Artwork

The external artwork was taken from the original machine via high res images I found online. For the Marquee (artwork around the screen) I had it printed onto glossy colour card, and glued this around the edges of a clear piece of clear arcrylic (eg plexiglass, perspex). I secured this in front of the monitor.

I’d forgotten to mention this in the last post, but before putting the controls in place, I stuck down two layers of black contact coating on the control panel. This stuff can be found in any hardware store, it’s usually used to line kitchen drawers and is similar to ‘Duraseal’ Book covering, just a bit thicker. Also in the above photo you can (just) see two screws on the side of the cabinet which hold the control panel in place. All other screws I covered and painted over, these two I left uncovered as it allows the control panel to be removed if you need to get to the back of it and change a LED or repair loose wiring.

The top Banner was printed on colour paper and sandwiched between two arcrylic sheets before being stuck into the top of the cabinet. The lights shown in a previous post provide back lighting for it, so having it printed on paper instead of card lets more light through.

So with all of this in place it would appear to be finished! The software running on this is called MacMame, almost any arcade game ever made can be downloaded and played through this software. Of course there are legal issues regarding downloading ‘ROMs’ (game files), but that’s a topic for another blog. After I got to this stage I got lazy, stopped working on the machine and just started enjoying it. Eventually we moved house and I decided to finish one more little thing off; the edging.

I managed to order 10 metres of black T-moulding through TradeMe. I used a router to cut a groove in the edges of the front, and hammered the moulding into place. It gives the cabinet a much more professional look. Where previously there were painted edges that still showed the shoddiness of my sanding job, now there are smooth, glossy black edges. There is one final job to do also, the arcrylic that covers the top banner wasn’t big enough; if you have sharp eyes you can see a line down the banner towards one end. I keep meaning to just buy a bigger piece of the stuff to replace it, but I keep spending my weekend time playing sweet sweet arcade games…