Tokens Only » Arcade documentation

Mappy arcade game mailer

cnlmoore — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:57:22 +0000

This pop-up mailer was included in a batch of documents I purchased from Art Mallet, or artfromny, as he’s known on the forums. Bally Midway had a good advertisement system in place, sending post cards to customers on their mailing list whenever a new game was released, amongst other things. This card is for the new release of Mappy, a whimsical game with a trampoline bouncing mouse in a house of burglar cats, fun stuff. The card is in great shape, with vibrant colors and a cute little three dimensional effect. A nice piece of arcade history, enjoy.

Notes & Quotes Arcade Game Token book

cnlmoore — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:31:14 +0000

I picked up this little 6″ x 8″ spiral bound book, titled “Notes & Quotes”, simply because it had token images on the cover. The text alluded to more information about tokens and the business side of the arcade industry as well. With a blog named “Tokens Only”, I thought it only fitting to get some token data up on the site.

I had only seen the cover image on eBay and wasn’t sure what to expect, but when it arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see that it has token info, marketing strategies, business projections and even touches on the psychology of arcade tokens, circa 1982.

While I can’t give the book any bonus points for layout, it is jammed full of arcade industry information. Notes & Quotes is 150 plus pages of bizarre marketing techniques, business strategies and sample token artwork for the amusement equipment operator. “Notes & Quotes” was published by Van Brook of Lexington, Inc., the #1 worldwide vendor of amusement and vending equipment tokens. While I’m not sure about the claim, I do know that they still exist, which means they survived the arcade bust. Check out the current Van Brook website HERE if you’d like to view their current product lineup. I scanned the entire Notes & Quotes book and added it to my resources page. Check it out and let me know what you think. For now I’ll just highlight a few of the pages I thought were interesting.

Operator notes and inventory sheets

cnlmoore — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:56:32 +0000

Operator notes are odd little items I’ve found in cabinets, manuals, industry magazines and of course in bulk arcade paper buys. In a recent batch of arcade paper, I came across this crude chart made by an op who was obviously trying to narrow down his next batch of game purchases. A lot of time was spent writing out little details about a number of games in an effort to maximize his return.

The operator listed the game, manufacturer, type, what its “like”, sound effects, graphics, odds, rating and comments. Whew! He was certainly trying to be thorough in his decision making process, I hope it paid off. Take a look.

This next set of images are documents I found in the box of manuals I got with my bulk buy made back in 2005. Check out the post about my warehouse raid, to learn more. Its an interesting list of games, parts, manuals, etc. Seeing this list made me cry a little bit as most of this stuff was trashed in the months before I found the warehouse, including the Death Race and old Nutting IQ machine.

I look at these pages and wonder about all the time it took to make and organize this list. Then when I think back to the way the warehouse looked…yeesh! At least something was organized.

Bally Midway Promotional catalog

cnlmoore — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:50:45 +0000

Here’s another piece from the big batch of arcade paper I picked up on the road trip to St. Louis. Pat C. was holding onto the box for me along with a HUO Pengo for Jeff R, so we made the trip. I’ve been slowly sorting through all the stuff, when I came across this wacky little item, a promotional product catalog produced by Bally Midway.

This catalog is chock full of 80′s cheesy goodness. Interesting idea for Bally Midway to produce items for distributors to resell or gift to operators, likely after a game purchase or something. I just don’t think any of these items qualify as great prizes for ops to give away to customers. A sweater? A pac-man tie? I suppose the ops might like that stuff, but how many ops were spending their cash on manufacturer novelties? Very few I’d guess. Just wait for the trade show and grab stuff free!

Anti Cheat devices for coin operated games

cnlmoore — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:53:17 +0000

I have been sorting through the big box of arcade paper that was my part of the haul from the road trip to pick up Jeff’s HUO Pengo. There are some really odd things in the lot, the first bit of info was about the wild and wacky Arcade Outpost. This time I want to share some industry info I found about anti cheating devices. Apparently back in 1981 cheating operators out of a quarter or two was a big problem. Operators must have been losing some big money and subsequently complaining to the manufacturers; because all sorts of anti cheating devices were developed for the various coin mechanisms and coin door configurations. I guess those sneaky kids back in the arcade had figured out numerous ways to get credits for free or for much less than a quarter! Shame on you. Anti penny, anti nickel, anti stringing and anti wire modifications or mechanisms were available and well documented to stop those thieving kids!

Midway and Coinco had service bulletins covering the topic in detail. There was even some info published in the “Franks Cranks” column from Play Meter magazine. If you think about the progression of the coin door, it is easy to see how theft played a major role in the subsequent design changes over the years. From the classic Midway Ms. Pac-Man style door (easy to trick), to the newer over-under coin doors with perpendicular coin mechs and complicated components that make it tough to add credits for free. Enjoy!

A little Willis history uncovered

cnlmoore — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:32:17 +0000

I’m a big fan of Willis artwork and consider myself to be an arcade history buff too. Unfortunately because of collector attitude towards most things Willis, these two subjects rarely meet. I would like to change that just a little. A recent eBay win has shed some light on the history of Willis and that companies place in arcade history. While this information may be known to some of the die hard collectors out there, it was new information to me. My enlightenment started with this little piece of documentation:

A true piece of 80′s cheese, for sure, but if you can get past the airbrushed silkscreen fantasy cover, you will find a few nuggets of classic arcade history.

The first paragraph talks about turning visual ideas into bottom line profits using the Willis illustrators and color psychology as a way to create compelling game art. What? I thought Willis just made those bad replacement overlays? Nope. The images on the inside cover clearly show artwork done for some of the major manufacturers of the day. Assuming Willis used the images as a sort of portfolio of past work, then Phoenix, Carnival, Spectar, Targ and Eagle art packages were all cranked out by Willis. Oh, but there is more.

The next paragraph talks about, “Willis pioneered the reverse-printed, pressure-sensitive, polycarbonate control panel for video games.” Whoa. Now Webster describes pioneer as, “to originate or take part in the development of”. So are we to assume that Willis helped turn around an industry practice of printing on metal control panels (think berzerk, gorf, asteroids, etc) and introduced the industry to a whole new way of thinking? Or were they perhaps just at the right place and time and picked up on the idea from others in the business? They were located in San Jose CA, so it is possible that they were influenced by Atari or the printer doing the work for Atari. I can only speculate without more data at my disposal and sadly much of what is known about Willis seems to be lost to the ages.

The back cover of the brochure highlights some of the comments Willis received from clients such as, Gemlin, U.S. Billiards, Centuri, Exidy and International Game Technology or IGT. So Willis did more than just crank out replacement overlays, they had a hand in the creative development of some true 80′s classic games. Think twice next time you come across that cheesy Willis cpo. Even the cheese has a place in arcade history.

Monitor Flow Chart added

cnlmoore — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 05:54:59 +0000

I got lucky back in 2005 and was able to raid a small warehouse near my old house in the City of Chicago. In that raid I found a lot of misc paperwork, inventory notes and technical documents made by the staff technician. I found this monitor flow chart on the work bench. It’s 11×17, dated 1982 and laminated. Not a bad little flow chart. Crappy jpg below, but the PDF is great.

Grab the two page PDF version HERE. If you use this chart for repair work, please leave a comment and tell me about it. If you want to re-post this to your site, that’s fine, just credit my site.