Pengo CPO Scanned
I decided last night that I would be a little more pro-active about the Pengo control panel overlay scan.
I took my control panel off of my Pengo, gave it a much needed scrub down with some citrus cleaner (hadn’t been done since I purchased the Pengo game about 15 months ago) and then I scanned the artwork in and pieced it back together.
This way, if I never hear back on my email about another Pengo CPO NOS scan, I have this one, and it has great detail at 600 DPI for the original scan, downsampled to 300 DPI for tracing.
I did notice looking through my found image files of Pengo control panels that there was another version. There was a second Pengo CPO that had a numeral “I” and “II” for the player buttons, and it had Pengo pushing the ice blocks into the sno bees. I actually like this Pengo overlay version better, but don’t know how rare it is. (I will try to post the file of this NOS Pengo overlay when I can.)
Does anyone know anything about this Pengo overlay, or have a example applied to their Sega Pengo game?
Purchased a 96 in 1 Multi Pac Kit
There was a reason, that I can’t disclose right now, that I wanted to get Mike Doyle’s 96 in 1 Multi Pac kit for my Ms. Pac-man. I have been wanting this for a number of months because although I love Ms. Pac-man, it was always been one of my favorite arcade games, I need to breathe some new life into the gameplay.
The 96 in 1 Multi Pac Kit is just the way to do it. A lot of collectors get multi-kits for their coin-op games because it gives you some variety in gameplay. Most arcade game collectors don’t seem to like MAME either, and this is a way to get around having a MAME machine.
This particular kit comes with every darn possible variety of the Pac-man maze style arcade game you can imagine. Most are variations on the originals, Ms. Pac-man, Pac-man, etc. etc. But there are some video games on the kit that you wouldn’t expect and are completely unrelated.
- Ms Pac
- Ms Pac Plus
- Ms Pac Attack
- Piranha
- Mr. & Mrs. Pacman (new!)
- Pengo
- Pac Junior1-4
- Pac Baby1-2
And the game list goes on and on. 96 total variations and games. But probably the coolest part are the features of the multi pac kit. I will list the kit features I am most interested in;
- High Score save in NVRAM
- Selectable Speed
- Start on any level
- Difficulty
- Screen Saver
I love the high score feature, and I can’t wait to use the start on any level feature on some of the games, especially Jr. Pac-man. I have only beaten level 6 in my dedicated Jr. Pac-man once, and could use the practice on the last three levels.
Plus, I know a lot of people who play the games will want to set the difficulty and change the speed of gameplay.
The 96 in 1 Multi Pac kit should arrive hopefully sometime on Thursday or Friday and I hope to get it installed in my Ms. Pac-man right away. Thanks Mike Doyle.
Sega’s Pengo Artwork
I can remember playing Pengo in the mid 80’s on an early IBM computer. This computer was a huge part of my childhood, friend’s of my parents owned it and their son was a burgeoning computer nerd. He always had different games loaded on it, including some popular, to be, arcade classic’s like Sega’s Pengo. I could play Pengo for hours, so until I got it in late summer of 2006, I had never actually played Pengo as an upright machine.
I would like to build up my library of exclusively owned vector artwork of games I like, artwork I like, and rarity. I felt like the Pengo sideart fell into all of those categories, and there is some demand out there for Pengo reproduction artwork in case I want to go through the process of printing.
Most of Pengo Sideart Traced
I had emailed a contact about getting some vector Pengo art that I thought they had. It appeared to me as if they had traced the cardboard bezel at one time, and I thought it would be a good place to start to get some vector versions of the ice mountains, sno bees and the Pengo character himself.
But come to find out, the image of Pengo bezel I saw was just a nice raster scan. So, knowing that I already had some different pieces of the sideart traced from other individuals (Pengo character, Pengo Lettering, Sega Lettering), and seeing that the artwork was fairly simple, I decided to see if I could crank through tracing it in one night.
I got through all of the major sideart details except for the sno bees on the right side of the artwork.
In one more night of work I should have the sideart decal artwork traced good enough to post an image here. Now, there will be some other details to iron out. The Pengo character doesn’t fit up with my photo (which could be due to distortion because I know the tracing is very good), there is a half tone pattern to make the gradient in the letter and the mountains in the original artwork that I will need to address, and of course the color matching.
But at least I will have the Pengo vector artwork to add to my collection. If I want to get into those details later on I can, if I find that there are people out there who want a set of the Pengo artwork I can do some reproductions. I would think there would be a significant demand, I don’t think there is any NOS Pengo sideart out there. I have found 2-3 people who have expressed some interest, Tim Hill, James Hagen and a couple of other arcade collectors in online board posts looking for sideart and control panel overlays. But we shall see.
No NOS Pengo sideart exists
This week I saw someone post about wanting some NOS Sega Pengo sideart, so I got motivated to do some vectorization of the sideart of one of my favorite games.
Last night I got through 80% of the Pengo sideart. I had taken the photos, pieced them together in Photoshop and used the pieces that were already done like the Pengo lettering and Pengo himself to start my Illustrator file.
I got through everything but the sno bees on the right. Today I was having major issues trying to get a good image of the smaller sno-bees to trace. I had taken some photos close up of the sticker and I even was able to figure out my scanner with the laptop and scan the two snow bees. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t get as exact of detail as I wanted. So, I used what I had and traced sitting right next to the Pengo cabinet so I could memorize the shape and then trace it as best as I could with what I had.
Like I mentioned previously, this Pengo sideart isn’t color matched, it doesn’t have the halftone pattern, but it is a good start to work with if I ever want to have this reproduced.
~ Update May 22, 2008: Well, I ended up eating my words. A set of new, unapplied, NOS Sega Pengo sideart surfaced. I didn’t have to wait that long, and I was lucky enough to get it.
Pengo PCB problem – Thick Yellow Horizontal Bars
Alex emailed me back and said that the board is not something he would work on. He gave me that name of someone else who might be able to, John Robertson. I emailed him, and he let me know that he could, but is two months behind on the boards he has to currently repair. So, I don’t think that is not a very good option.
On a related note, in less than a month, Tim has bought two Pengo’s for really good deals. The one seems to play blind, so he may have two working boards. I don’t know if he will sell me one or not, but we shall see.
I tried to figure some things out about the PCB today online. I research the sound a lot, seems the bad pot that causes the static on the game is very common. I don’t know if the symptons of the sound caused the PCB problems or not (even though I doubt it), but the other thing I read was that the power supply does seem to go back fairly easy. The original Pengo power supply will under or over supply voltage on a regular basis, so that made me think that maybe I should just try to put in a switcher and see what that does.
My Sega Pengo I bought in Nashville, TN
I take pride in every one of the stories in how I got each of my arcade game machines, but the one concerning my Pengo is probably my favorite.
When I first started researching classic arcade games in March of 2006 I posted on the video game collecting group on Google(RGVAC) to see if anyone had a Pac-Man, Pengo, or Ms. Pac-Man around Indianapolis. This was one of my first experiences with posting on the group, or any forum for that matter, and expected a great response. I was severely underwhelmed when I only got one email back, and that was from a guy all the way down in Nashville TN.
He let me know that he had a Pengo, and a couple of Pac-man cabinets. My post did say I was looking for a “Ms. Pac, Mr. Do!, Pengo, or a Pac-man”, but Pac-man was my last choice. However, he was the only guy that responded, and he had two of the arcade games on the list of the ones I was looking for. Still, Nashville was 4-5 hours away and transportation would be costly. That was March, and I had not yet been to an Indianapolis USAmusements auction at the fairgrounds, so at the very least I wanted to attend an auction and see what sort of luck I could have finding one of these arcade games locally.
I attended the USAmusements auction in April but didn’t really understand how everything worked. It didn’t matter, most of the arcade games at the auction were mid 90’s games with no Pac-man’s to be found. Time went by. May came around, and with some freelance money I bought a Pac-man cabinet locally (complete minus the game board) that I had kept my eye on for awhile from a Wagner Gameworks in Greenfield.
Still searching for a Pengo
But I didn’t come across another Pengo. I watched the forums, I watched ebay, and a couple of other sources, but it felt like this was a hard to come by game. I kept emailing the guy in Nashville back and forth, checking with him on different games that I was interested in from time to time. For awhile I thought he had an empty warehouse full of games, and he was letting them go cheap. He said in his original email that he would sell the Pengo to me for $50. I had all these grandiose plans, to team up with another collector locally, rent a truck, buy the games and split the costs and profits. But nothing came of it, and the underlying problem never changed, how do I make it cost effective to get that game when it was over 5 hours away, especially without a mode of transportation to bring it back in.
Come July when I emailed the guy about the games and how things were going, he indicated to me that he was going to do something with the games, sell them, junk them, whatever. He was renting space to store them and he wanted to stop doing that and save some money. Looking back after meeting him, I knew he knew I wanted that Pengo and he was calling my bluff a little. He put a little pressure on me to make some sort of decision, and that is what I did. I started planning.
Itemizing costs for my big arcade game buy
I started calling local hauling guys out of the classifieds, but no one would go across state lines. I figured that renting a large truck would be too cost prohibitive, but then I thought, if I buy all 15 of his cabinets, I should be able to cover my costs, resell them all and keep the Pengo or a couple others that I might want.
All of the trucks were very expensive, except Penske. They had a great price, and just trounced everyone else. So, I started to talk with Sarah about it, and I needed to itemize what was there and in what condition. Looking back at the itemizing, I am sure I drove this guy nuts, he must have thought I over thought this way too much. But he also got to know my inexperience and that I wasn’t trying to screw him. His price he gave me was for the Pengo, the $50, but that wasn’t the same for all the games he told me. As I was having him take photos, and tell me what pieces each game had (bezel, marquee, etc. etc.) he tells me this, and I start to think at certain averages higher than $50 a cab, I can’t make my money back. So I tell him that, that I don’t think it will work for me.
He sees the urgency, and the fact that the deal is about to fall through and being the really awesome guy I find out that he is, he says “Whatever, these have lost their usefulness, I just need them gone, so $50 a piece is fine.” With that we are back in business. I finalize my list, and get my final quote from Penske.
Then, Sarah comes home one day after school and says that she was talking to a friend who has an SUV and a trailer, and they just told us to skip renting a truck and to borrow both their vehicle and trailer for the weekend. The trailer isn’t getting much use anyway, and I think the husband was a little intrigued in what I was doing so that made them even more willing. Plus, they are just really awesome, nice and giving people.
So once again the arcade game deal was in jeopardy. I got some measurements for the trailer and the SUV, checked them out, and based on my calculations figured I could only bring back 8 cabinets total. The guy in Nashville wasn’t overly thrilled I was changing my plan again and not buying every single one of his games, but being the great guy he is he gave his ok to just buy 8 games at the same price, and things kept moving forward.
Making the trip to Nashville
The weekend came. We got the Honda and the trailer and made the trip down to Nashville. I planned to stay overnight on Friday night to minimize hotel costs in the total bill, and then get the games in the morning and use Saturday for travel back to Indianapolis. Sarah and I arrived at the hotel fairly late, maybe 10-11 pm, I can’t remember exactly. We pretty much hit the hay. In the morning we took a leisurely breakfast. I was kind of nervous on how this whole arcade bulk buy was going to shake down and how smooth / not smooth the transportation would be. We took a swim in the pool, relaxed some and then checked out and headed over to the storage unit.
Chris was there waiting with the unit open. Remember, this is the first time I have ever met another collector and seen the methods for storing large quantities of arcade games, so I was a little bit in awe. For him, this was just another day, trading, selling, and buying arcade games.
He was really nice and made the whole experience so memorable. I picked the 8 games that I wanted and the list looked like this;
- Ms. Pac-man – Sticker artwork
- 2 Pac-man Cabaret Cabinets
- Nintendo Vs. Golf in painted over Pac-man cabinet
- 2 Midway Galagas – One cabinet was free, dropped off by another collector to Chris earlier in the week
- Sega Pengo
- Bally Pac-man
There were a number of other arcade games and other things in the storage unit including a bunch of gumball machines, one or two skeeballs, a Popeye, etc. Interested in seeing a photo gallery of all of the items I ended up bringing back from my bulk buy? Check out the Nashville arcade game photo album.
I had checked out weather reports and anticipated some rain on the way back to Indianapolis with this vehicle full of classic arcade games. Chris helped us secure the tarp with the bungie cords / rope I bought for the trip and gave us some other tips. After tying everything down, we figured that maybe a little more support was in order so Chris invited us both over to his house and said we could have a couple of tie downs that he wasn’t going to use. How nice!
To be continued….
