Pac-Man is Alive!

After four months of hard work I've finally finished restoring/converting my Pac-Man cocktail arcade cabinet to full glory. This cabinet has been locked away from the world for more then a decade, maybe even two decades. It was hidden away in my buddies garage forever, and then a few more years in mine, until I had the time to invest in restoring it. The cabinet was empty other then the original monitor, and in very poor shape. So I made the tough decision to "MAME" the cabinet. I'm sure I'll be flamed by the purists out there, but for me and this cabinet, this was the right decision.

I started off by stripping the cabinet bare, and giving everything a thorough cleaning. I had to rebuild the under carriage and leg levelers as the wood was splintered from years of moisture. I sanded rust off the metal components and gave everything a new coat of paint. I installed my old 19" IBM CRT monitor, which to my surprise fit perfectly with only minor alternations.

I then installed a vast array of new components:

• 11" Cocktail Control Panels from ArcadeDepot. I had to modify the controls from pac-man's centered solo joystick to a proper joystick & 3 buttons layout.


• Red/Blue Suzo Universal STC 500 (OMNI Stik) Joysticks (set to 4-way)


• Red/Blue Translucent Pushbuttons from FX Buttons


• Mini Round Momentary Pushbuttons


• Reused my old I-Pac4 Encoder from Ultimarc, however I may installed a GP-Wiz40 Eco from Groovy Game Gear that I have lying around to try it out.


• Cold Cathode Lights from NW Computer Accessories


• an old Dell Optiplex GX1 - running Micro XP Pro.

To keep the cabinet as authentic as possible I only installed MAME and classic ROMs that have a cocktail cabinet dip switch mode. No Nintendo, Sega, Virtual Pinball, or jukebox craziness on this cabinet. I configured everything under the MaLa front-end, and set the machine to boot directly into Pac-Man (you can then backout to select other games to play).

I still have a few more lighting, electrical, and software tweaks to make to the cabinet, but it's in fully function order. It was ready in time for my 30th B-Day party, and got a lot of usage and rave reviews.

Mark another knotch in the project tree, let's see what's next ...

Review: Big Al's Bowling Alley

After work one day last week Darci and I were trying to think of somewhere new to go eat dinner. Darci remembered that the new Big Al's bowling alley was now open, I immediately made an executive decision to go there. I was amazed by the size of the place, the large vaulted ceilings really made the place feel inviting. A big difference from the traditional low ceiling bowling alley that makes you feel claustrophobic as soon as you walk in the door. I marveled at the site of 30 brand new bowling lanes. I've never played on a brand new lane before, all the lanes I've bowled were at least 20 years old. There was even 12 separate luxury lanes in a separate area that featured plus couches instead of the standard table/chair design of the other lanes. This is my type of bowling!

I toured the arcade section next. I marveled at the selection of brand new arcades, some of which I had only seen in development before: Rockin' Bowl-O-Rama, NASCAR & World Poker Tour pinball, Time Crisis 4, House of the Dead 4, a bank of The Fast and the Furious, Super Bikes, Mario Kart Grand Prix racing arcades, and a myriad of ticket redemption games. All of the machines run off a prepaid credits card, that is purchased from a nearby machine. This is a great option as it allows parents to prepay for their kids arcade time and takes out the hassle and risk of kids carrying around pockets of quarters.

Next we heading out in search of their large sports bar. We entered a large auditorium in the back of the facility. This had to be one of the biggest sports bars I've ever been in. There are booths and tables setup in and auditorium style layout, much like a movie theatre, so you never have a head in your way. In fact the bar wall/ceiling is decorated to appear like you are in a baseball stadium. At the front of the bar is the TV wall, which is actually three 8ft x 12ft projector screens. The display is split across three LCD projectors that have the ability to split up each screen into several different displays, each playing a separate sporting event. While we were there we they had approx 11 channels playing everything from football, baseball, NASCAR, golf, and even a movie. It appears that they could chop the display up into 9 displays per screen and still have each large enough for viewing, or even stretch a single display across all three screens for special events like Super Bowl. There was eight brand new pool tables in the middle of the bar. And at the rear of the bar was what is called the Skybox. It's a separate room with large glass windows looking out into the main area. It includes large leather chairs, couches, and it's own pool table. Seems this would be a great rental area for corporate outings.

After drooling over the brand new lanes for a while I just had to play on them. Darci and I played two games. The first Darci won, I sucked, I was too rusty, especially since I was playing without my bowling ball. Although it was very nice to play with brand new house balls. Not the old chipped, alien finger hole sized/aligned house balls we're all used to. The second game I kicked ass! I scored 203 and only missed 13 pins out of the possible 110 pins. It's funny how fast you can gain the respect and admiration of bowlers around you. During the first game there was this grumpy old guy bowling on our right side who was taking his game too seriously (and sucking by the way), and a group of rowdy annoying young punks on our left. After I bowled my 4th strike in a row I gained the respect of both parties. The old guy was trading tips and trying to talk me into joining his league, and the young punks were yelling "Damn!", "Nice!", "Sweet!", each time I finished. It was pretty cool, I haven't had an on game like that in a while, especially with a house ball. I'll definitely start frequenting this place. My score card is below:

Frame	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Pins	9 /	X	X	X	X	9 -	X	9 /	X	8 - -
Score	20	50	80	109	128	137	157	177	195	203

If you are up in Vancouver try this place out, better yet, call me and we'll go hang out there together.

Project Update (4/3/06)

I've made a lot of progress on many of my projects. Since I don't have a proper site update feature created yet, I decided to post a blog entry to summarize my accomplishments. MAME Arcade: I finally finished assembling my 4-player control panel for the MAME arcade. I was up till 4am on Sat 3/25 trying to get it finished in time for our March B-Day Party. Since then it's been thoroughly enjoyed by all, especially the kids. I need to buy a new soldering iron as my old one is crap. Then I need to solder up the El-wire, LED's for the pushbuttons, and the trackball. Lots left to do, track my progress on this here. Bumper Pool: I found an awesome deal on an old Bumper Pool table off craigslist. Heath and I went to pick it up on Saturday afternoon. We tied it down pretty good in the back of his truck, however once we got on the Glenn Jackson Bridge we found out otherwise. Right after we passed Government Island the high winds caught the lip of the table and flipped it over. Fortunately we routed one of the tie downs through the legs, that held it until Heath was able to pull over. It scared the crud out of me as I was following right behind. If it had fallen out, it would have hit me and likely caused a nasty accident on the bridge that would have closed it down for a while. Phew! Eventually we got it home and had to remodel the basement bar to make room for it. We played a few games after getting it all setup. It is a lot of fun to play. However it does need some TLC and a few modifications. Follow my work on this here. Blazer: I've been scouring the web for new parts and mods for my Blazer. On Saturday I met up with a guy in Gresham to get some 2nd gen seats. On arrival it turns out the Blazer was only a 1st gen. However I was able to find a rear window with defog & rear window wiper and some really nice lighted sun visors. Sunday I decided it was time to paint my dash components so they all match. Took me about an hour to remove them all, and I found a couple more components were need of repair. Eventually I got them all sanded, cleaned, and applied a first coat of dark grey Krylon Fusion Textured spray paint. I'm letting them cure for 24 hrs before I re-install them, however that meant driving into work this morning with my dash all ripped up. This week I'm going to remove the headliner and run wiring for all the new components: overhead console, power sun visors, rear window defrost, rear window wiper motor & spray pump, and cargo area accessory power port. For pics and a full write-up on the modifications check here.