Potential Progressively Gr-80s Cafe Set Packs 8-Bit Punch with Cabinets... Arcade Cabinets
Ron Baxley, Jr.'s Southern Series Pilot and Episodes Registered with WGA Have Arcade Games in Retro-cafe
Most kitchens, even the ones in real restaurants and my fictional Progressively Gr-80’s cafe from my WGA-registered Southern T.V. show of the same name (see link at end) have cabinets. Progressively Gr-80’s, the cafe within my series, has cabinets of a different variety — arcade cabinets.
And these arcade cabinets, such as the ones at Wizard World in my hometown when I was a boy as well as Showbiz Pizza Place in Augusta, GA and current ones at the retro-arcade Radioactive Pinball…, inspired me in at least four ways.
The cabinets evoked nostalgia in general for clothes and design appeal:
Within my pilot, my college character cheerleader-type, Brit, is so much more and wears Pac-man and ghost Jibbitz (those little plastic charm-like accessories which have little rounded tabs to make them relatively easy to insert) in the holes in Crocs. She has her reasons for doing this which are revealed in a later episode.
The arcade cabinets themselves lend a further nostalgic air to the back of the cafe as vintage toys and other decor evoke the same effect toward the fictional cafe’s front.
The specific cabinet Q*bert inspired me with nonsensical, unintelligible cursing and more :
Q*bert mutters garbled words just before he dies. Like “Scott Pilgrim Versus the World” uses a kind of digital noise to bleep out curse words in the film and like old school censors and even modern ones use a beep, I use Q*bert cussing to bleep out bad language (I think in the pilot but definitely in the series, including episodes registered on WGA).
Shown are Q*bert in action, the Q*bert cabinet, and where Q*bert has fallen off (the noise he makes when he lands is done with an old pinball knocker). The knocker is discussed in and creates a comedy of errors, innuendo, and double entendre in the full pilot which is handled fairly innocently.)
Two cabinets provided Brit-com-style innuendos:
One was already mentioned — the Q*bert one — and the knocker double entendre.
The other one references Baby Pacman which is a unique arcade machine with a pinball game combined with it. The arcade part is at the top, and the pinball part is at the bottom. When you have Baby Pacman enter one of two tunnels below the arcade playing field, he basically becomes an analog-based, real pinball and gameplay ensues there in an actual mini-pinball machine with true paddles, etc. You have to hit different goals and that is the only way you can earn power pellets for the arcade playing field above. Once the ball is lost, you return to the arcade part. There, you can eat the power pellets you earned to give you the power to eat ghosts and eat the dots in the maze like your father and mother before you.
I saw the game years ago and played it at Showbiz Pizza Place in Augusta, Georgia as a kid at my eighth birthday party in 1983. When Radioactive Pinball Arcade found it and brought it in, I was overjoyed and automatically taken back to age eight. By the way, back to the innuendo… kids do say the darndest things, but my Southern juvenile characters are fairly innocent and when they say something related to Baby Pacman and their seeing the ball as dropping from the inside of the machine to below, they really mean that literally. But the audience may ironically read innuendo for humor.
Ms. Pacman inspired an episode beyond the pilot:
As it is an episode well into the future beyond the pilot, I will not discuss it much. But there is a Ms. Pacman-related episode in “Progressively Gr-80S” which focuses on the version of Ms. Pacman with the hearts as dots. And, yes. it does involve romance with two of the older characters.
Those are some of the ways arcade cabinets and their characters and situations are utilized within my satirical Southern television series, “Progressively Gr-80’s”.
Click here to read an excerpt from the pilot and become a paid subscriber to read the full version:
I enjoyed countless hours of Ms. Pacman, as I’m sure most folks did back then. I love those cabinets. Great post.
My wife and I played Ms. Pacman often. We even found it in a pub in England on our honeymoon!