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Memories of where and when you first played/saw this game


retrorussell

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Prof. Pac-Man...I've heard of this game, but never seen an actual unit. I do remember a few trivia video games I played at the now defunct South Beach Arcade in Staten Island, NY. Given it was from the Golden Age of the arcade (late 1970s/early 1980s), I was able to answer most of the questions since I'm a late Gen-Xer.

 

Trivia games don't seem to pull in the same number of people that go for the usual Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter, etc.

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Here's another one: Loco-Motion from Centauri, 1982.

 

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This was a puzzle game similar to the old sliding tile puzzles. You had to drive a train to pick up passengers and you had to move tiles around too. There were a lot of ways to die: if you went into the barriers on the edge of the screen, if you ran off the track into the gap, or if you ran into a dead end. If you waited too long to pick up passengers at a station, they'd send a Crazy Train after you (those train riders mean business!) and if you went around constantly on a loop of track, you'd get a Sweeper sent after you.

 

I played this game at a flea market in Eden, NC sometime in the early 1990s which was the same place where I played Mappy. Anyone else see/play this one in the wild?

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I remember first actually playing Prof. Pac at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) in Portland before it moved to SE Portland. OMSI was a cool place to be; haven't been back there since it moved.

 

When did OMSI have this game? My dad retired from OMSI last year and I was there hundreds of times from age 5 or 6 til now. I definitely do not remember there ever being any coin-op video games. Where was it located?

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I remember first actually playing Prof. Pac at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) in Portland before it moved to SE Portland. OMSI was a cool place to be; haven't been back there since it moved.

 

When did OMSI have this game? My dad retired from OMSI last year and I was there hundreds of times from age 5 or 6 til now. I definitely do not remember there ever being any coin-op video games. Where was it located?

Oh boy, I can't remember the layout of the old OMSI location.. but PPM was there probably only in 1983, as the game bombed mightily and was either dumped or the cabs were reused for other titles. I think it was in the same area as the electronic "card memory game", if that helps. I don't know how old you are Mxyzptlk, so you might be too young to recognize my clue.

 

I never saw Loco-Motion. I see that Intellivision has a port.

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INTV has two versions, actually -- the 'official' one by Matell and the 'ripoff' by Activision. If you go to the Blue Sky Rangers website, you can read the whole story behind it. Never played the arcade version, but played both thru emulation and like the Activision version better.

 

BTW, Centauri is actually just a spin off company for Konami, much the same way that they used Ultra to publish extra games for the NES during it's lifetime. A lot of 'classic' Konami games got released originaly under the Centauri label.

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Wow...I didn't realize that Professor Pac-Man was such a rarity...probably because where I went as a child to play arcade games had it for the longest time! To this day I'm a big Pac-Man fan (literally and figuratively), but I was never once tempted to try Professor Pac-Man.

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I used to play Mappy here often. One day the machine was broke some how.. sort of like how an Atari 2600 can be "fryed"? The game was giving out free games! So, this kid was playing the machine. My friend and I asked if we could play. We played for awhile and wouldn't give it up. Finally we said he can have the machine back, but first we pulled out the power so it reset itself and no more free games.

 

 

Nice! :D Did you start laughing when you pulled the plug? :evil:

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Prof. Pac-Man...I've heard of this game, but never seen an actual unit. I do remember a few trivia video games I played at the now defunct South Beach Arcade in Staten Island, NY. Given it was from the Golden Age of the arcade (late 1970s/early 1980s), I was able to answer most of the questions since I'm a late Gen-Xer.

 

Trivia games don't seem to pull in the same number of people that go for the usual Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter, etc.

Prof pac-man, never heard of it, but like i said before, I was a 90's kid.

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Confession: I've NEVER seen a Mappy machine. Ever. I don't even know what it's about or how to play it. And I'm 37 years old. And have loved classic video games since Pac-Man came out.

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YES! That's the machine I saw at the flea market!

 

It's definitely different from your standard arcade cabinet - maybe that's why it caught my eye.

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Yeah, it's got the same giant-sized marquee like Jr. Pac-Man did.

Speaking of which...

Next game:

JR. PAC-MAN, 1983 Bally/MIDWAY

Okay entry in the Pac-Man series. Steer a preteen through a giant, scrolling maze. Child-related prizes float through the maze, turning dots into bigger dots that slow Jr. down when eaten, and destroy energizers!

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I think I first saw this at an Aladdin's Castle in Vancouver, WA.

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  • 3 weeks later...

NEXT GAME: MAG/MAX, 1985 Nichibutsu

Probably one of their best games not named Crazy Climber. You are a spaceship flying above and below ground, shooting enemies and trying to add pieces to become a giant robot. Being below ground is a LOT more fun, seeing as how your firepower is a lot more wide-spread. As a giant robot, you won't die but parts will be destroyed until you're back down to your ship, which will explode with one hit. Pretty fun, but endless, with one boss showing up, and you just keep going right after you kill him.

Mag%20Max%20marquee.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

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