I wo n’t rehash the story, but I did a few years ago about how Pac-Man developed. You can learn more by reading the article at this link.
And from that article, we can quickly summarize some of the context:
The original show’s subject immediately became Puck Man in Japan on it’s transfer. Moving from” Puck” to” Fuck” would be very simple in Western markets, and all you need is a pen and a little arcade vandalism. This is why Namco executives in America made the hasty decision to adopt the name Pac-Man to prevent such shenanigans.
Development of Pac-Man
Of course, Pac-Man was given a huge following on his US US licensing and became incredibly popular, but what the title change meant was that Puck Man existed for a while before it was decided to formally change its name.
Which brings us to the topic of this blog!
I recently picked up an intriguing Board from the Welsh certification program that I was a part of a few months ago. After some research and debate with other UK buyers, we decided it was a Puck Man table despite the fact that it appeared to be an initial Namco PCB.
Having been pulled from a UK driver’s inventory, the problem arose of how it got around?
I did a last push of a specific corner of one of the rooms as we approached the clearance, which revealed some artwork bezels and marquees leaning against the wall and behind a shelving unit. I was a well-known man at the time. And what should move up, but these two items:
This provided a crucial insight. After doing some research, I was able to determine that these items were from a UK Puck Man government returning home.
These, it starts to get a little murky. According to the web puckman. online:
This adorable little up was created in the United Kingdom by Bell Fruit MFG, and it has a genuine Namco Japan Puckman table for the sake of its accepted license.
Puckman.net
Bell Fruit MFG was a well-known company of plaza units back in the seventies and were a well-established, reasonable and above board business. However they licenced many games over around, including Namco’s Galaxian– but from my perspective, there is little to recommend that they would release a bootleg/copy version of Puck Man.
One thing that stands out when you go over the major PCB once is the use of child boards, which are unique to original Puck Man boards.
These girl cards are in place of the specialty chips that would ordinarily remain present there. There are two distinct schools of thought present:
- Due to supply issues, the daughter cards were substituted for the custom chips because the game was so well-known and the chip’s creator could n’t keep up with demand ( in fact, if you look at a Midway Pac-Man PCB, these daughter cards are used ).
- Bootleggers used these daughter boards in place of the unique custom chips because they were able to copy them.
The cable ribbon cables in the middle, which are paper or card with wires outside, are what are common when comparing both PCBs side by side. For use on a cocktail tables where space is limited, the Board may be” cracked” in third and folded over on itself.
There are other similar colors on specific cards, and in every other regard, the Boards are similar.
What does n’t help, is that Namco did n’t mark these early PCB to make identification easy.
There are a few interesting threads on collector forums that discuss these Boards if you want to vanish down a squirrel opening. They make for interesting studying, unfortunately, there is no true conclusion reached.
Bell Fruit Puckman discussion thread on UKVAC conferences
Thread ( that I started ) on KLOV forums
Therefore is my Circuit unique? The big question is this, but after talking with Chinese buyers and some of the more well-known UK lovers, we can all agree that the PCB is a Namco board, which was either supplied by Bell Fruit here in the UK or shipped with the child boards because there were no available practice chips.
While the online discussion was raging, I wanted to see if the PCB worked. After replacing a broken RAM device and creating a custom connector to enable the Board to become plugged into my Jamma case, I received the following message:
My friend Gavin was able to take the PCB off to me to have a look at, but he ended up being surprised!
So it seems as though our UK operator once changed the Puck Man board so that it can operate Ms. Pac-Man, which may explain the extra wire hacks on the board’s reverse. So I requested that Gavin repair the PCB and reload the EPROMs so they could move the original Japanese Ball Man ROMs.
But a few hours later, we then had a functioning Puckman PCB running the original Japanese film Puck Man, which pre-dates Midway’s discharge of Pac-Man!
My friend Gavin, who is a restoration witch, deserves a big thank you for getting this issue back up and running!
Although all the evidence in my head suggests the panel is authentic, the question of originality is not really addressed, and I’m delighted to have one of its pieces in my collection. And basically what does it problem? In any case, it’s a rare item and really nice to have.
As I already have all the custom parts, I could make up a copy Bell Fruit MFG” Puckman” cupboard one day and add the PCB, bezel, and marquee. Would be an exciting job!
Check out Jamey Pittman’s amazing Pac-Man Dossier, which can be found here, for more checking on the subject of Puck Man and Pac-Man.
I’ll give you a great video that shows the artwork for Puck Man. Its in Chinese, but you can use YouTube convert have to observe English subtitles.
Thank you for reading this year; feel free to comment below if you have any more information on Puck Man PCBs.
Until next day,
Tony
