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Grandstand Pocket & Handheld Games

myPinballs

myPinballs

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Joined
Nov 19, 2011
Messages
5,446
Location
Pudsey UK
Alias
Jim
Anyone into these old games? And the amazing silver/chrome boxes??. A recent facebook post reminded me of them and remember having a few pac-man type games that i'm trying to track down/work out what they were. Weird as not thought about them for years then just popped to my head today!!

These 2 i believe i had

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I also had an astro wars desktop form a car boot a few years ago, which was cool, but not the same as the pacman ones from being a kid.
 
I always fancied the Tomy Tron one.

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The Wildfire has some lovely art on them resembling Pinball Wizard. I'd imagine there's a few on here with these.

I've been selling off a lot of toys and consoles and spent the money on real pinball & parts!
 
I just realised the puck monster one i had was actually CGL (computer games limited) not grandstand, but similar technology. I'd love to watch a documentary on these companies on how they made them, the engineers/designers involved etc. Just like all the bally/williams/midway/atari documentaries out there. These things were a big thing when you were a kid and didn't have any idea owning real arcade stuff was possible.
 
I had Astro wars and Munchman when I was little and my big brother had a Fire Fox and a Merlin which looked like a red telephone receiver .
 
I had the Astro Wars and Puckmonster. I remember finding a dumped wallet under some stairs in my block of flats as a kid and finding a £20 note!
Bought the puckmonster from a mate with that, shame I couldn’t afford to keep buying batteries😞
Sure I had others, will have to rack my brains.
 
Never liked the LCD games, I had a couple of the tandy vacuum fluorescent (wow - I think I spelt both words correctly) games that I bought from the returns bin they called 'AS-IS'.

They only had faulty switches or bad solder joints so at a young age I was learning soldering skills.

I paid £2 each, and caused goodness knows how much damage to the dining room carpet.

This is actually the same as one of the games I had.

 
We had or still have at my mums somewhere caveman, pac man which was kinda a pac man shape and I’m sure the third one was Astro wars
 
Just remembered another one I had and loved. Possibly the favourite ever

Tony Astro blaster! Found a video of somebody playing it here and instantly remembered how to beat the end of level 1 baddy 😂😂😂

mega trip down memory lane!!


I’d love to make my own version of this using my rgb led panels
 
Heard on the radio the other day that you can google old Argos catalogues, just had a look and they are out there. Amazingly I went straight to the back to find the games😂
Autumn ‘82 and autumn ‘83, spent many hours looking through these as a kid dreaming.
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I remember getting Invader from Space for my birthday. The same day i'd just had gas to remove 4 of my bottom teeth... 🤮
 
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I remember playing hours on a Merlin amazing really when u think how primitive it was.

I had a v

auge memory of playing the Mario Bros Game and Watch in the playground, picked up one a few years ago and it doesn't disappoint. 
 

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M4carp said:
Heard on the radio the other day that you can google old Argos catalogues, just had a look and they are out there. Amazingly I went straight to the back to find the games😂
Autumn ‘82 and autumn ‘83, spent many hours looking through these as a kid dreaming.
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This is brilliant!!!! :)

The joy of staring at these pages dreaming!!! ha ha I remember me and by brother going through all the games pages many a rainy saturday afternoon!!

Looking at this i wish i'd seen that defender handheld back in the day... :D
 
M4carp said:
Heard on the radio the other day that you can google old Argos catalogues, just had a look and they are out there. Amazingly I went straight to the back to find the games😂
Autumn ‘82 and autumn ‘83, spent many hours looking through these as a kid dreaming.
Click to expand...
I've still got that Donkey Kong Game & Watch shown on the bottom left page and I used to have the Nintendo Ice Hockey two player one but that's long gone unfortunately :(
 
I’ve got a broken Astro Wars in the loft. Never got around to looking at fixing it.
Used to love it as a kid.
 
myPinballs said:
Great game
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Yeah it is. I’ve just been looking on the interweb. There is a guy who fixed one recently on YouTube. I also found out that there is a component in it that nobody seems to be able to identify.
I might get mine out of the loft and have a looksee.
 
stoptap said:
Yeah it is. I’ve just been looking on the interweb. There is a guy who fixed one recently on YouTube. I also found out that there is a component in it that nobody seems to be able to identify.
I might get mine out of the loft and have a looksee.
Click to expand...
I’m trying to remember what was up with the ones I fixed a few years back. Can’t remember. I think as long as the vacuum display is ok still you should be able to fix it. I need to get another Astro blaster I think. End of level baddies on an 80s lcd!
 
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