Classic Arcade Games
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.
Super Punch Out Decal Reproductions
There was a post on the forums about a month back of someone looking to do reproductions for some Nintendo Super Punch Out Decal / Sideart Stickers. At the time, I jumped in, thought it would be a fun short project that could help me get to know some more collectors.
The collector sent out polite emails to all VAPS members who had a Super Punch Out to see if any of them would be willing to help get a scan of the Super Punch Out sideart. As it turned out, one member had one NOS decal, un-applied and was open to getting it scanned. They took it to a local print shop to get a nice full oversize scan of the Super Punch Decal, it turned out nice. They sent me a copy, but the collectors decided that is made more sense to do the decal reproductions on their own and I didn’t feel that strongly about this game personally so that was fine. (I haven’t ever actually played Punch Out or Super Punch Out in the arcade, only Nintendo)
Here is what a smaller version of what that sideart Super Punch Out Decal piece looks like;
There were two challenges with the artwork. The is a dot gradient of sorts on the swooping “Super” lettering, and the original artwork was screen printed on reflective material of sorts. Here is a closeup of the gradient.
I had originally contacted Rich at This Old Game to get his input on how the gradient would be done. It doesn’t sound like the Super Punch Out decals will be made with him, however;
We are looking for people interested in buying a set (two decals, one for each side of the machine).
The decal in question is approximately 18″ x 10″ and is placed above the regular Punch-Out side art when converting to Super Punch-Out. It says “Super” on it and looks like this – http://maxim.skyphix.com/super.jpg
This illustration from the Super Punch Out manual shows where they are applied on the machine;
I have an NOS Super Punch Out decal that I scanned in at 600 DPI and vector traced. The NOS decal will also be used by the screen printer for color matching. The original Punch Out decal has portions that are a metallic silver-gray in color, and I was concerned about them being able to recreate that. I visited their place today to show them the decal and they showed me a piece they were doing for L.L. Bean which used a nearly identical metallic silver-gray ink, so that part should be no problem.
The Super Punch Out artwork will be screen printed (AKA: silk screened), 3 colors, with the black being halftoned to represent the gradients (which is how the original was done), onto white self-adhesive vinyl, and cut to the outside shape on a plotter.
When looking at the original, they noted that it was laminated, which gives it a glossy appearance. They showed me a piece they had done that was laminated in the same way, and the finish/gloss was identical.
The cost was originally estimated at $26 per decal, but with lamination, it was estimated at $27 per decal ($54 per set). I know it is a bit pricey, but it is a small run (minimum order of 24 pieces).
Anyone interested in buying a set for a Punch-Out or Super Punch-Out machine will only need to pay actual cost.
There was a tremendous response to the reproduction decals, which is awesome for them because they’ll both get a couple new sets of the Punch Out Decals as well as recoup some of their cost. Sounds like the order was placed on the 27th of this month, so the Super Punch Out Decals will probably be done sometime in December of 2007.
Update: 02.06.08
The Super Punch Out Decals were finished at the beginning of the year, around the second week of January 2008. Here is a photo of the final product. Not the best photo of the sideart decal, but it is a reflective material so what can you do?
They sold out in the pre-order with only about 10 sets of Super Punch Out art reproduced. Make sure not to miss out as Maximum Recoil is continuing his quest on reproducing artwork for this, his favorite game, by doing a limited fun on the “Duck Pull” artwork.
Retro Arcade Video – Chardon Jeans & Stern’s Berzerk
Cop out tonight, I have too much to do and no time.
Saw this retro arcade video link posted in the Google Coin-Op groups. It’s a commercial for Chardon jeans, smacking of true 80’s design, cool at the very least for the girl that is rollerskating like life couldn’t get any more simple. The jean commercial is set in what looks like an arcade, I was not old enough at the time to know if this is a typical looking arcade or not. Oh yeah, and Larry Bird is also in the commercial.
The game of choice in the commercial is Stern’s Berzerk, and it looks as though the marquee doesn’t have any flaking just yet:)
Jr. Pac-man developed by GCC
I was surfing tonight, trying to come up with an idea for an arcade related post, when I came across this arcade history.
On arcade-history.com, I saw a snippet of information on the history of Jr. Pac-man that I did not know;
Jr. Pac-Man was developed by ‘General Computer Corporation’ (GCC) for Bally/Midway and is essentially an enhancement to “Ms. Pac-Man”
I thought to myself, isn’t General Computer Corporation the company that made Super Missile Attack back in the day, a hack enhancement board to Missile Command and was sued by Atari? I thought that the lawsuit was settled, GCC went under, but before they did they had to build three games for Atari as part of the settlement. Food Fight and Quantum were two of those games, and the third was never made.
I took a look at General Computer Corporation on Wikipedia, and this is what I found;
The General Computer Corporation was an early video game company started by Doug Macrae and Kevin Curran.
The company started out with the game Super Missile Attack, which was sold as an enhancement board to Missile Command. Atari sued them for this, but the suit was soon dropped after Macrae and Curran agreed to develop games for Atari and stop making enhancement boards without permission. Their next project was Ms. Pac Man, which they developed as an enhancement kit for Pac-Man. They took the game to Midway who sold it as a sequel to Pac-Man.
They made other arcade games for Atari, such as Food Fight…
So, GCC was a third party that development coin-op games for the big arcade companies at one point in time. It looks like GCC development Ms. Pac-man, and more importantly, Jr. Pac-man.
I would assume that developed means they designed, built, programmed and fabricated the arcade machines themselves. Which leads me to believe that maybe an artist at GCC would have done the sideart and other artwork / stickers for Jr. Pac-man.
I am going to have to explore this a little more. At the very least, I still believe the famous pinball illustrator Margaret Hudson may have some contacts to lead me to the original Jr. Pac-man artist. I just need to find her contact information, hopefully an email. It almost seems like she does freelance work for Stern Pinball now, or works directly for Stern in their art department.
Found a Tempest mini arcade game
Today, I stumbled into one heck of a deal. I found a lady local to Indianapolis who had a couple of games sitting in her garage. Her husband used to be an operator, but he passed away a couple of years ago. At that time, most all of the arcade and pinball machines he had were sold. But a Mr. Do! and Tempest remained.
I was lucky enough to come across this find, but was not familiar at all with Tempest – I’m still fairly new at this. Mr. Do! was my primary interest and one of my most favorite games. I posted it on RGVAC to see what interest there was for a wood grain sided Tempest arcade game around the Indianapolis area. Offers came pouring in, and in the end I was able to pick up the game and within an hour had made an agreement to get it into the hands of another local collector in the Indianapolis area.
The Tempest worked briefly when we plugged it in at the lady’s house. But when I arrived at the collector’s house to drop it off and we plugged it in, smoke came pouring out of the back almost immediately. I hope that the other collector can get it working again, Tempest is a game he has sought to find for some time throughout the state of Indiana.
