ACAM @ PAX-East -- Come see CRAZY OTTO

[MPS]

Just a notice to those who are attending PAX-East in Boston next week......

The American Classic Arcade Museum is pleased to announce that at PAX-East on Friday, March 26th and Saturday, March 27th, we will be having the first public showing of Crazy Otto since 1981. PAX-East will be taking place at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA.

Ms. Pac-Man started life as Crazy Otto, an enhancement hack of Pac-Man. Developed in Massachusetts by General Computer Corporation (GCC), the game featured a number of improvements over traditional Pac-Man gameplay including randomized ghost algorithms, multiple new mazes, new music & sound, new intermissions and bonus items that float around instead of popping up in the same place.

GCC showed their game to Midway (Namco’s American distributor for Pac-Man), attempting to bluff Midway into approving the release of the enhancement kit by telling them that GCC won their lawsuit against Atari involving a similar enhancement for Missile Command. Midway had nothing in the pipeline to follow up Pac-Man, so they suggested that GCC create a true sequel to the original Pac-Man instead of an enhancement kit. The result is Ms. Pac-Man.

Crazy Otto has been in GCC's possession since 1981. It was not released in arcades and it has not been emulated. Our exhibit of Crazy Otto is a one-time showing to the public.  It will be set up in a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet and it will be fully playable.

Also, the ACAM Classic Game Developer Panel will be taking place at PAX-East on Saturday, March 27th. The panel will take place in the Wyvern Theater at 7:30pm.

I have an exciting discussion planned. The panelists are former employees of General Computer Corporation in Cambridge, MA. GCC was involved in game development, and between 1981-1984, they designed products that created over $750 million in revenue for Midway and Atari. Some of those products include the Ms. Pac-Man arcade game and the hardware for the Atari 7800 console.

My panel guests are:

Steve Golson (Super Missile Attack, Crazy Otto, Ms. Pac-Man, Atari 7800)
Mike Horowitz (Crazy Otto, Ms. Pac-Man)
Jonathan Hurd (Food Fight)
Tim Hoskins (Jr. Pac-Man)
Tom Westberg (Jr. Pac-Man, Atari, other arcade)
Kevin Osborn (Atari 2600/7800 games)

We invite all PAX-East attendees to join us for a fun discussion of classic game development & history.

The American Classic Arcade Museum will be in room 310 at PAX-East. We are setting up a museum exhibit in that room that will consist of classic coin-op games & pinball machines, along with static displays of gaming history. All four of the GCC-designed arcade games (Ms. Pac-Man, Jr. Pac-Man, Food Fight & Quantum) will be on display in our museum-style retro arcade environment. We will also have two classic laserdisc games (Dragon's Lair and Us Vs. Them) hooked up to projectors so the entire room can watch the gameplay.

The American Classic Arcade Museum is the first 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to restoring and displaying vintage coin-operated amusements. Located on the third floor of the immense Funspot Family Entertainment Super Center, the museum celebrates the origins of the arcade industry with popular games from the past. Asteroids, Pac-Man, Centipede and Gorgar are just a few of the nearly 300 games in the classic arcade museum. The museum also contains static displays of game history and the walls feature many posters of vintage arcade games.

Mike Stulir
Board of Directors
American Classic Arcade Museum

[MPS]

Here is the list of games that ACAM will be bringing for the classic arcade exhibit in room 310. These games were chosen for popularity, historical significance or rarity:

Video:
Omega Race
Dragon's Lair
Us Vs. Them
Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom
Galaga
Ms. Pac-Man/Crazy Otto
Jr. Pac-Man
Quantum
Food Fight
Sinistar
Asteroids
Leprechaun
Space Invaders Deluxe
Frogger
Pong
Pooyan
Joust 2
Donkey Kong 3

Dragon's Lair & Us Vs. Them will be hooked up to projectors so the whole room can watch the gameplay.



Pinball:
Buck Rogers
Flash
High Speed
Spy Hunter



Mike Stulir
Board of Directors
The American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot
579 Endicott Street North
Laconia, NH 03246
http://www.classicarcademuseum.org/

[escher]

Holy crap.  I played that and I just assumed it was a weird hacked ROM or something.  The joystick seemed a little off and the graphics were quite odd, but everything else seemed authentic.  It threw me for a bit of a loop.  You guys should have had some more obvious signage there. 

[massive88]

Shot from the field, unfortunately not by me, but by a friend I tipped off to go see Crazy Otto.

[MPS]

Well, the show was a smashing success.  We still need to a post-mortem with the Board members, but the success level was so high that I'll bet you will see ACAM taking games to other shows on the East coast.

Here are a few photos.  First off, the room was completely mobbed for the entire weekend, and I think the picture shows just how busy we were.  The second is TV & Film star Wil Wheaton playing Crazy Otto during the private showing we arranged for him on Saturday morning.  (Wil genuflected when he came into the room.)  Finally, a photo of ACAM Board members Mike Stulir, Sarah St. John and Gary Vincent with the GCC crew after the panel discussion.

I'd like to give a Big "Thank you" to Steve Golson & the entire GCC crew.  The panel consisted of 7 former GCC employees & we had even more of them in the audience.  Despite a mistake in the programs listing an incorrect time for the panel, we had a huge crowd and it came off better than I could have ever hoped.

Mike Stulir
Board of Directors
The American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot
579 Endicott Street North
Laconia, NH 03246
http://www.classicarcademuseum.org/

[Level42]

Completely missed this thread !

GREAT that you had Crazy Otto on the show !!  Did anyone dump the ROMs ? 

I think that's the first decent screenshot of CO I've seen apart from the tiny Life magazine picture.

Cool shot of the GCC people in front of their products. I know they did Ms.Pac, Quantum and Food Fight but did they make Jr.Pac too ?

The new issue of the UK magazine Retrogamer has a feature on Ms.Pac and Crazy Otto. It's also showing (MAME?) screenshots of CO and some original schematics.

Check out the video preview here: