Pengo on Chicago Craigslist
Short post, can’t resist when one of my favorite games come up for sale nearby on Craigslist.
Best offer takes it – i have a 80s pengo machine by sega. i was told it needs a new transformer to make it work. perfect for someone who knows a little about repair. Selling for the top offer – please email me if you have questions.
Pengo High Score – 347,430
Over the weekend I trashed my newly achieved high score in Sega’s Pengo. My score of 226,610 was the first time I had beaten all 16 levels and started over, and I knew that I could break the top 10 Pengo high scores on Twin Galaxies with a touch higher score at just over 250,000. Little did I know that I would just storm my un-official way up to 6th place all time worldwide with a Pengo score of 347,430.
Since that first time I cleared all 16 levels I have done it four more times, and with my new high score of 347,000+ I played to level 40 before I died. I still have my setting at the hardest gameplay, and for a couple of reasons I am still weary about changing it down to the medium difficulty for true Twin Galaxies “tournament” settings.
- The harder gameplay makes me better – Don’t want to have to step down and lost that edge
- I’ll lose my High Scores:(
- I am not going for anything official – yet
In the last week I have been in email contact with Blaine Locklair at Twin Galaxies to find out a little more about the submission guidelines. The high score submissions are fair, but kind of a pain (from turning the game on and off, getting a boot screen, stating name etc.), and right now, I am still small chips on the Pengo high score list. With my current score, I am in a league where the best scores taper off fast with my next closest competitior, Francesco Vasta from Italy, is at 457,400!
In order to be official, I would have to remove my Jrok high score board, and I would prefer not to if at all possible. So for now I won’t worry about high score submissions. If I start to score 800,000 or higher for a couple of games it might be time to think about going for the Pengo world record, but right now I have a way to go. I feel like I can knock off Vasta, and Terry Tanaka at 460,000 and that may be it.
Would you go through the work of submitting a score to Twin Galaxies if you were in the top ten? I want to hear from some other collectors. I am guessing most might say it’s not worth it.
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.
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?
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.
Pengo Numerals CPO Vectorized!
I got an email about a week ago (January 8th) from Chris. I knew that he had been working on the other Pengo CPO and it was a nice surprise to see that he had finished the final vector details.
Chris had a scan of the Pengo numerals control panel overlay, and he had completely vectorized the artwork in Paint Shop Pro awhile back. I had tried to convert that artwork, to bring it into Illustrator (A couple small things needed to be done, like the lettering and dot gradient and I don’t know PSP), but after a ton of hours searching I had no luck.
Well, in the meantime, Chris went out and taught himself Illustrator and did a bang up job tracing the Pengo CPO in one of his first vectorizing jobs. but he’s a small cookie anyway, he is a MIT grad! Here is a small image of it.
I am going to email him with some of my thoughts and opinions about some of the accuracy of the details. It might come down to a matter of preference between one artist and another, who knows, but we have had some good theological conversations about arcade reproduction artwork and everything will probably work out alright. Each arcade vector artist will trace something a little differently.
Having most of the Pengo artwork is a great start. We have a vector Illustrator file of Sega’s Pengo numerals CPO finished, sans color matching. As always, continue to follow Rotheblog for Pengo reproduction updates.
Removing Masking Tape Residue on Arcade Games
On my long to do list of small arcade maintenance activites, here is a photo of my Pengo.
I think the previous owner of this Sega Pengo also couldn’t figure out how to tone down the sound on the game, so they tapes something over the speaker and left it for quite some time. You can see the thick resilient masking tape residue.
Here is what you will need, pretty simple actually.
I started out with a rag and soaked it with Goo Gone, dabbing it on the residue. But I wasn’t able to apply it as thick as I wanted.
Then I figured out to soak the Scotch Brite pad and then apply it to the underside of the cabinet to start to break down the masking tape remnants.
Then, carefully after a few minutes, I scrubbed carefully in a circular motion (not pressing too hard so I didn’t make tiny scratches in the paint) until most of the residue was gone. Here is the underside of the Pengo cabinet under the marquee after I was finished. It isn’t perfect, but it is a lot better and satisfactory for me.
