Maze Man upright arcade game

Unearthed in Lawton OK, I still don’t know much more about this game beyond the fact that it was made by Entertainment Industries / Technology – possible Enterprise? Using arcadeflyers.com as a resource doesn’t give us much of an indication, but does support the idea of an illegal bootleg.

However, one clue – Dean on the Oklahoma forums posted that the PCB has some similarities to Falcon game boardsets. The first thought that popped into my head when I saw the photo brought me back to my post about Falcon games and the cabinet shape. This game has woodgrain sides, but that’s not to say that an operator added vinyl to the sides somewhere in its life to cover up some faded flaking screened sideart. The guys at Phoenix Arcade (Not to be confused with Darin Jacob’s artwork repro shop) found this machine, and that website is an interesting read if you have some time. An unfortunate story of a local arcade and a tremendous fire – hence the use of ‘Phoenix’.

A Maze’ing deal for the right buyer

Those guys travel quite the distances to pick up games, I’d be interested to hear where they found this Maze Man. It certainly is what I would call a ‘rare’ game but that is no indication of value. Working, worth $100? Maybe $150 to the right buyer? It would be worth that to me and I’d buy it just because it is such and oddball piece, if they were one state over and not some 13 hours away….

What is your guess? Artwork underneath the woodgrain?

Up to speed on Star Castle sideart

I wrote an introductory post about progress on stitching together the Star Castle artwork. I mentioned that I got a disc from Russ that had 90% of the artwork, but I was missing 2-3 areas and I needed additional scans. You can see those areas in this stitch detail.

Another Star Castle owner – Ben, stepped up and supplied scans for those areas. When I went to lay in that artwork, there were some obvious differences. Here are two side by side images of what I found. Click the image for a larger view.

See the differences? From how far the black explosion line extends, to a missing yellow dot, to the explosion details, to the pattern of circles and the halftone in the tower – there are a ton of differences just in these two detail comparisons of the Star Castle sideart.

Help with the Star Castle Sideart

I need your help. If you own a Star Castle, grab this image and make a close comparison – which version do you have, or is your artwork even different from these two? Send me a photo or two. I need to know the division of who has which, and how many.

If you can help out, I will certainly mention your name in the final post when the artwork is completed – and of course you’ll know that your help made Star Castle artwork available for all.

Look forward to hearing some thoughts.

Missile Command and Battlezone production at Atari

Most people are visual by nature, and I am a sucker for an old arcade related Polaroid or any other weathered photo – so I naturally loved getting a time preserved look inside Atari when Missile Command and Battlezone were in full production. Here are a couple of those photos.

Atari’s leadership made them profitable – but included calculated risk

Scott has also posted a couple of interviews with Owen Rubin and Mike Hally. I enjoyed the Mike Hally interview a bit more, and some of the history surrounding the making of Star Wars. But this particular statement from Mike about Laser Disc games stuck out in my mind;

He said Atari is “most definitely” going to come out with a laser disc game fairly soon “We haven’t always been first, but we always try to be best” he said. “We’re looking at doing a full blown string capability” which would allow players to control the action at every point in the game — some things videodisc games cannot do now.

Ah yes. Atari will be the best at Laser Disc games, the games of the future – reliability be scorned. Atari was successful because they did not follow, they lead in innovation. But I had to laugh because I remember what Owen Rubin said when he came on Coinopspace for a live chat;

The laser game that actually went the closest to production but did not make it was Road Runner. The Road Runner Laser Disc game was amazing!, real backgrounds (video), animated characters for the game, and actual cartoons. If something happened in the game where a cartoon was available, it would get shown. Then all hell broke loose, Firefox was a disaster from a technical side, and Laser Disc games got canceled.

I went to MIT for session in video and LD production while at Atari. When I came back I suggested that we NOT do Laser Disc games, the technology would not work. It was too soon, the technology sucked big time, and they would break all the time. They said I was wrong, and tried. Such is history!

Laser Disc games would have worked, but the technology was still in its infancy, and adoption before proven data of duress was a hard headed folly filled with too much risk. Regardless, both interviews are an interesting read. For more on these interviews, the photos, and other great Atari history, visit Atarigames.com.

Other Atari Documents and Photos?

I don’t what Scott has in the way of development artwork, but I hope we can see more of that – like the Food Fight concepts he published last year. How about you? What would you like to see?

Trade a Mello Yello Q*Bert for my teeth?

I’d would have seriously considered it. Maybe not seriously, but if I was 20 and in charge of purchasing – you better believe I’m ordering so many cases of that lime green sludge that I’d be one elemental ring short of a hopped up planet saving cartoon superhero. But I digress.

I don’t think I could have written a better story, or supplied a better photo! Take a look at this photo of the old Red Owl grocery store in Garrison, ND – Population 2000. This is one of the many stores where a Mello Yello Q*Bert made some rounds, and eventually landed for good in the early 1980’s.

And without further adieus or too much gratuitous editing, here is the story straight from the mouth of the daughter;

Coca-Cola was trying to promote Mello Yello to compete with Mountain Dew. The Coca Cola distributor in Bismarck, ND that supplied them was the guy who would let them know about what promotions the soda company was doing at any given time. This particular promotion involved points. The more cases of Mello Yello a store bought, the more points they got, and those points were used toward entries in a drawing for the arcade game.

While the contest was running, the game rotated around and spent some time at each of the stores that were competing in the promotion, and in the end, my grandfather’s store won it. My dad was very happy. He was the one in charge of ordering at the time, and he said he ordered *alot* of Mello Yello, because he (and one of his older brothers) wanted the game. (They were both in their 20s.) He said my grandfather was less thrilled, because the Mello Yello didn’t exactly run out the door. According to my dad they had a back room full of Mello Yello cases for a very long time. He’s not entirely sure the distributor didn’t just feel sorry for them and award them the game, just based on how much they bought. ;D

Once they won Q*Bert, it was at the store for a little while, then it moved to my grandparents’ basement for years. That’s where me and my two brothers learned to play it when we got older. Eventually, when I was in high school, my dad gave my grandpa a few bucks for the machine and added it to our basement rec-room area. It hasn’t been played much at all since we all graduated and moved out.

Q*Bert Mello Yello Photos

The game is in solid shape, the bottom isn’t too ragged, the sides look great – the control panel overlay is really the only area that shows significant wear. A couple of fixes to the main pcb, this game is ready to roll. The most interesting item of note – this machine has no coin door. Check out the photos below – click the Q*Bert photo to enter the full gallery.

Selling the Q*Bert Mello Yello

Talk about a one of a kind machine with a tremendous story. Pepsi and Coca Cola were great at these arcade game promotion tie ins, and these machines are great collectibles.

When she listed the game for sale, she was well spoken and had done some contextual research to get an idea of the value, which she estimated $500-$800. I think that was a solid range, and considering the history and condition I would definitely have held out for at least $800. On eBay, who knows, with all of the detail of that story, as a long shot she might have gotten as much as $1000 – funnier arcade eBay auctions have finished lately.

But it sounds like the Q*Bert might be sold. Hopefully MN Jeff picked it up. Regardless, if you picked up this game, leave a comment, brag a little and make the rest of us jealous.

Neo Geo CPO Artwork, Straightforward right? Negativo.

When Scott sent me the scan back in early 2009 I knew right away that all of the artwork was fairly straightforward – the anomalous purple blobs, the imitative wing shapes and the block-y elegance of the lettering were all things I’d done before. But inside each of the letters, numbers and even the ‘wing’ shapes behind the user controls were halftones – which always present a fun challenge when working in Illustrator.

I looked at the scan closely to see if I could make some raster adjustments and just reuse part of the original scan. But…the scan showed the button grooves filled with grime and wear, and when I weighed that against the fine detail of the checkbox style halftone, I made the decision that it would be more efficient to just recreate that halftone pattern then try to perform touchup. Plus, for the blue to green and red to yellow gradient, that would allow for easier color adjustment to match the original sample.

Simple enough, I played with the halftone density in Photoshop until I got a match for each piece and laid that into the artwork. Its kind of hard to see here, even if you click the image for the larger size. But I kept a swatch of the original halftone on another layer and kept tweaking them until they matched.

I finished the project nearly a year ago, in April of 2009 – just one of those weird projects that took awhile to write about. Later in the year Scott listed the Neo Geo overlay on the Mamemarquees website, color matched, refined, and ready for purchase. (The halftones never render well at a smaller size like I’m using here)

Reproduce your candy cabinet artwork today

There were many Neo Geo variations, and not all the artwork is available for reprint. If you have a piece of artwork you want to restore for your game, shoot me a message today.

This Taito Crazy Climber was nearly HUO

The inquiry about the value of the game went on in detail, explaining that this was only the second owner and the game had never seen the inside of an arcade. So then I started to think about what an accurate price point for a Nichi Crazy Climber, sideart in tow, might be. What do you think?

I was starting to think a Nichibutsu would run $800-$1,300, depending on buyer and condition (maybe this estimate was pre economic downtown) because its a hard game to find complete in nice condition. Here are a couple of photos of the Taito Crazy Climber. I’ll let you formulate what you think it might be worth…

Pretty awesome condition eh? Accurately verifying whether a game is actually HUO is about impossible, you have to look at the game’s condition in context of what the owner is saying. In this case the story seems to match up.

Then he told me what someone had offered. Another collector was willing to pay $800 for it. To me, that was a tough one. I think that is very good money for a Taito Crazy Climber. But, you might want to look at sentimental value and whether $800 will prevent you from experiencing any regret down the road for a set of circumstances ‘right now’. For me personally and considering this market, I’d sell it. But that was just me.

In the end, he sold the Crazy Climber for $800. What do you guys think? More than fair? Great price? Ripped off? Let me know. This was one of the most interesting inquiries I’ve had lately.

It’s a Maneater, the fiberglass video terror

Only a handful of people own a Maneater, probably less than 25 total, and only 6 are listed on VAPS. (Ron in TX I believe purchased Mike Doyle’s Maneater, but its not listed)

Craig N. out in Salem Oregon uncovered a small cache of arcade games that not only included a Maneater, but also a Fire Truck, Starship 1, Bally Asteroid, Video Pinball and, strangely enough, a full size Darius (A three monitor 45″ viewable screen monster!). This is a small lot of truly classic late 70’s, early 80’s games tucked away on some racks and completely forgotten – check out a couple of the photos.

I can’t help but want a Maneater. It’s freaky, its unique, the gameplay probably stinks, and I couldn’t sleep at night within eyeshot, but as a conversational piece its the bees knees. Plus I just love those fiberglass cabinets. Nice job Craig on unearthing some great games in excellent condition and thrusting them back into the collector’s sphere.

I also heard that there are many games left, including a classic game that I had to look up and have to say, I am pretty psyched to see more photos. It’s a pre-80’s era game, that five or less collectors own with one heck of an interesting set of user controls. Stayed tuned.

Steve has brought quite a bit of attention, relevance, and prestige to Twin Galaxies. If Billy Mitchell was considered the face, then in many respects Steve has made TG cool.

Unfortunately, that also means that more people are gunning for your score. But a little competition is healthy.

Donkey Kong Junior High Score Competition History

Steve took the Donkey Kong Junior record in April of 2009 with a score of 1,139,800. In September of 2009, Mark Kiehl beat this score by 8,000 points, at 1,147,800. Hard to believe its been almost a year already since Steve topped Donkey Kong Junior. I remember, because it was right at that same time when Steve visited Coinopspace.com for a live chat. Good to see him back on top of that game, and with a wider margin of 40,000+. Congrats Steve.

Someday, I’ll buy a camera and submit a score or two to Pengo. All this chatter is definitely motivating.

Arnon Milchan, King Kong pinballs, & many more

My knowledge of rare pinball machines and their history is not quite as rich as I would like, so seeing photos organized into a concise album like this is quite fun for me.

Most of these photos are on IPDB.org, but the reason this album caught my eye is because the Arnon Milchan pinball is not. I had looked for some photos of this machine when we were interviewing John Carpenter. Maybe some of those photos were submitted to IPDB by Herb, I really don’t know.

If you are on Facebook, you might ‘friend’ Herb Silvers, and then check out his photo albums.

If you know more about Herb and his circumstances / involvement in the pinball hobby, in a fairly inclusive and concise cliff notes version, that would be swell. Preferably, from another collector’s point of view, not his biography.

Time Pilot artwork – Interesting detail in the star bursts

The particular panel has a unique detail that I haven’t seen before, and find a little bit strange seeing as the rest of the artwork isn’t – how shall we say – nearly as amazing as an Atari cabinet. Some of the major burst fade out with an outer-lying crosshatch pattern. Check out a little bit of that detail here;

Here is a detail of how the Time Pilot 84 CPO artwork looks now without those major bursts;

I have picked out 20 of the largest stars that show this crosshatching and will be using Photoshop to touch up and isolate those selections to then go back and lay them in as a separate white raster layer. You can see the first one I took here, from the dirty dingy scan above with the grid line through it to this;

No other crosshatched artwork came to mind when I wrote this post, but if you know of another arcade cabinet that has a similar style, comment on a name. It would be cool to reference back, maybe something else that Konami made around the same time.