44 years ago (22 May 1980 to be precise), the first Puck Man machine was placed in an arcade in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, starting a worldwide global videogaming phenomenon. Today, Namco’s Pac-Man remains one of the most recognisable video game characters, transcending popular culture. Namco’s sales flyer for the Japanese market for Puck Man I won’t rehash the story, but I wrote about the development of Pac-Man a few years back – you can pick up that background by reading that article on this link. And from that post, we can quickly summarise some context here: The original game’s title subse ..read more

Episode 33 of the Ted Dabney Experience podcast is available now for your listening pleasure! If you enjoy reading ArcadeBlogger.com, you’ll love the other project I’m involved with: Ted Dabney Experience, episode 33: Roger Hector – Click to listen in! Senior corporate executive, serial entrepreneur, automotive designer and fine artist. Roger Hector is not only a successful businessman but a bona fide creative polymath. A long time ago, Roger sharpened his pencils at Atari Inc, working alongside co-founder Nolan Bushnell and creative director George Opperman on a vast range of videogame projec ..read more

I’ll start with an apology – I’m rather ashamed that its taken me this long to post my review of last year’s event! It completely passed me by, and its only the recent announcement of the 2024 dates, that reminded me I didn’t share this write up. So let’s put that right! I’ve been flying stateside for a few years now to attend Florida’s premier arcade gaming event, Free Play Florida. Check out some previous recaps here. After missing a couple of years due to Covid and illness, I was excited to get back in November last year to catch up with everyone and soak up a bit of winter sunshine. Free ..read more

You may have noticed that I don’t share many repairs here on the blog. Although useful (and I’m glad people do share their knowledge) I think they’re pretty dry to read and I don’t tend to tackle repairs – and when I do, they aren’t always successful! My arcade technical expertise is rather limited – I can research a problem, follow instructions and solder and swap things out, but diagnosing an issue with a board from scratch isn’t something I’m very good at. That said, I thought this was an interesting process worth sharing. I picked up a nice Super Pang Jamma PCB a few months back and it’s b ..read more

Episode 32 of the Ted Dabney Experience podcast is available now for your listening pleasure! If you enjoy reading ArcadeBlogger.com, you’ll love the other project I’m involved with: Ted Dabney Experience, episode 32: Eugene Jarvis Eugene Jarvis cut his teeth in the Atari pinball division before going on to produce the groundbreaking Defender for Williams Electronics. Also for Williams (contracted as Vid Kids, his new company with Defender co-creator Larry DeMar) was Stargate, Robotron: 2084 and Blaster. Jarvis left Vid Kids in 1984 to attend Stanford University where he gained an MBA in 1986 ..read more

Some sad news to report on the blog this week. I got word that long-time Industrial Designer at Atari coin-operated division, Make Jang, has passed away. I’ve known Mike since 2016, and whilst we never met, he was always on the other end of an email answering my questions and providing really valuable input into my articles here on the blog, and especially so for my book Missile Commander. Mike has always been approachable and happy to share his knowledge and deep insight into the industrial design processes at Atari. Learning his craft at San Jose State University, Mike joined Atari’s Industr ..read more

A few weeks back I wrote about Automatic Services and the arcade cabinets that a group of us were able to acquire, after its owner Mark Shepherd passed away. If you missed that post, go here. This post is something of a follow up to that one. You may recall that I made reference to the Universal cabinets that were designed and built by the company to be placed out on location. We discovered 25 or so of these, and managed to rescue most of them – I ended up with three which have been sitting in my garage for a few weeks now. The Automatic Services Universal arcade cabinet I remarked at the time ..read more

Generic cabinets from the Golden Age of arcade gaming tended to be functional workhorses. Of course the beauty of dedicated cabinets from manufacturers such as Atari, Williams, Gottlieb and Sega is undeniable. Those cabinets usually had bespoke designs, dedicated controls and glorious artwork, all designed to draw players in. But generic cabinets tended to be functional, built to withstand the rigours of life out on the arcade floor. They were popular with arcade operators, as they were designed to accommodate new games without the expense of replacing a complete cabinet. Commercially, ops cou ..read more

If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you’ll have read several articles where I’ve been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go through old collections or stashes of arcade cabinets. This is where arcade collectors get together to acquire, rescue, save (call it what you will) artifacts from the arcade industry. Often cabinets are abandoned in pretty desolate buildings, or an ex operator decides to sell up some of their old inventory – every event like this has a story and they are all unique. As well being a great way to acquire arcade cabinets and spares, clambering around on your ha ..read more

Searching on the web for photos of classic arcades from back in the day, tends to bring up a plethora of American locations. Which is all well and good and pretty informative, but sets of genuine photographs taken in the 80s and 90s that documented the British arcade videogame landscape are pretty thin on the ground. Whilst arcades were of course popular over here, especially in seaside resort locations, we tend not to find many images online. Given that most visitors to British arcades would have been on holiday, it’s not a huge stretch to imagine that cameras would have been on hand at the t ..read more