Response from Jonathan: Karl,

From your pictures, it definitely looks like a board issue of some sort. Our friend Raymond at arcadecomponents.com tackled a similar issue with a Ms. Pac Man board a while back and posted his repair log on the New Life Games forum. Here’s what he found:

Symptom: Characters were missing on screen. The text at the top of the screen for Player 1, High Score and Player 2 were doubled. The “free play” text and the player scores were missing.

Repair: Replaced bad 74LS157 in the center of the VRAM addresser to restore characters and fix the text issues. Pin 12 was stuck.

From the information in his log, it looks like you are having an issue with the VRAM addresser. Now, you could try replacing just the chip that he mentions or you could order a new VRAM addresser for your board. MikesArcade.com sells the entire VRAM addresser for a pretty reasonable price if you want to go that route. Keep in mind that you may still have additional issues going on with your board but it might be worth trying the VRAM addresser first considering the price.

Hope that helps. Thank you for your question and good luck with your repair.

Response from Karl: I went ahead and ordered the VRAM addresser like you suggested. It works like a charm now!! Thank you so much for your advice and help. Karl