My First (Almost) New Game!

Mattroid

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I've had my eye on Pac-Man Battle Royale for a while. The first time I played it with three other people, I had a blast. Being so new, I figured it'd be years before I had a chance to pick one up but I started keeping my eye out on new cabinets about six months ago.

After watching two come and go, then hearing from multiple sources that Namco stopped shipping new units, I figured I should go ahead and bite the bullet.

And yes, I could have gotten a decent pin for what I paid or a little more...it was a tough call, believe me.

Anyway, I knew that Joystix here in town had one on the showroom floor so I checked with them. They had two for sale, one new and one demo unit which I assumed was the one in the showroom. I was leaning toward the new one since the price difference wasn't enough not to get the new one, but in the end did end up getting the demo...haha. Saving every little but helps. It turns out the one on in the showroom is actually a third, presumably not for sale (at least for now). The demo unit was said to have "light plays" on it whatever that means, but after checking the book keeping in the menu, there was about 58 hours of play time already. Ha. Whatevs.

It was kind of a bitch to get in the house and I had to remove the leg levelers to be able to install the sign without hitting the ceiling (standard 8'), but in the end it worked out well enough. I just put some little sliders under the legs and will be leaving the levelers off for the time being.

This thing basically replaced the dining room table (if you really wanted to call it that, it basically just collected arcade related stuff on top).

There's a lot of hate for this game, and I can understand why in a commercial arcade setting. The single player mode is boring as hell and not nearly challenging enough. Also, there's no way to just keep playing as there is a max number of rounds that can be played (up to 9). However, for home use it's great...for parties. Not so much by yourself, as I mentioned. But I have a plan for that. But on to pics for now!

A few additional (and larger) pics on Arcade Crusade here.

PMBR-TitleScreen.jpg


PMBR-Front.jpg
PMBR-Back.jpg
PMBR-FullCabinet.jpg


PMBR-P1ControlPanel.jpg


PMBR-MarqueeLight.jpg


PMBR-MarqueeDark2.jpg


PMBR-PCBs.jpg
 
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Nice pick up! Looks great.
She's a beauty, congrats Matt!
Thanks! I'm wondering when the buyers remorse is going to kick in...probably when something around the house or the car breaks, lol.

The only issue I've had so far is that I don't see the LCD adjustment PCB anywhere, though one is referenced in the manual. The brightness could stand to be turned down and colors adjusted as you can probably tell in that first pic above. I'm hoping that it's just up behind the screen where I can't see it and not missing completely. I'll find out this week when I attempt to pull the top off and see what I'm dealing with...
 
Nice, I've never played this before what's the game play like? Or I guess how do you play others?
 
Nice, I've never played this before what's the game play like? Or I guess how do you play others?
It's pretty simplistic, really. It's in the style of Pac-Man Championship Edition or it's sequel CE DX+ but obviously focuses on multi player (which CE does not have). If you haven't played CE DX+ on PC, Xbox, mobile, etc, I highly recommend it.

The main goal of Battle Royale is to eat the other pac-men. Last player standing wins the round. The ghosts are still there, but your focus are the other players (or simply avoiding them and not dying).

Power pellets turn the ghosts and other pac-men blue as usual and your Pac-Man grows in size. While in this state, you can eat ghosts and other smaller pac-men. Like-sized pac-men will bump each other back if they hit each other. This can be used as another strategy to kill players by bumping them into ghosts. The game play will speed up the longer the round goes on without a winner. Each round will change the maze size and at least the final round will be a full screen maze (I think it may be decided more on how many players there are, but I haven't payed a lot of attention yet).



Unfortunately, single player mod pits you against one CPU controlled pac-man who pretty much just runs away from you the whole time. There was a planned update that actually made the single player more fun but it was never officially released. There's USB port on the main board, presumably at least in part for updates. I'm hoping someone can figure out how to distribute that update someday. Here's a video of that in action:



One of the funest games I've ever played....a must have at any barcade IMO.

Most definitely. I assume it's a pretty decent money maker with how it's designed, too.

That is a very fun game, so congrats on picking it up!
Fun multi-player game. Nice pick up!
Thanks!
 
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So I'm not sure how I'm going to do this yet, but my plan is to try and get Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+ setup in this cab and have a way of switching to that whenever only one player wants to play. It has come out on damn near every platform since the 360, so I'm hoping I can find a decent way of doing it.

I'm in process of researching a few options, but if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. There not a ton of room in the cabinet but a decent mini PC should work reasonably well. Worst case, some decent Android device could also work but that would be a last resort type of option for a number of reasons.
 
Wow never knew about this version of the game. I think the MP looks fantastic, this is the game we wished was available back in the day.
 
So I'm not sure how I'm going to do this yet, but my plan is to try and get Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+ setup in this cab and have a way of switching to that whenever only one player wants to play. It has come out on damn near every platform since the 360, so I'm hoping I can find a decent way of doing it.

I'm in process of researching a few options, but if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. There not a ton of room in the cabinet but a decent mini PC should work reasonably well. Worst case, some decent Android device could also work but that would be a last resort type of option for a number of reasons.

For the whole $40 they cost nowadays on craigslist, you could just buy a 360. They have VGA output, and HDMI depending on what that monitor takes. Wiring up a couple padhacks wouldn't take an hour. =]
 
Congrats on your awesome pickup. I played this at Ground Kontrol a while back, played it with a bunch of people. Best new game I have played in years up there with the 1st time I ever played Smash TV which seems like a classic now.
 
Are you sure your machine isn't actually brand new?

Namco will actually build small runs from time-to-time if there is demand.
I imagine they wanted some more machines for their own use as well, but Namco built 50 units in Oct. 2015 and 25 more in Jan 2016, I think it was. Both of these small runs were the first time they built more tables since the original run a few years ago.

The game was not a popular seller until they released it into the deluxe cabinet, but the table had found a "new" audience since that time...

Betson's warehouse in November:
PBR_crates_zpsvrggrcv0.jpg
 
For the whole $40 they cost nowadays on craigslist, you could just buy a 360. They have VGA output, and HDMI depending on what that monitor takes. Wiring up a couple padhacks wouldn't take an hour. =]
That's an option, yeah. I already have CE on there but not DX. I don't mind buying it again for this though. I hate the thought about how hot the inside of this cab will get just for this game on a 360 though, lol. But yeah, that could be a cheap option or I could maybe use the 360 I have since I don't really use it for anything else anymore.
That's awesome Matt!
Congrats on your awesome pickup. I played this at Ground Kontrol a while back, played it with a bunch of people. Best new game I have played in years up there with the 1st time I ever played Smash TV which seems like a classic now.
Thanks! Yeah, it's a load of fun when you have the people.

Are you sure your machine isn't actually brand new?
Not completely new, I know that much. It had something like 3200 hours of power on time according to the booking screen, about 58 hours of which was actual play time. When I bought it, I was told it had "light plays" (whatever that means, lol). From what I gather, I believe this unit to have not been in an actual arcade floor environment so I don't think it's been beat on like those you might see at D&B, etc. The cabinet itself is pretty nice and clean with very few blemishes. It was a demo unit, so I think it may have mostly been tested by prospective buyers.
 
Your remote board is velcroed near the 'ceiling' of the PCB area.
 
Thats awesome, really fun game.
I got to play it recently in Paris at La tete danes les nuages (Head in the clouds)
http://www.ltdn.com/fr/

They also have Pac Man Smash which is awesome.
I highly recommend finding someplace that has this and playing it.
Its a crazy four player version of air hockey thats Pac Man themed where periodically during the match dozens of extra pucks come out all at once.
Crazy fun.
 
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