Terrible Modern Pac-Man

[omegadot]

So I was a a Dave & Buster's today for a friend's birthday. It's a bar + restaurant + arcade business around the US. Kinda like an adult chuck e cheese but a lot more expensive to enjoy. I walked around and saw a few cool games, the linked Mario Kart for one, but then I saw a Pac-Man cab so I thought "Sweet! A real arcade game!" This turned out to be a modern multi-cabinet with Pacman, Galaga, Mappy, and a few others. It also turns out that it uses an LCD in vertical alignment for display and it was awful. Pinky was basically white. I'd rather play on my pretty mediocre MAME cabinet at home. Thankfully the stick and buttons were fine.

[VectorGamer]

This turned out to be a modern multi-cabinet with Pacman, Galaga, Mappy, and a few others. It also turns out that it uses an LCD in vertical alignment for display and it was awful. Pinky was basically white. I'd rather play on my pretty mediocre MAME cabinet at home. Thankfully the stick and buttons were fine.

 

Sounds like they had the ever popular 60-in-1 JAMMA boards installed. I have one at home but I have an arcade monitor in use for a display and it looks sweet.

[Cynicaster]

I was at a Dave and Busters a few months ago and had a similar experience. I just walked around looking for some kind of classic game to play, but all I could find were the multi-cades with big LCD monitors and lame controls. I tried Xevious and realized the control panel had a 4-way joystick. Talk about freakin' useless.

 

Still, more fun than those $2/minute amusement park rides that they try to pass of as "arcade games" nowadays.

[omegadot]

 

Sounds like they had the ever popular 60-in-1 JAMMA boards installed. I have one at home but I have an arcade monitor in use for a display and it looks sweet.

 

Interesting. I admit to being pretty ignorant about real arcades. I mostly played light gun games when I was growing up and now I mostly use MAME since the kids keep be trapped at home. I was pretty disappointed to have such an eh experience at a real live place.

[number six]

I saw these at Namco's booth at Iappa a few years ago.

 

They are exactly what they sound like, a namco produced cheap LCD multicade. Well, probably not cheap to buy.

 

The LCD looks really garish and despite the Namco graphics I didn't like this at all. If i recall it had horizontal games like Rolling Thunder 'fit' to the vertical screen as well.

 

I do like their older multi-game units, the Reunion and Pac-Man anniversary are good cabinets.. but then again those use traditional CRTs.

 

The unfortunate reality is CRTs haven't been in production in years now so if new games are to be made they will be using LCDs. I just wish they could have done a better job or maybe introduced some sort of video processing to maybe emulate scan lines or SOMETHING to make it look more authentic.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

What you came across was Namco's Pac-Man's Arcade Party. It's not a bootleg or Chinese 60-in-1 but an official product. Technically it is the 30th anniversary cab. As mentioned above, the reality is that CRTs are not viable to use in a modern commercial product. However, I'm sure they could have found an IPS LCD panel that does a better job. The base hardware that is emulating the games is a downsized PS2, in case anyone cares (looks like a small form factor PCB but it is the same hardware used in the Pac-Man Battle Royale arcade game that launched in 2012).

 

Here's the product page:

 

http://namcoamerica.com/game.php?gameid=32

Edited January 24, 2015 by Shaggy the Atarian

[Rex Dart]

I tried Xevious and realized the control panel had a 4-way joystick. Talk about freakin' useless.

 

Aww, that's the worst. They'll make multi-game cabinets with a 4 way stick, and include Pac Man, Dig Dug... and then 30 games that are totally unsuited to a 4 way stick.

[+Random Terrain]

Aww, that's the worst. They'll make multi-game cabinets with a 4 way stick, and include Pac Man, Dig Dug... and then 30 games that are totally unsuited to a 4 way stick.

You're supposed to get drunk first so you won't care. Have a beer in one hand and your other hand on the pizza grease slathered stick and imagine that you're the king of high scores.