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Grandstand Pocket & Handheld Games

myPinballs

myPinballs

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10 Years
Joined
Nov 19, 2011
Messages
5,883
Location
Pudsey UK
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.

Very-Rare-Tomy-Tron-1982-VFD-Tabletop-Electronic.jpg 9749d3b1bfa4f9a4c728aad8517197e2-2.jpg
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
 
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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