Anyone know anything about Pacific Novelty

Wiz

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I just picked up a few games and grabbed a couple of boxes of old boards the guy had. Within the box I found about 15 Pacific Novelty boards. I don't know much about this company other than that they created a few games back in the early 80s and a couple of redemption games in the 90s. So I have a couple of questions.

Is there any way to tell which ones I have by a serial number or distinguishing characteristic?

It looks like they had multiple boards in each game so were any boards common across their games?

These are the games I have found that they made (so far):
Deep Death
Mr. F. Lea
NATO Defense
Pop-A-Ball Pacific
Pop-A-Ball II
Shark Attack
Thief

Are people into these games? Shark Attack actually looks pretty sweet and it seems like Thief got some attention BITD.

Thanks!
 
Shark Attack was controversial when it came out due to the "violence" of the shark attacking/eating people. Funny seeing today's games, huh? A rare conversation piece, the but the gameplay blows.
 
I like Mr F. Lea. It has a Tron-like screen selection of 4 levels that are a combination of DK, Frogger and Jungle Hunt with some neat music. Wouldn't mind a working board myself :) I've never really played Thief, but that one has a tape recorder in the game for some of the sound effects.
 
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Pics of the boards may allow some of the guys who are more experienced working with boards to identify their relative age at the very least.

There is also the possibility of Googling each board's serial number. Soetimes that helps me determine what a board is...
 
Shark Attack was controversial when it came out due to the "violence" of the shark attacking/eating people. Funny seeing today's games, huh? A rare conversation piece, the but the gameplay blows.

Yeah, I saw a vid on the game's profile that had the sound effects, which were actually pretty cool. I have a bad feeling I have some redemption boards here or something. That would be my luck. But I did make it out of there with a dedicated Time Pilot and Gyruss!
 
Pics of the boards may allow some of the guys who are more experienced working with boards to identify their relative age at the very least.

There is also the possibility of Googling each board's serial number. Soetimes that helps me determine what a board is...

True, I should take some pics. I did not see much numbering or marking on them when I looked them over last night, but I will try to get into them more tonight.
 
Yeah, I saw a vid on the game's profile that had the sound effects, which were actually pretty cool. I have a bad feeling I have some redemption boards here or something. That would be my luck. But I did make it out of there with a dedicated Time Pilot and Gyruss!

Cool, Gyruss is one of my favorites :) As to whether it's the older games or redemption boards, a look at the EPROM's should help. If it's mostly small ones like 2516/2532/2716/2732/2764's, then they're probably the older games. I can't imagine any newer redemption boards would have the smaller EPROM's like that.
 
I have a complete set of schmatics and manual for Thief, if interested.
 
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