present I received as a kid (I believe I was 13) was a Gottlieb electro-mechanical pinball (Jacks Open, which I still have) that my parents bought for me and my two brothers. When I was out of school and had a place of my own I went looking for more pinball machines to buy and fix up (even though they wouldn’t fit in the place I was living at the time, and the games ended up in relatives’ houses) and I soon had a couple more pinballs that I found through the local newspaper.

Then one day my father-in-law called to say he saw some video games sitting by the side of the road on someone’s lawn. I ran over there to find a Galaxian (which I still have) and a Star Castle that the guy wanted $40 for the pair. And that’s how my video game collection started. Now they outnumber my pinballs.

Cool story on how he got into collecting arcade games. If you take a look at Matt’s website, Score Saves.com, you will see that he has a ton of projects that are on his plate.

Matt has started or finished high score saving or free play capabilities for classic games like;

• Juno First
• Pooyan
• Time Pilot
• Time Pilot 84
• Gyruss
• Nemesis
• Turtles

Some other games that Matt Osborn has listed as possibly future projects for what you might consider an arcade “mod” or “upgrade” are;

• Circus Charlie
• Pandora’s Palace
• Roc’n Rope
• Mega Zone

Plus, he mentioned a few more cool arcade kits in his email that I am sure he will announced after he has had time to fully test them. I had briefly thought, “Maybe Matt could make up some Jr. Pac-man score save kits, and that is a pretty popular game so maybe it could be worthwhile for him.” I think Matt has enough to do:) I don’t know what I was thinking.

It is ridiculous how affordable the Gyruss kit is at $30, a drop in the bucket when it comes to collecting arcade games. Installing the save kit is pretty easy, do some soldering on a socketed chip and replace one or two more. Gyruss is a great game. I have only played it once in person in Chicago at Chris Moore’s place and I liked it instantly. If you have Gyruss, and are looking to up your game play and always challenge yourself, check out Matt’s high score save kit.

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Sinistar in Joystik Magazine 1983

Note: Some of the following content is directly from Xmission. As best I can tell, Xmission were the original online publishers of this content, and you can find all of what I have here at the above address. Also, a short nod to Joystik magazine who originally published the arcade content in paper form.

I have visited a lot of arcade sites since I started collecting, and it can be challenging to keep them all straight. Xmission is a great arcade website, although not that user friendly, for a wealth of old arcade information and resources.

It wasn’t until today that I realized that Xmission has a section on their website for scanned pdf and jpg images of arcade related books, magazine and literature.

One such magazine was “Joystik” magazine, published in the 80’s, that focused on classic arcades, reviews, strategies, etc. etc. Most of the articles talk about the arcade games as they were still new, or newly released, from Pac-man and Tempest to Pengo and Robotron. Here are just a couple of the covers;

I love the artwork, they did the best with the clunky printing technology available in the early 80’s. Especially some of the inside magazine graphics of Pengo (upper right cover) are strange Monty Python-esqe direct translation instead of interpretive illustrations of the game characters.

I decided to read through an article on Williams Sinistar that was released in the Joystik magazine back in September of 1983 (Sinistar Cover above). At the time it was released, I may have started to read, but judging by my mental capacity today, I doubt it. I would have been almost four years old when it was published. Sinistar had just been tested at the AMOA in Chicago in 1982 and got mixed reviews from players and critics.

I love Sinistar but would not have heard of it if it wasn’t for the beauty of classic arcade game collections for the modern systems, in this case – Playstation. I got hooked on Sinistar in the Williams collection, but have never actually played it in person as an Upright Machine. I would love to. I have played Food Fight with the analog joystick, and assume the 7×7 joystick in Sinistar would be a similar feel and make controlling the ship a little bit easier. Surprising as it may seem, opposable thumbs may separate us from monkeys, but they aren’t great for collecting sinibombs.

Either way, I thought the article on Sinistar gameplay, although straightforward, had some interesting tips in it that I will employ. I pieced together the pages with the tips, click on the image below for a larger version. (2 MB+)

Here are the tips I picked up on – Originally written by Doug Mahugh;

Once a Planetoid has absorbed enough energy from your shots, it will being emitting crystals and then continue emitting crystals as long as you keep the total energy of the Planetoid above a certain threshold. there is no limit to the number of crystals that can be mind from a single Planetoid, but the Planetoid can be accidentally destroyed if you fire into it too rapidly; it will simply absorb too much energy and shake itself apart.

If you do recover it, (crystal from a blown up Worker) you’ll receive 200 points, but following a single crystal all around the universe – when you could be mining many more – is definitely a rookie move.

(Referencing strategies to gameplay from design team leader Noah Falstein) Start out by mining crystals like mad. Then, use a bomb to find the Sinistar (drop a bomb and watch which direction it goes).

The idea of chasing down an errant crystal isn’t a great insight, but couple that with the idea that a Planetoid will keep emitting crystals as long as you don’t blow it up and I have a new method of destroying Sinistar. I chased down bombs because I thought there were limited amounts emitted per planetoid. Plus, the idea of dropping a test bomb to discover Sinistar’s location is a good one. I hadn’t researched strategies before now, most collectors who play this game a lot or own a Sinistar probably already know all of this. Heck, some of them may have this issue of Joystik and read it when it was released.

But it was a fun trip back in time for me, and hopefully I will be that much better when I finally do play Williams Sinistar in person.

Any of my readers have any other great Sinistar gameplay tips that weren’t listed in Joystik?

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Pengo on Ebay in Indianapolis Area

I have my RSS feeds setup such that I immediately see when new auctions are listed concerning my favorite arcade games. Within 2 minutes of the initial listing, I saw a Pengo come up on ebay on January 30th, 2008. The starting bid was $20! As things usually go, I opened the link and figured the game would be in Oregon or something. It was in Plainfield, IN! For $20, how can that be possible? The story the seller gave surround the Pengo sounded true and it appeared as if this would be a great deal for someone.

My dad owned a video arcade that went out of business in the 80’s. I bought this upright Pengo Arcade game and brought it home. It got a lot of use by my wife and daughters. I remodeled the basement and decided to move it to the new Rec Room, but the basement door was too narrow. I moved it to the garage during a remodeling project, where it has been for the past 10 years. Now my girls are grown and gone, and even though I’ve purchased a wiring diagram for the machine, I still haven’t managed to find the time to work on it.

I called him that morning right away asking for photos of the Pengo, not even sure what I was going to do with it if I bought it. Would I buy a second Pengo? But for $20 starting bid, how could I pass it up? I decided that if this Pengo had the other control panel, the one with the roman numerals, I would drive out to Plainfield, make and offer on it and snatch it up and then have the two different Pengo UR’s in my basement. How long would I wait for photos if the seller never got back to me? Would I drive out sight unseen the next day? Did I feel that strongly about the idea of a good deal without really wanting another arcade game?

I didn’t have to make those decisions because four photos were updated in the auction later that night, and I saw that this was going to be a great deal for someone.

This Pengo has the exact same control panel overlay that mine does, and even though it has most of the sideart and will be a steal for someone, I decided to pass.

Well, today, the auction ended. $81! (Right click this link and choose “Save As” for an ebay screenshot of this Pengo auction.) What a rock bottom final auction price. Just goes to show you how weird the market for these games can be, and timing. A non guaranteed working Pengo, but probably an easy fix, sold in the Indianapolis, Indiana area for less than $100. A true steal if you want to keep the game in your collection. The Pengo fixed up to the right buyer might bring in $300, but if you ebay it, probably less. If the bid had stayed under $50, I would have gone for it and figured out the rest later.

Also, it really is true that patience is a virtue. If I had waited about 18 months, I could have bought this Pengo here less than 10 miles away. But instead, I drove to Nashville, TN for mine.

But mine was HUO for most of it’s life, has perfect sideart, and it just a great looking machine. Plus, I had my first bulk buy, my first arcade game adventure, and I ended up getting my Pengo for free. Once I sold off all of the other machines I paid for the trip and the Pengo. (View the Nashville bulk arcade game buy photo album.)

I am just glad to know that it is staying here locally with Aaron Demaree over in the Speedway area. Once you get it fixed 7146aaron, you should definitely look into Jrok’s high score save kit. I play my Pengo every night, trying to best my own scores and enter my initials. Sega’s Pengo is one of the best games ever.

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