Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Anyone else own one of these as a kid?

I'd completely forgotten that I got one of these "official" Pac-Man mini-arcade machines for Christmas back in the day before I came across this blog post a couple of days ago.

I can't remember exactly which Christmas, of course, but I'm guessing it was in 1981 or shortly thereafter, as that's when this eBay listing says it was released.



If memory serves, it plays a pretty spot-on version of Namco's classic arcade game. Sadly, my memory's also suggesting to me that I sold my mini Pac-Man machine at a garage sale a few years later--most likely for chump change.

Should any of you want to relive those memories--or make some new ones--check out this auction, which ends at about 6:56 pm Pacific today. (Current bid is $100, not including shipping.)

(Via retro-treasures.blogspot.com)

7 comments:

Zaphod65 said...

I didn't own one myself, but my Uncle Dennis had one that I used to play a lot. I think he had one for Donkey Kong as well.

thegaygamer.com said...

Oh, right! I remember the DK one, too. Damn. I think I would've liked that as much as I liked this Pac-Man one. WHY DID I SELL IT?

TheGameroomBlitz said...

Yeah, about that... I owned one of these, but took it apart to fix a Ms. Pac-Man mini-arcade game, which I since sold. However, I do have Coleco's Galaxian and Donkey Kong! The Donkey Kong has control issues, but the Galaxian works pretty well. I think they replaced the sound effects with public domain music, though.

thegaygamer.com said...

Oh, that's too bad. About the sound effects and the control issues, I mean. Also, I didn't realize a Ms. Pac-Man one was released as well. EVEN BETTER!

TheGameroomBlitz said...

Here's some footage if that helps!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnODAjYRpuA

It's a pretty good game, if you can ignore the fact that Ms. Pac-Man looks like a fetus. It's better than Coleco's Pac-Man tabletop in that it doesn't make a constant droning noise while you play it.

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=9019879

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?publicUserId=5592510&bId=9020723

This seems as good a time as any to post these links to a handful of Pac-Man games I reviewed for 1UP a few years ago. If you do a little digging around, you can find my reviews of other retro handhelds, including Mattel's Burgertime. Enjoy!

Zaphod65 said...

Great timing for this post, since they announced PacMan for Smash Bros. lol

thegaygamer.com said...

I'm psychic! Er, maybe not :P