Got my Pengo High-Score Saver and Enhancement Pack
Pretty excited to come home last night after a long day and see that my Pengo High-Score Saver and Enhancement Pack from jrok had arrived.
This kit for Sega’s Pengo has a ton of goodies in it, if you are interested in buying one, here is the enhancement pack’s homepage. The main options that I wanted were;
- High Score Save – Even when game is turned off, of course I had to have this:)
- Change Music Type – Popcorn Pengo – I can’t stand the original music, Popcorn is what I have always played in Mame
- Freeplay – So I don’t have to coin up every time and increment that counter
I played Pengo last night in between studying. I had to set those high scores:) The Pengo enhancement pack is so simple,fast, and easy to install, as the instructions say (It’s also really affordable at under $50!);
- Step 1: Remove the CPU from the socket (Z-80 Processor)
- Step 2: With the CPU removed insert the Pengo e-pack board into the socket. Take note of the orientation and location of pin 1!
- Step 3: Insert the Pengo e-pack into the Processor Socket (Kit Fully Installed)
I always get nervous when working with these classic arcade games, mostly for the unknown. In the case of this enhancement install, there wasn’t a lot to double check. Make sure the direction of the board is correct (Just double check the direction of the half moon cutout on the Z-80 processor) and make sure it is pressed and secure and that none of the pins were bent on install. Reattach the harness connection in the right direction, and turn on the game. I watched the Pengo PCB in back just in case something happened and I could cut power as needed.
I wanted to see my Pengo scores come back up after I turned the game off. I was running out the door, so I didn’t have a lot of time. I waited about 30 seconds after my last game, turned the game off, waited 30 seconds, and turned Pengo back on. All I got was a flashing message saying something toe extent “Eprom reading high score tables”. The same message you get after each Pengo score is saved. I said a little prayer that it was new, or overheated, or I just did everything too quick, and hoped when I returned that my Pengo high score kit wasn’t broken already. When I got back, the game played fine, so I don’t know what the problem was, maybe I didn’t wait long enough for the next screen. Whatever.
Tonight I will be looking at the enhancement pack options more, to turn off “Game Select” and turn on Freeplay.
Thanks Jrok for making this Pengo high score saver enhancement kit, it really adds a lot of value to my game.
Scanned Both Versions of Sega’s Pengo Marquee
Tonight I got around to finish scanning both of the Pengo Marquees that I have, version 1 where Pengo is standing, and version 2 where Pengo is pushing an ice block.
I’ll be checking the artwork off of Arcade Art Library against my scan to see how accurate it is. I plan on vectorizing both Sega marquee versions eventually, possibly over Christmas, but will probably only reproduce the Pengo standing version of the marquee.
The standing Pengo marquee version was given to me for free when I stopped to visit an arcade operator in Ohio. The marquee is pretty sad, you notice the brush stroke type section of the print that is missing. The back of the marquee has some residue on it, and it appears as if someone put some sort of cleaner on the marquee, wiped it away, and didn’t think that by putting it on the artwork side would wipe away some of the Pengo artwork.
The Pengo pushing the ice block version of the marquee is what was in my game. I think this is the less common version, so I found it interesting that my mostly HUO Pengo had this version and not the standing version.
Got the “Numerals” version of the Pengo Control Panel Overlay
There was a post in the Google Arcade Group by a collector by the name of Troy Akey. Troy has a number of NOS pieces of arcade artwork that he is guaging interest to do reproductions. One of listed pieces of artwork was Pengo, but he failed to mention whether it was a control panel overlay or the sideart. I am assuming it is the CPO.
I posted that the Pengo control panel overlay is about 90% vectorized already, as well as the Pengo sideart. I have a great scan of the bezel, and that shouldn’t be that hard to vectorize. I also own both of the marquees, and as of tonight have scanned in the pieces of the standing Pengo marquee. (The “numerals” CPO is the only piece of artwork I don’t own.) I hope Troy just lets me make my kit and focuses on one of the other six to eight pieces of artwork he listed. Besides, you can already purchase a numerals version of the Pengo overlay from Mamemarquees.
But, with my post, I was fortunate to find a bunch of other collectors who are interested in the Pengo kit of artwork I want to reproduce. One collector in particular has a couple of NOS Pengo control panel overlays with the numerals. He has a good network, and was fortunate to get the original NOS Pengo artwork from an operator’s warehouse. Really awesome and nice guy, and we made an agreement on the Pengo reproductions that I am doing in exchange for what he has. The main idea is I am hoping his work will save me some time.
The fact that he has the NOS artwork is pretty cool, but he has also scanned in one of the overlays at 600 DPI, 24-Bit color, and to take it one step farther, he has already vectorized the whole CPO in Paint Shop Pro. Pretty amazing.
We spoke a lot via email over the last 24 hours, and I got the three pieces of the Pengo CPO scan with the numerals, as well as the Paint Shop Pro vector file he made. Here is a small image of what it looks like;
From what I can tell he didn’t finish the Pengo lettering with the halftone pattern overlaying the red to blue gradient. But other than that, he artwork looked pretty good. But I’ll tell you what. Before today, I had some pre-concieved notions about Paint Shop Pro. I thought, “It’s a dumbed down former -freeware made by Jasc that is good for the most basic image manipulation, but nothing else”. Well, PSP has a new name, Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, and a much cooler looking interface. Oh yeah, and Corel Draw owns it now, and it isn’t free, but pretty cheap. But the fact that they combined a raster and vector program should make most designers run screaming in the other direction, and for good reason. From what I could find, there is absolutely no way to get vector artwork out of PSP as a vector format. It will save artwork out as a .ai, or .eps, but it is a flattened raster image and nothing more. It also doesn’t save as a .svg, only reads that particular file format.
I researched their “message” boards, which are so old and antiquated…I searched the web finding only indications that what I wanted couldn’t be done, and I emailed their custom support which let me know that the trial version of the software doesn’t merit troubleshooting from their staff.
So, what I have is, a nice vector traced file of the Pengo control panel overlay numerals version, with no way to manipulate and add to it. (Unless I want to learn PSP…no thanks.)
So, does anyone out there know anything about Paint Shop Pro and what I need to do here? Can anyone help me?
~ Edit: I posted on the Klov forums, the BYOAC forums, Google’s Arcade Group, and rec.photo.digital. I got some good ideas on things to try to export or save vectors out of Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. The one comment I got twice, was to try exporting the file as a .wmf. Well, a .wmf was the only suggestion I got that worked in some sense. But the vector lines that came out as a .wmf were terrible, the curves were angular and it would have taken more time to correct the original vector trace from Paint Shop Pro than it would take to redraw it.
I ended up trying ImageConverter Plus to try to convert the .psp file to a .pdf. (Paint Shop Pro can’t export as a .pdf) I installed the software fine, opened a file, set my presets on what I wanted the output file to be and everything else. I hit start, ImageConverter said it was converting the Paint Shop Pro file…but it never made a file. Like there was an error.
I tried copying the vector artwork to the clipboard in Paint Shop Pro, and then pasting it into Freehand, Illustrator and Corel Draw. All of the software interpreted the PSP vectors as .bmp images.
I checked to see if Paint Shop Pro would save as a .cdl, Corel Draw file. But it doesn’t. Funny, since this Photo X2 is a new release, and both software are owned by Corel now. I even registered and posted in what looked like a well traffic’ed Paint Shop Pro forum (http://pspug.org). But no reply posts. What a piece of crap software, seriously. This isn’t that hard.
So, as of now, I am giving up. Unless someone out there with a licensed version of Paint Shop Pro wants to contact Corel for me and see if there is a way, I don’t think there is.
I zipped up the file and sent it to another collector to see if they could have any more luck. We’ll see.
~Edit 12/13/2007: I never did get a solution figured out on how to convert the vector art of the Pengo “numberals” control panel overlay from Paint Shop Pro into Illustrator. I haven’t heard back from the other collector, so as of right now I am assuming it can’t be done. I will be re-tracing this Pengo artwork soon, check my “Pengo CPO Vector Update 3 – Tracing Complete!” post to vote on whether you want this to be the next piece of artwork done or not.
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.
Finding The Rare Pengo Bezel
I saw this Pengo flyer over a week ago with the rare “dark blue” bezel and I can’t curb my curiosity. I can only see a small image of the full upright Pengo, but the bezel looks like it is a dark blue color, with a completely different design for Pengo and the Sno-Bees. The only bezel I have ever seen is the one on my machine, but I have to wonder if any other collectors out there have this more rare Pengo Bezel.
Here is the link again to the original Pengo flyer released by Sega back in 1982. Dan Hower lists the source as Leandro Dardini, who is probably just an arcade game collector. Is this version of Pengo shown in the flyer a “beta” test version that Sega later revised after consumer feedback? For now, I am going to refer to this bezel version as “version B”.
I don’t know the answer to that question. In just under a half hour of searching today I came up empty handed, other than I fond a couple other collectors who own Pengo’s.
Sega’s Pengo has a pretty loyal following. I sent out emails to about 12 of the Pengo collectors listed on VAPS to see if I could find out any more information. We’ll have to see what, if anything I hear back.
July 10th, 2008
I ended up buying a copy of the Pengo flyer and scanning in the rare Pengo bezel prototype version at a resolution. Take a look, you can see what looks like huge versions of the characters, the Sno Bees and Pengo himself, with no ice mountains in the background. Now that I scan it in, it looks funny, with Pengo only on the right side and hardly the focus of the artwork.
Pengo CPO Vector Update 1
I started working on vectorizing the Pengo control panel overlay (cpo) the day after I scanned it. In the first day I got the Pengo on the underside of the joystick (down motion) finished, as well as most of the Pengo eskimo player 1. On day two, I finished the eskimo player 1, and two players by mirroring the same artwork. Today, I also finished Pengo pushing an ice block into a sno bee on the upper left. But just Pengo, not the ice or the sno bee themselves.
Don’t know what tomorrow will bring for the Pengo artwork, hopefully continued progress.
There has been a ton of great debate and information on the Klov forums over the past couple of days on this Pengo project. We’ll have to pick between the two versions of most of the Pengo artwork, I will probably only do one set of reproduction artwork for this Sega game. We’ll have one marquee, one bezel, and one control panel reproduced. There is only one version of the Pengo sideart.
