• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Namco "Ms. Pac-Man" Plug N Play Handheld Controller!

T

Techron

New Member
Joined
Nov 3, 2015
Messages
1
HPIM3516.jpg

I found this vintage game controller at a thrift shop in the used electronics section. What a gaming gem, and it works! It came in perfect condition for only $3.00! It is dated 1982, which is the first year Ms. Pac-Man was released. This game works just by plugging it into a TV with RCA Video/Audio (the Yellow and White Cord). This is perfect for vintage game collectors.

I have featured this item, and many more on my new Blog: http://themildmanneredblogger.blogspot.ca/

:D:D:D
 
Just to be clear the GAMES on that might be copyright '82, but that Jakks plug and play unit you have there is circa ~2003ish. Such devices sure as shine-ola didn't even exist in the 1980's.

That's the one that also has Xevious, Pole Position, Mappy and Galaga on it, right? *Zooms in* yeah I can almost make out the Xevious and Mappy stickers, should be pole position and galaga stickers on the other side.

While somewhat cool to have, they're really not that hard to find and still hover between $5 and $20 on e-bay depending on the title and wear/tear. Sad part is some jackasses are asking hundreds of dollars for these on Amazon in the blind hope someone who doesn't know any better will bite -- when they were being shoveled out on pharmacy end-caps for $10 or less each just five years ago. Even more of a laugh when you can walk into Wally-world, plunk down a twenty and walk out with a 12 game system of basically the same thing released by Bandai. (since Jakks didn't renew their license of the IP, Bandai is doing it now).

Though the layout of the Bandai one is quite awkward for the non-pac man games on it thanks to the bizarre placement of the buttons. It's actually like it was designed for a lefty.
 
facattack said:
One time I saw one of those things had Sega Genesis ports of NHL and NFL from 94...
Click to expand...

One of the most fun ones is the "C64 Direct to TV" stick, since the board has breakouts for basically turning it into a real C64. The ASIC has on it a near perfect recreation of all the hardware in a full 64.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV

But yeah, I've seen them in all sorts of crazy forms recreating old platforms. It's like some of the bizarre chinese consoles you can get for like $30 USD that take NES, SNES, SMS and Genesys carts in one little box... or the Atari one that's an entire 2600 inside a somewhat taller version of the classic CX-40 joystick...

But any way you find them, all of the units in that form factor are new builds from the past ten to twelve years.
 
Scali said:
We had SCART and/or RCA on VCRs and TVs at least in the late 80s.
I used my grandma's old TV for my C64 and Amiga for many years. It was one of the first stereo TVs. I connected my C64 with a composite-to-scart cable I made myself.
It was something like this one from 1986: http://www.marcelstvmuseum.com/philips 22cs5758 folder.html
Click to expand...
We had RCA on VCRs. But not on TVs. No video game or other equipment had RCA outputs, unless they were intended to plug into a modulator.
 
deathshadow said:
or the Atari one that's an entire 2600 inside a somewhat taller version of the classic CX-40 joystick...
Click to expand...

That's actually based on NES-on-a-chip, so it's just Nintendo hardware emulating Atari 2600 games (just like the original Atari Flashback). The only plug-and-play gaming system that uses Atari-2600-on-a-chip hardware and plays genuine 2600 game ROMs is the Atari Flashback 2.
 
KC9UDX said:
We had RCA on VCRs. But not on TVs. No video game or other equipment had RCA outputs, unless they were intended to plug into a modulator.
Click to expand...

Every front loading Nintendo Entertainment System had RCA video and audio output and an RF modulator. The Sega Master System and Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo had cables available for AV output.
 
Great Hierophant said:
Every front loading Nintendo Entertainment System had RCA video and audio output and an RF modulator. The Sega Master System and Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo had cables available for AV output.
Click to expand...

Same as with the Atari XE Game System.

id4nr6.jpg
 
I know about those. My point is, at least it seemed to me at the time, they expected you to use an RF modulator (or a computer monitor), because TVs in the US, almost never had baseband video in, and TVs were what most people used.

But none of those things are from 1982, just like the toy in the OP.

If something in the 80s had RCA video and audio out, it didn't have a yellow colour coded video connector. At least nothing I ever saw did.
 
KC9UDX said:
If something in the 80s had RCA video and audio out, it didn't have a yellow colour coded video connector. At least nothing I ever saw did.
Click to expand...

True. The color coding of composite video jacks as yellow didn't become standard across the industry until there was a need to differentiate it from component (YPbPr) video, which also used RCA jacks.
 
Do you remember the name of that fancy microprocessor controlled TV/stereo system from RCA? Something tells me that colour coded video cables and jacks were used on that.

I can't recall when those were made, but it could have been in the late 80s.
 
Thank you!

So I was wrong: yellow connectors were in use, but not commonly, and still probably not as early as 1982.
 
All depends on the setup. There were certainly tv's and monitors available that featured RCA composite video connectors, however they weren't commonly available and ubiquitous until the 1990's.

I remember seeing a Sony stereo monitor built into a stand that had pretty much every input available, bnc, rca, s-video, rf, etc, and it was from 1983 or 1984 (I forget which, now). Was old, but nice. It had a tv tuner built in as well. We had a customer use it as his main tv until probably 2004/2005. He would constantly call in service calls for bad pictures, and would never believe that the tuner in his tv was finally going bad after nearly 25 years.
 
TV sets designed for commercial and industrial use had composite video inputs decades before it became common on the consumer market:

 
vwestlife said:
TV sets designed for commercial and industrial use had composite video inputs decades before it became common on the consumer market
Click to expand...

Dates back to the tube era at least. The first time that I worked out a RGB-to-Composite adapter, it was for one of the studio monitors--and that was in the 70s. Good golly, think of all the displays in airports and stock exchanges, not to mention TV studios...

My first computer monitor was a Zenith hot chassis tube set that I hacked into right after the IF stage.
 
I bought an Apple II Plus at a garage sale back in the 90's and the seller threw in an ancient 19" industrial rackmount B&W monitor that worked fine with the Apple via an RCA->BNC cable. I have *no* idea how old that monitor was, I think it may have been manufactured by Saruman's orcs near the end of the third age of Middle Earth. It was full of tubes and absolutely huge capacitors and the CRT was one of those really-low deflection ones with a neck like two feet long for a nine inch-ish screen.

Needless to say I wish I still had that monitor.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top