Let's Play! Name this cabinet!!

PinFixin

Well-known member

Donor 2013, 2025
Joined
Jan 24, 2013
Messages
1,436
Reaction score
230
What cabinet is this?

It literally looks like a dedicated Mr Do. It's real hard to see any other burn-in besides mr do, however there is a "credit 0" burnin in the lower left corner of the monitor.

Is it possible it's a Galaxian?

-Pat
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1527.jpg
    IMG_1527.jpg
    198.4 KB · Views: 109
  • IMG_1525.jpg
    IMG_1525.jpg
    199.6 KB · Views: 79
  • IMG_1528.jpg
    IMG_1528.jpg
    194.1 KB · Views: 88
  • IMG_1529.jpg
    IMG_1529.jpg
    192.4 KB · Views: 67
  • IMG_1531.jpg
    IMG_1531.jpg
    205.3 KB · Views: 64
Last edited:
I was thinking either Rally X, Bosconian, or Galaxian. Some things that throw me for a loop are:

The sides do not look painted over. It's in very nice shape, and they look original.
The coin door is a midway style coin door, but it has the starburst sticker in the middle instead of the midway sticker.
The person who converted it put a doorbell as the fire button. The control panel started life as a one joystick in the center, and then the player 1 and player 2 start on the right.
The burnin on the monitor shows Credit 0 in the lower left, which looks exactly the same as the galaxian attract mode, where it says Credit 0. From what I saw Rally X, and Bosconian don't have the credits shown in attract mode I don't believe.

It's possible this guy put paneling on the side of the game, moved over a control panel, but why go to all that length, and then put a doorbell as the fire button?

Anyways, I'm going to turn it into a Puckman for my collection. It's about the closest looking to a Puckman cabinet I can find, without the original coin door. And I'm still curious as to what the cabinet was to start with.
 
One other thing that is weird is the control panel secures to the cabinet by wing nuts on the carriage bolts on the 4 corners. There are no latches. Which made me think it could be an earlier model Midway.

-Pat
 
It's gotta be some sort of copy of a pacman cabinet that a lesser known company made back in the day for kits or bootlegs or something. It may have always been a Mr. Do...

There's a few things different from The midway cabinets, like for instance the way the inside is made on the bottom, and the way the bottom back is built, etc.
 
Assuming that the CP is more or less original, I'm inclined to say that this was a Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man that was converted and repainted.

What's making me think this is the Atari Volcano-style fire button that's been grafted on to the left-hand side of the CP. Bosconian, Rally-X, and Gaplus were set up for ambidextrous play with fire buttons on either side of the joystick. Galaxian and Galaga only had a single button to the right of the stick.

There would have been no need to add a fire button to any of these games - but neither Pac-Man nor Ms. Pac-Man had fire buttons, so they're the most likely candidates for conversion.

What I'm not sure about is that coin door. It looks Midway-ish, but not totally right and I can't quite figure out why. It's not the starburst sticker; it's something about the overall shape of it.

Late edit: that marquee looks to be hand-drawn on paper with an LED strip behind it, possibly ultraviolet. This has me thinking that some of the conversion work could have been fairly recent.
 
Last edited:
I don't feel so bad that it has everyone scratching their head as well. I think I'm going to get a cheap pacman control panel to see if it fits, and have my buddy bring over his Galaga panel to check that fit as well.

-Pat
 
Pull / look under the CP and see if there're any signs of button holes next to the joystick having been Bondoed at some point. It won't necessarily give a definitive answer, but will at least provide some clues.

One detail about this machine is driving me crazy: the serial number is stamped into the upper left corner on the rear.

YmnnKsk.jpg


That really does look like a Midway serial number stamping, but it's been a long time since I had one of these cabinets so my memory may not be the greatest. That said, I want to say that at some point with these cabinets they stopped stamping them and went to just attaching tags, but I don't remember which game would have started that or even if my memory is correct.

It looks almost as though there's a date of 22-10-81 written on the panel above the monitor. That would be an odd date format for someone to write on a US-production cabinet, but assuming that that means the 22nd of October, 1981, and it was written somewhere on the assembly line, it would put this machine right in the middle of the production runs for Bosconian, Galaga, Ms. Pac-Man, and Rally-X. Than again, it may mean nothing.

I kinda want to say it looks like a Galaxian with a Pac-Man control panel on it, but it's hard to say for certain. Any useful tags inside the machine?
 
It appears to be a copy/bootleg of a classic Midway style cab. They were common back then. There are bootleg Ms. Pacs that look really similar, but have signs that they are boots. This cab has the right profile, but different construction, etc.
 
Pull / look under the CP and see if there're any signs of button holes next to the joystick having been Bondoed at some point. It won't necessarily give a definitive answer, but will at least provide some clues.

One detail about this machine is driving me crazy: the serial number is stamped into the upper left corner on the rear.

That really does look like a Midway serial number stamping, but it's been a long time since I had one of these cabinets so my memory may not be the greatest. That said, I want to say that at some point with these cabinets they stopped stamping them and went to just attaching tags, but I don't remember which game would have started that or even if my memory is correct.

It looks almost as though there's a date of 22-10-81 written on the panel above the monitor. That would be an odd date format for someone to write on a US-production cabinet, but assuming that that means the 22nd of October, 1981, and it was written somewhere on the assembly line, it would put this machine right in the middle of the production runs for Bosconian, Galaga, Ms. Pac-Man, and Rally-X. Than again, it may mean nothing.

I kinda want to say it looks like a Galaxian with a Pac-Man control panel on it, but it's hard to say for certain. Any useful tags inside the machine?

Here are some more pics. I've taken a picture of everything on the game that has a stamp, sticker, or writing on it.

1st one is the top of the control panel. Please don't laugh at my momentary pushbutton, I didn't want to drill a larger hole because I'm still converting it to a Puckman if I need to use this control panel.
2nd one is a somewhat decent picture of the burn-in. You can see the credit 0 in the bottom left, and then what looks like player 1, player 2, and high score across the top of the monitor.
3rd one is underneath the control panel. There looks to be two additional holes drilled, however nothing original to galaxian. It looks like a single center joystick and P1 and P2 start buttons originally.
4th one is where the control panel mounts to. There are no control panel latches, it's just held in by wingnuts.

-Pat
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1532.jpg
    IMG_1532.jpg
    207.8 KB · Views: 19
  • IMG_1533.jpg
    IMG_1533.jpg
    228.9 KB · Views: 23
  • IMG_1534.jpg
    IMG_1534.jpg
    200.6 KB · Views: 21
  • IMG_1535.jpg
    IMG_1535.jpg
    190.5 KB · Views: 25
My vote would be Galaxian. I have a cabinet that is exactly the same (white veneer) with the same mounts for the control panel - it detaches in the same way...
 
My vote would be Galaxian. I have a cabinet that is exactly the same (white veneer) with the same mounts for the control panel - it detaches in the same way...

Except that original Galaxian control panels mount the stick offset to the left, whereas this one is in the centre.

Granted, it is possible that the control panel has been swapped out at some point, and I kinda feel like it may be a Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man CP in a different cabinet. Then again, I also keep going back-and-forth on the possibilities to the point where right now I'm really just not sure what it is we're looking at.
 
Copy/bootleg. That cabinet was not made by Midway/Namco. None of the back panels are right. Power cord in wrong spot. Black vinyl on inside?? Partical board? 2 inch plywood lip inside bottom? The basic shape and coin door are only things that make it "similar" to Pac, Galaxian, Rally-X.......
 
The only things I can put together after all of this is:

#1: It's a copy of a midway cabinet made back in the 80s that was preserved all these years. Someone had a galaxian in it, then used a different control panel and converted it to Mr Do when it first came out.

#2: It's a Galaxian cabinet that someone converted. Either completely sanded it down beautifully and repainted, or painstakingly took off all the art for Galaxian, ripped out all the wiring, used a pacman control panel, and then put a doorbell for its fire button.

I was always leaning towards #1, but it's such a good copy, and so well preserved, I can look at it all day and still scratch my head as to what it is. lol

-Pat
 
I believe the upper left corner on the back of the cabinet is stamped with a serial number "210". (might be wrong, but I think thats what that is)
Not all companies did it this way, but some did.
Heres a picture of the back of a Game-A-Tron cab where the serial number on the cabinet matches the tag inside the cab.

Although its a low serial number, the fact that it has a serial number suggests that the cabinet was part of a production run.

Do any of the cabs people suggested have serial numbers on the back like that?
 

Attachments

  • 2016-07-03 09.47.09.jpg
    2016-07-03 09.47.09.jpg
    188.1 KB · Views: 19
  • 2016-07-03 09.26.48.jpg
    2016-07-03 09.26.48.jpg
    200.4 KB · Views: 16
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom