Pac-tory floor.

December 17, 2012 6:15 PM

00:49 Cut to footage from inside of a Ms. Pac Man Arcade game factory. We watch as employees assemble the video game in mass production. [via]

Also, if anyone needs background music, here is that link to How Crayons are Made that you were looking for.

posted by griphus (18 comments total)

The happiest factory in the world.
posted by i_have_a_computer at 6:22 PM on December 17, 2012

I'm struck by how horribly inefficient and haphazard it all looks to my sensibilities.
posted by meinvt at 6:24 PM on December 17, 2012 [6 favorites]

Testing the "quarter triggers a new game" lever over and over again all day seems possibly the most monotonous job ever.
posted by PhillC at 6:33 PM on December 17, 2012

Totally did a double take when the dude with feathered hair finished with the back panel he was fiddling with and took a drag on his cigarette.
posted by carsonb at 6:43 PM on December 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, right next to the cardboard boxes full of parts.
posted by wallabear at 6:47 PM on December 17, 2012

I'm amazed by the lack of migrant labor.
posted by slogger at 7:06 PM on December 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

The crayon video, that song. It's been in there, deep in the recesses of my mind for 33 years.
posted by roboton666 at 7:13 PM on December 17, 2012

I enjoyed Ron Swanson at 15:00
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 7:16 PM on December 17, 2012

Woah, this is amazing. "Richard Taylor of Information International Inc. presents a video compilation of his graphic arts work." Amazing early 80's graphics demonstrations.

Lots of great stuff in this Wired in Raw series! Awesome!
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 7:27 PM on December 17, 2012 [3 favorites]

I'm kind of suspicious of this "never completed series on the technological trends and innovations of the 1980s." Seems like that'd be a pretty good cover for industrial espionage.
posted by Sys Rq at 7:39 PM on December 17, 2012

Nobody knew years later that many of these guys would be debilitated by Pac-Man Fever.
posted by dr_dank at 7:45 PM on December 17, 2012 [10 favorites]

The coin mechs were flat mounted to the doors, and always overheated. And you could whack them for free plays... or so I've heard.
posted by underflow at 7:55 PM on December 17, 2012

here is that link to How Crayons are Made that you were looking for.

HOW DID YOU KNOW
posted by shakespeherian at 9:08 PM on December 17, 2012

That's a pretty awesome website. I discovered that the Clinton/Gore campaign had a friggin BBS at 46:28 on this one.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 11:46 PM on December 17, 2012

Testing the "quarter triggers a new game" lever over and over again all day seems possibly the most monotonous job ever.

Yeah, as fascinating as "How it's Made" type manufacturing footage is to watch, I'll never forget the one day I spent working at a cosmetics container factory, sitting on a stool and loading mascara caps one at a time (probably 20 per minute) into the gizmo which then inserted the brush into them. No interaction with anybody, isolated even further by the hearing protection everyone wore due to all the industrial machinery.

I have a real respect for people who do those types of automated workstation jobs day after day for years... I was ready to lose my mind after a single shift. I was only doing temp work for a summer between years of college, and had the luxury of telling the agency that I couldn't hack it.
posted by usonian at 8:08 AM on December 18, 2012

The coin mechs were flat mounted to the doors, and always overheated. And you could whack them for free plays... or so I've heard.

I can confirm this urban myth. The Pac-Man cocktail cabinet at Shakey's Pizza in South Lake Tahoe, CA, circa 1982, gave free plays for a swift punch to the coin box.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 9:32 AM on December 18, 2012

This factory is still in operation in Franklin Park, IL, making treadmills and fitness equipment for LifeFitness, now a division of Brunswick. Bally/Midway actually built some of the earliest stuff for LifeFitness, so in a historical sense this factory really hasn't changed since the 1980s.
posted by JoeZydeco at 11:49 AM on December 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Man, there's some awesome footage in this series if you're a coin-op arcade fan.

Check out Tape 24, where you can watch Eugene Jarvis trying out Robby Roto at the Midway booth at the very first AOE trade show. Eugene is sporting a nametag that reads RON ROBOT, an anagram for ROBOTRON - the game he and Larry DeMar were currently working on.
posted by JoeZydeco at 1:25 PM on December 18, 2012