Well, I've always found introducing myself to a group of strangers to be pretty awkward but here goes anyway!
My name is Joel but people usually call me Petko or "Pet;" I'm 38 and live in Pennsylvania, USA. Semi-frequent lurker of the forum for a while but never thought I'd actually own an arcade machine of my own or have anything to contribute to those who do so I never registered. That all changed last week.
After
years of dreaming and searching for a Candy Cabinet (ideally an Aero City), I'd nearly given up - they're rare in the Mid-Atlantic USA and when you do find them they're quite expensive. Pure dumb luck had me stumble across a Facebook listing for a 100% functional Ms. Pac-Man machine...in a Capcom Impress cabinet with no screen burn-in or visible damage at all...for about 1/4 what I'd seen candy cabinets go for in my area. I had it loaded up in my truck that day.
Here's where I feel like the "I have no idea what I'm doing" dog meme should go. I practically lived in arcades as a youth in the 90s and have done the usual skim-reading online, but I know nothing about owning my own arcade machine. Further, this cabinet is an enigma - Ms. Pac-Man predates JAMMA, the control panel is definitely not original (it's a jigsawed piece of Lexan), and (perhaps most critically) I have no keys for the cabinet. I know there are adapter boards to convert old Midway games to JAMMA and I hope that's what's going on here, but I do have a secret fear that some mom-and-pop vending company hacked the harness to bits. Ugh. Another oddity is that the joystick in the cabinet has an octagonal gate (which is
really annoying for Ms. Pac-Man).
So, here we are. I'm going to be bugging all of you with a billion questions I'm sure. Some plans/ideas for the near-mid future:
1. Pick the locks open with an impressioning tool and see what we've got going on in there; either have keys made or put new locks in.
2. Flip the jumper on the Ms. Pac-Man board to the factory setting of 10,000 points per extra life (it's set on 20,000 right now).
3. Find an original Impress 2-player control panel and put that in there.
4. Fix the coin mech and have it take 100-yen coins for that "authentic" feel.
5. Rotate the monitor (which terrifies me, as I'm afraid I'll break something) and convert to ARpiCADE
A preemptive thank-you for the welcome and here's to a long future relationship, as now that I've got this thing I'm never letting go of it!
