Our New Baby Has Arrived!
Baby Pac-Man December 21st, 2007He’s 68″ long, weighs 300 lbs, and has a very wet bottom:
Baby Pac-Man is 50% arcade game, 50% pinball machine, and 100% awesome. Restoring this one is going to be a major pain in the ass undertaking. I’m not sure exactly what is wrong with it, but was told it did not work. The arcade game portion was working however, so I guess maybe the pinball portion is broken.
I’m not going to attempt to work on anything electronic in this game until I restore the cabinet. Unfortunately, it looks like someone used it as a canoe to paddle down the ol’ Mississippi river. It was stored in a basement…apparently a very leaky basement. The cabinet is made out of fiberboard, and sucked up a ton of water. You can see areas on the cabinet that swelled from it. The one pic above doesn’t show the worst of it, which is on the left side. The bottom of the left side is absolutely horrible. At a minimum, I’ll have to put in a new bottom and sand the entire thing down. I’m not sure if I can sand the swollen areas down or not. I may take the approach that Brian Koenig did on his restoration.
On the way to get this it was raining, but it stopped when I got there. Because it was already water damaged, I figured a little more water wouldn’t hurt it so I didn’t cover it in my pickup. On the way back, it started raining, then snowing. I was in a hurry to get it in the garage so I didn’t get to take a good pic of the left side.
I had taken out the bezel and playfield glass at the seller’s house for safe keeping so they wouldn’t blow off on the highway. The bezel is in great shape (just dirty):
The playfield glass, however, is in slightly worse condition:
I walked in the door with the playfield glass in one hand, and very very gently went to put it down to lean it against that door. I honestly don’t think it even touched the floor, and exploded! I’m very glad it wasn’t the bezel. I can get another piece of glass cut for a few bucks.
Here are some more pics:
December 23rd, 2007 at 9:18 am
did you pick that up in Durham Ct?
December 23rd, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Yup, that was the one in Durham on Craigslist.
December 23rd, 2007 at 6:46 pm
ok i bought the lee trovino fighting golf i went there and did not work i got the game home and works great, cab has a little water damage around t moulding area. what kind of cab was this i know it was a atari.. the game was vey very dirty, good talking to you, P.S did u have fun driving in the back of the house???
December 23rd, 2007 at 7:45 pm
That’s cool. I saw that game when I was there. It was originally a Food Fight. I think those are pretty hard to come by. You can tell by the unique shape of the sides of the cabinet. Check it out on KLOV.com. If I knew that they made replacement sideart for Food Fight I probably would have been interested in that one, but I don’t think they make it. Does it have water damage? The Baby Pac has it big time!
December 23rd, 2007 at 9:33 pm
no real major water damage the bottom just has regular damage due to no feet on cab, just at t moulding area has a little water damage it does not have the orig power supply for monitor it lookes like all atari stuff was striped out and new stuff installed has screen burn but not too bad, it is not the orig monitor, it plays great, i am starting to re work cab clean it up and paint and i have to order new t moulding and feet and that is it so i got a real good deal on this game this is the fist one that is not a money pit…… i think i will have less than a hundred it repairs so it is a home run compared to my 34 outhers
December 28th, 2007 at 11:45 am
That play field look in good shape, looks like a fun find. Now you just have to figure out where to put it
December 28th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Hey Mark, thanks.
I think I let my desire for this game cloud my judgment though. I have my work cut out on this one…the cabinet is a mess. It doesn’t look too bad in those pics, but the water damage is pretty extensive.
January 27th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I have just started restoring my Baby Pac also. I am so glad to have found your page, lots of SUPER info… I would never had thought to put the plastics in the oven to flatten them out! Great stuff!!haha I will be downloading your pic of the spinner decal to make my own too… I have been searching for repros for months with no luck. Keep up the good work!
January 27th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Hey Dan,
Thanks! Glad you like the site.
I haven’t posted in a few days…I’ve been fighting my Vidiot board trying to get it working. My next post will probably be about that.