I was tipped off to this Mr. and Mrs. Pac Man being sold along with a 1962/1963 Seeburg LPC-1 on Facebook yesterday and picked up the Pinball machine last night and Jukebox later today. The MPU in the machine has severe acid damage and will be replaced with a new aftermarket MPU and hopefully will get this machine back and functioning. The playfield has seen far better days and the people I bought it from weren't educated on care, maintenance and played it to death. Hopefully I will come across a marginal to decent playfield but in the meantime I will be diving in head first with my brushes and paints to see what justice I can do to this $150 find as it will be the biggest playfield paint repair job I've taken on yet! Wish me luck!
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I got myself a pair of 6.0 readers just for this job. I expect many long winter nights working on this one! It’s been awhile since I’ve had a good project, so glad I came across this one and hope I can do right by it! Here’s my last big project. Most of the rail gun was gone and half of the cityscape and tire tracks around the Spot Letter W/L and right hand ball lock was down to bare wood. Spent a good 10 hours on this one.

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Here’s what she looks like after the first wipe down with Naptha. Looks a lot better and the colors are still vibrant. No flaking of paint during wipe down which is a very good sign!

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Nice work!

First things first, install new MPU check, reflow lamp driver due to bad header connections check. Lamps working sans a couple bad maze bulbs. Now onto the Squawk & Talk board to isolate half the missing game sounds (all speech appears to be intact but only a few sounds, pretty much all default basic sounds are missing, custom sounds to this game seem to be intact) mixing pots good, suspect a cap kit is in order. We’re making progress!
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Testing all the lamp sockets and experimenting with some LED bulbs and whoa this Bally with its slow refresh is a seizure inducing strobe machine, even the original 44’s and 47’s strobe! Worked on lots of Williams and Gottlieb and have never seen this level of strobe before. Going to be installing 470 ohm resistors across the controlled sockets to tone it down a bit. I’ll also say that these 555 sockets Bally used are a huge PITA!

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First test coat on the maze, we will see how this looks after it sets and gets buffed out.

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A few more color test coats, just getting started. It won’t be perfect but it should pass the 5 foot rule when it’s all complete!
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More black fill in and cutting in some lines.

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Lower black above PF display cut in. That’s enough for today.

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That middle portion above the Pac direction inserts is going to be a real challenge to get right and color match since it’s completely down to bare wood. I would have preferred the middle around the maze to be shot. Oh well, the price was right and I like a good challenge and I have lots.... well a bit of free time.

Squawk & Talk rebuild kit arrived today and I just finished swapping out all those Caps. We have the full sound set, now I can move all my attention on to the paint and mechanical portion of this restoration!

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Blue fill first coat.

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PAC MAN yellow match and fill coat 1

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A little more black and sidewalk fill. Penciled myself some guidelines for the missing portion of the buildings. Just need my acrylite pens to get here so I can work the tiny details.

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Note sure yet. My other two repairs (also done with enamels) have held up extremely well for the past 5 or so years under light play so I may let this one ride and see how it holds up. It all depends on how smooth I can get the repaired spots. This is coming along much better than I expected but I’m not done yet!

My ink pens arrived today and I was able to work on the middle arrows detail, some miscellaneous lower playfield fill and detail, upper ghost face detail, reconstruct Pac Mans right hand and test some outlines. My headlamp finally died and I’ll take that as my cue to stop for the night.

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Hand painting and using a magic eraser to smooth out the layers. There wasn't too much large area with missing solid color otherwise I would have airbrushed it. After initial cleaning and rub down with naptha and magic eraser I opted to keep what paint remained and dealing with trying to color match and get the paint through the airbrush before it started to thicken was something I didn't want to deal with.

I only mask off with light tac masking tape when I need to make long straight lines like the sidewalks, arrow triangle and black arrows extending from P A C M A N inserts. Other than that everything has been freehand with magic eraser smoothing after cure and between coats. The enamel cures very quick and I am able to smooth it within 15 minutes. The only problem with masking over the checked remaining paint is that sometimes spreads out in the area where the original paint is missing, just makes for a little extra cleanup during detail. This repair is nowhere near perfection but it is passing the 5' rule and it should hold up for many years to come or until I find a replacement PF or overlay. Color matching has been the toughest part of this job so far. Due to the condition of this play field I've done a little more experimentation compared to the other not so extensive jobs I've done, I figured the play field was blown out to begin with and the machine was only $150 with just under $250 invested in getting it functional so I don't have much to loose and I might as well have fun and learn a few things from my mistakes!

I've been throwing around the idea of clear coat but since I have been using primarily all enamels which have held up extremely well on my other machines going on more than 5 years I may leave it which will allow me to better my work and color matching down the road. I'm still on the fence.

More progress done tonight. Partially painted in missing building artwork above direction arrows, painted in sidewalk face, detailed P A C M A N inserts and part of the Maze inserts.

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Yes I have a reference photo to work from. It’s not exact particularly around the PAC-MAN inserts where all the artwork was missing but it’s close enough that the casual eye won’t notice it while playing when it’s done. This painting has been almost meditative for me, according to my Apple Watch my pulse slows almost to resting pace while painting!

Finished the maze insert detail, detailed The 5 Pac Man men remaining inserts, more city paint and detail tonight as well as adding hands and fingers of Mr and Mrs Pac Man above the Playfield status display. Only a couple colors left.

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I have a Space Shuttle that while it has an un damaged playfield it has really bad ball swirls
and one of the prior owner(s) installed Mylar without giving it a proper cleaning. I’d love to get it back to its original luster but I fear I’d cause more damage trying to remove the Mylar so I’ve decided to just leave it. Sounds like yours was done by an operator to mitigate wear while squeezing the last bit of profit out of it. What a shame to Mylar over a checked play field. /smh

Missing artwork has been recreated and completed. Now I can concentrate on the lower playfield, detail and the missing lettering.

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I like the whole idea and for a game that went into design in 1980 the digital maze game was ahead of its time. Not sure if it’s the first such mini game idea using playfield lights but it sure works into the theme!

I ordered a 10 pack of regular bulbs for the time being. I will probably order the LED maze after I finish the project.

Lower playfield fill and detail. I opted to fill in the bare wood area around the playfield data display and did my best to blend it in with the railing posts on either side. The brown was impossible to match as it’s yellow with a translucent brown layer on top, the depth of color changes from bottom to top (classic brown near the outhole to an almost gold-ish near the pop bumpers) so I just filled in the missing paint with my best match and used the planking pattern to emphasize wood grain in those brown areas. Did some side lane color fill and some top right paint chip wear repairs. Need to make a stencil for the PAC-MAN SPECIAL wording around the light insert below the center pop bumper and upper PAC - MAN AGGRESSIVE insert.
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It’s come a long way in the past 25 hours of work over 18 days. Just a few more details and then the long wait for full cure begins.
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I currently have this animated LED clock which I picked up on Amazon last year for $30, seems they are very hard to find now!

I totally agree and it looses time when it gets unplugged but the animation is awesome, mine has been running non stop in my game room since I bought it. I wish there was a way to hack this thing to add more or different animation. Great idea with poor execution.

Yes, mine has the exact problem as well as loosing time when power goes out. Like you I just let it run animation, I don't care if the time is correct.

Installed LED back box lighting, what a huge improvement!

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I used CW 12vdc strip lights, hot glued to the inside of the back box and tied into the switched AC at the power supply with a 9.5vdc power supply. I found it was a little bright with a 12vdc power supply. I do get a slight shadow at the bottom due to the frame the glass sits in but I think I’ll cover the aluminum with some white paper to help reflect some light forward to tame that shadow down.

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Backlit flipper buttons added. I’m trying to find other things to mod because I’m not looking forward to making the stencils for the last bit of Playfield work.

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Please share pictures and if you find a way to fully eliminate the bottom shadow without compromising the inner door operation please share! I thought about mounting the strip on the inner door but I was afraid of LED hot spotting. LED neon tube may be the way to go to install directly to the inner door.

Well it was a little nerve racking but I got the stencil right on the second cut. I was worried that I’d get paint lift but even after hard pressing the stencil down no paint came up!

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It is a Brother Design-N-Cut, it works very well but the software is pretty lousy and hard to learn however once you figure out its quirks it gets easier to use. I designed the stencil @ 300 DPI in Photoshop and used an online tool convert the JPG to a SVG file that the cutter required then sized it from there. I used low tack masking tape which the cutter had no problems cutting. Note: If applying to an uneven repaired playfield its best to use thicker enamels, I used my acrylic paint pens with the first try and the paint was too thin and it ran into the deeper grooves on the playfield which I had to clean up in order to make my second attempt. These printers can cost around $250 - $300, if thats a little steep for you drop me a message and maybe I can help you out on the stencil cutting side.

Thanks for the link, I'm totally ordering one of those!

Thank You RonSS, this is the 6th machine I've done paint repairs on and this is by far the biggest job by a long shot! I figured I had nothing to loose since the Playfield was so blown to begin with, it should hold out well till I come across a replacement or overlay someday.

Last stencil work complete on the upper Pac Man insert and now I wait for the paint to fully cure. While not perfect I’m pretty darn happy with how it turned out! It sure has come a long way from what it looked like 30 days ago!
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Still haven’t decided, the enamels I use cure very hard and the machines I’ve repaired have shown no wear in the past 5 years however none of those repairs are close to the overall size of this one. I’ll probably leave it be for awhile to see how things wear and this gives me the opportunity to do future touch ups.

I tend to use my enamels on the thick side and after a couple hours or day I will work the area with a magic eraser which breaks down any high spots or paint lines and then repaint if necessary. My acrylic paint pens tend to be on the thin side and work well to fill areas without leaving lines however it does take longer to dry before I can work the area with the magic eraser.

Considering I paid $150 for the machine you’d be getting a heck of a deal after I spent about 27 hours and countless cuss words on the thing! Thanks for the kind words of encouragement!

It looks like you had some plank lines or some uneven spots. How did you get the Mylar to sit down so well? My fear of attempting Mylar is that it would lift out of the low spots over time and even attempting to remove Mylar at a later date from a repaired play field such as mine would pretty much reduce it back to the original blown out state. Your job turned out great, it looks fantastic!

Good info, I was going to ask if you used heat, that Mylar laid down nicely. Great idea on the wax!

Installed dedicated 12vdc power supply for LED back box lighting and under cabinet LED accent lighting. Dimmer installed for back box circuit.

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Those are some ugly drop targets! I’ll give the previous owner(s) credit on repair creativity though! Toothpicks and hot glue FTW!

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Well she passed the test, everything is functional and Mr and Mrs Pac Man has earned a ticket out of the garage and into the basement arcade. A few upgrades on the horizon but no need to eat up space in the garage when I have two machines in the queue waiting to be worked on!

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WHO AMONG YOU WILL CHALLENGE US! I agree, great game and plays really well when properly cared for. I have seen a few at pinball shows and they are usually always beat up, dingy and dirty.

On another note I’ve been holding off on the LED maze upgrade however I had the wife come down to play it for the first time and she said “it’s really hard to see the red ghost in the maze, you really need to get LEDs in there”. Gotta love easy approval, done and ordered!

That would have been awesome! I think they tried to make some of the sounds to be similar but they were very limited considering it was designed in 78-79.

Will do, I saw the one piece divider on your ebay listing and was hoping mine would come with it! For some reason the package was supposed to be delivered last thursday but it has been stuck in a town 60 miles away and hasn't moved since Friday. If it doesn't progress tomorrow I'll be paying the local PO a visit. I'll be sure to post pictures of the install process!

Damn, she sure is yummy!

Just finished installing the LED maze board by Geeteoh and wow what a difference and that 3D printed light divider is a HUGE bonus over the old method which I wasn’t looking forward to, zero light bleed between the inserts. The red is so much easier to see now, pictures don’t do it justice, it needs to be seen in person to appreciate. Great upgrade and seeing how much work went into the board design the price is an absolute bargain.
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Thank You so much for your kind words, this was a fun project and exactly the size project I've been wanting to do for quite some time. One project like this a year is exactly what I need!

Thank You! As far as the skill shot...... rarely, maybe 1 in 20 and my table is set steep as well. That is one tough SOB!