My Gameroom
Got to play my Mr. Do! in Allendale, MI
I got to see the game for the first time. I wasn’t impressed, but for what I got it for, it was a good deal for a working board and monitor. The cab was in worse shape than the photo showed, and the joystick was set so low that it was really hard to manuever and play.
I started to think what I was going to do with the game. I wasn’t going to have it in my basement looking like this, would I just keep it in the garage? I should try to make a decision before Justin comes down and brings it with him in February, so I thought on it a little bit.
Picked up my first Ms. Pac-man
Exciting day, very short and tiring night, but it was worth it.
There were a number of arcade cabinets in Marion, as I mentioned, and I was looking to buy one of the Midway’s that has the same shape as a Ms. Pacman so I could build my own.
But this week I had been watching a local auction on eBay for someone selling a Ms. Pacman that wasn’t working. I looked at the photos, the cabinet appeared to be in good condition, artwork was good and the problem sounded like a simple fix. The Ms. Pac-man was in Columbus, which was the closest one I had seen to this point and for the amount of money he was wanting as an opening bid I decided to see if he would sell it offline. I made the guy an offer, and a couple of hours later he took it! That was the first time I had did that, and it worked, and now I had my favorite game!
So I took the van down to Columbus and picked the machine up and brought it back. I was so pumped, when I first started collecting a Ms. Pac-man was what I really wanted, and I didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg to get it like I had anticipated I might. This Ms. Pac-man has a little bit of a cool back story.
The guy I met was involved with the youth ministry at a church in Columbus. When I pulled up with the van he opened a large freestanding garage that was fairly empty except for this Ms. Pac-man and a Tron (also on eBay, also not working). He started to tell me that these were the last two. He had liked both Tron and Ms. Pac-man growing up and since he had some electrical knowledge the plan was to try to fix them up.
But he could never find the time (shocker!) so it was time to sell them off. He said that the church has purchased an abandoned storage unit in the area of an old operator. Apparently this huge freestanding garage was at one time full of classic games that they had ebayed a number of years back! So at one time he had about 20-30 games, all classics just waiting to make their way into collectors hands.
Obviously I would have liked to have been looking for a Ms. Pac at that time, but it wasn’t in the cards and he didn’t really have any other information about that old operator for me. He just kind of vanished and defaulted on his storage payments.
What to do about the faded sideart?
As I researched and researched, I didn’t feel great about making my own with reproduced artwork, it would just never be the same, but I couldn’t pay the outrageous price that the machines go for, they just were too high. This kind of fell into my lap, and I was glad I didn’t go to Marion, it would have been a ton more work. Check out photos in the Photo Diary section of the machine, and keep posted here and I will try to mention when I get it running.
Mr. Do! bought on ebay in Grand Rapids, MI
In late November, Justin turned me on to two auctions one seller was having, very close to Grand Rapids MI, for a Mr. Do and Mr. Do Castle. They were both going for pretty cheap, so I bid on both. But I didn’t want them that bad, they didn’t look that great or so I thought, and I was at the movie when the auctions were ending.
I ended up winning the Mr. Do machine, but not the Castle. That was a mistake. The Castle was in great condition with a great cab. The Mr. Do had issues. The cabinet was terrible looking, and the board would intermittantly stop working and would need an adjustment here and there to keep working.
Justin made arrangements and went and got the game later the following week. He worked on it when he could to test the voltages and try to fix some things. At one point I sent him a new Jamma connector for him to put in, and that seemed to help things. The fuse holder was partially broken, and in general, the game had seen a lot of use so it needed some TLC.
