6 charged with making fake Pac-Man games in Santa Clara, CA

[Nz17]

Which decade is this again? The 2010's or the 1980's?

Story's source: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Prosecutors-6-charged-with-making-fake-Pac-Man-11749616.php


A woman, her son and her ex-husband, who together owned and operated the company called CoinOpStore, are accused of forging for a profit machines that played classics such as Galaga, Tank Battalion and five different versions of Pac-Man.

According to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office, the six defendants are:

Chun Chu Chang, 61, of Milpitas
Kingsley Stewart Chang, 29, of Milpitas
Bruce Michael Burton, 39, of Sunnyvale
Kung Teh Chang, 59, of Milpitas
Ryan Loesch, 45, of Folsom
James Chian Chen, 67, of Arcadia

Collectively, the six are charged with 14 counts of felony counterfeiting, prosecutors said. Officials said that the proceeds from the sale of the machines may be seized —including $1.2 million in cash, a 2012 Mercedes Benz, a 2015 BMW and five properties.

[WulfeLuer]

This story is at least a month old (the source article was last updated August 11), the article is a bare-bones stub probably ripped right from a police blotter with a slideshow attached, and interwebz did not see fit to lose its mind over it. We're definitely now in a post-arcade world. I don't like it, I'm not going to like it (hell the only place left in town with decent machines is very...adult gamer-unfriendly; harrumph), and I don't expect anybody else to like it, but here we are.

On the bright side, at least we're one step closer to one good thing to come out of the Primal Rage novelization: Game tokens becoming rare and priceless artifacts, valued enough to fight wars over.

[Nz17]

I don't know, "$1.2 million in cash, a 2012 Mercedes Benz, a 2015 BMW and five properties," seems like good arcade money to me.

[celerystalker]

The whole multicade racket is pretty predatory in all honesty, so this is probably a good warning. Arcade machines are something that carry a lot of mystique, but are pretty simple. Most of these new multicades are either conversions of old cabinets or simple MDF builds containing about $100 in parts at retail and a $50 chinese multi board, then sold for over $1000 to folks who don't realize just how simple these JAMMA machines are. I have no personal experience with these individuals, but the whole multicade business is an insane ripoff.

Edit: not complaining about the existence of multicades; just would encourage people to do a little research before blowing a small fortune on one when you could buy the cheapest JAMMA cab on craigslist, buy a $45 Pandora's Box, and have the same thing, or if they're more ambitious, a JAMMA cab's guts can be purchased easily at roughly this cost brand new:

Switching power supply- $20

JAMMA harness- $8

2 Joysticks- $16

16 buttons with microswitches- $10

RGB to VGA converter- $20

Used 4:3 VGA monitor- $5-10 at most thrifts

Put it in the enclosure of your choice and decorate it. You can have your own multicade as a weekend project.

[Niku-Sama]

OH!

I would see these for sale all the time in my local craigslist and all of a sudden they disappeared earlier this summer!
I know its them, they would always post from California numbers and citys in my local CL. I'm not far from California so it makes sense.
the list of games are the same, they were cocktails and they advertised those same games in the news article but from what I could tell there were way more games than what they were advertising.

they were trying to sell them for $1200-$2000