Hey there, hi there, ho there. Checkout this strange Pac-Man marquee that I picked up on eBay:

Things that are wrong with this as compared to a regular marquee:

• No Midway copyright notice
• Art under logo is slightly different
• That instruction box is not on the normal marquee
• The Pac-Man in that instruction box is eating more pac-men instead of ghosts(autocannibalism?)
• The fruit is all wrong. The first fruit should be a cherry, not a watermelon (which doesn’t exist in Pac-Man). The banana doesn’t exist normally either.
• The instruction box calls Pac-Man “Cruncher”

The reference to Cruncher and the look of the instruction box are identical to this marquee for a game called Cruncher:

I’m guessing Cruncher is a bootleg as well. If you know anything about that game or this weird Pac marquee let me know.

I just picked up another Pac-Man today.

I don’t really need 2, so I’m planning on getting rid of this one.  I’m looking to see if anyone is interested in trading this for another classic.

I’ll describe it the best I can, followed by pics. It has Pac-Man Plus roms in it. It’s complete, and seems to play fine as far as the game board is concerned. Sound seems OK. The joystick is screwy, but it can be easily fixed. I looked at it quickly and one leaf switch was missing a leaf.

The game has it’s original power supply…not a switcher.

The cabinet is typical for it’s age. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than some I’ve seen. It has some scratches here and there, and no water damage. I’ve taken detailed pics of the side that you can zoom in on to see the condition.

Someone put corner protectors on it. They also painted 2 black stripes on the front. I guess they were going for a bumblebee look.

The monitor is blurry, and could probably stand a cap kit.

If you have any questions about it let me know. Clicking any one of those pictures will take you to that picture in my Flickr album. There are more pics in there than shown here. The album name is “Pac-Man (#2) for trade”. If you are interested in a trade or want to come see it please send me an email: jamie@ldev.com.

As for games I’d be interested in:
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong JR.
Mario Bros
Q*bert
Frogger
Simpsons Arcade
Simpsons Bowling
other suggestions welcome?

This is really just a feeler. If no one is interested in a trade, I will probably fix it up and put it on ePay.

OH…and I am in Westerly, RI. This would be pickup only.

…provided you have a time machine:

Click the pic to see it in larger sizes.

I got this on eBay. I had a frame that I bought for something else and it fit well in it, but was missing something so I stuck some Pac-Man Colorforms on the glass. I think this ad came from a comic book. It has a Bubble Yum ad on the backside. Mmmmm…..Bubble Yum rocks!

Hey there, hi there, ho there. I haven’t done much of anything in quite a while on Pac-Man. I’ve been busy with other projects, and have been holding off on it a bit to figure out what I’m going to do about the sideart.

I was planning on buying a new control panel from Arcadeshop.com for $125 (ouch!). I recently saw a used one on eBay and ended up winning it for $2.25.

I’ll need to strip it, fill the extra holes, refinish it, and put a new CPO on it. I’m on the lookout for a good deal on a CPO, so if you see one let me know.

While grabbing the pic for this from my Pac-Man pictures folder, I spotted the pics of the cabinet after I stripped the black paint off it and before I got it down to bare wood. It really made me miss seeing the cabinet with art on it…I may need to get moving on this one soon!

I’m almost done restoring the coin door.

It used to look like this.

I stripped everything off of it and hit it with a wire wheel to get all the old paint off.

I then hit it with the orbital sander using 220 grit sand paper to get rid of the scratches from the wire wheel. After that, I hit it with some fine steel wool. I don’t have any pics of that. Next, I did one coat of Rustoleum Satin black spray paint. It looked pretty good, but I guess I didn’t clean it off well enough and had little bits of stuff (steel wool?) in the finish. When I thought it was dry I sanded them off and hit it with another coat. Big mistake…it wrinkled like an old lady (or a young wrinkly lady). The problem was that I didn’t wait the recoat time after sanding it. I also don’t have any pics of this, but picture the alligator handbag that old lady probably has and you’ll get the idea. After sanding, waiting 48 hours, painting some more and finally putting it all back together:

The 25c coin labels were pretty nasty looking.

They were loaded with scratches (like an old lady that has been scratched up). I couldn’t find replacements for these, and there is no easy way to remove the scratches. I scanned one into Photoshop and redrew the “25c”. I then printed it out on my inkjet on glossy photo paper, put a transparency sheet (like for a projector) over it, and cut it out with an x-acto and a ruler. After that, I made a plexiglass, photo paper, and transparency sandwich and taped the edges together. It looks much better and you’d never know it wasn’t original. The pic is a little blurry, but it looks very cool in person. The transparency should protect it and gives it a shiny reflective appearance like new plexiglass.

You couldn’t do this for any Midway doors that have these pieces backlit, but for Pac-Man there was no light so it works good. If anyone needs the file I made to print these let me know.

I finished redrawing the front art:

I am very close to running out of things to do on this at the moment. It’s too cold to paint, and I’m not ready for that yet anyway. I still need to get the silkscreening supplies, paint, etc… I may clean up the wiring harness and power supply board next.

Just a quick update on the Pac-Man restoration as its been a few days since I posted. This past Sunday morning I woke up at 5AM for some strange reason, and figured I might as well stay up and get some work done. It’s been too cold to use Bondo in the garage (has to be higher than 45 degrees), so I dragged the cabinet into the cellar and did it in there. I had a window open, but that didn’t stop the entire house from smelling like Bondo for most of the day. A fan probably would have been a good idea.

I brought it back outside, and sanded the bondo smooth. It needed a second coat, which was done and it’s now ready for paint. I’ll have to wait on that until it gets warmer, so Pac-Man won’t be done for a while.

I’m working on redrawing over the scan of the front art, and will post that when it’s done.

Work has slowed a bit on the cabinet due to the temperatures dropping. I’m working in a garage with no heat and insulation, and it’s freezably cold out (thank my wife for that word). Even with the cold, some progress is still being made. I have everything stripped of paint with the exception of the top (scheduled for tomorrow) and the front. I’ll be stripping the front after I get some scans of the art so I can make my stencils and silkscreen for it (cross your fingers on that one ). The sides and the back have been sanded with 60 grit and then 150. Bondo will be next, but I will probably have to drag the cabinet into the house for that as it’s supposed to be at least 45 degrees to harden correctly. You can see some sanding pics in progress below. I think the last one is after 60, as it looks a bit cleaner now then in that pic.

Both sides and the front are stripped now. It is really starting to look like a Pac-Man again!

After this pic, I started sanding it down. I have one side almost done to bare wood. I think that’s it for the night.

I decided (a little late) that I should really empty out the cabinet before I continue to strip the outside and fix it up. I spent some time making a safeback discharger to discharge the monitor, just to be safe. I discharged the monitor, and pulled everything out. It’s all in a big pile in the corner of the garage. Hopefully I can put it all back together somehow.

Nasty ass empty cabinet…complete with 26 years of grime:

I’ll give it a good cleaning tomorrow.

After pulling the monitor, I could get a closer look at it than I did when I bought it. It’s got a lot of burn in. You can make out the words “ice block”, “sno-bee” and “sega”. I threw that in Google and low and behold, I discovered this monitor was used in another life for Pengo. That explains the blue paint. Click the image below to see how it burned into the monitor.

So, it looks like I’m now going to need a new monitor…this is getting expensive. Maybe I can keep this one for testing boards if I can figure out how to make it work standalone.