Sinistar CPO’s and HUO Sinistar

Today is the day of Williams Sinistar.

Surfing Klov there was a mention that Quarter Arcade is doing reproduction artwork for William’s Sinistar control panel overlays. Here are the photos;

I emailed Anthony at Quarter Arcade, and he was nice enough to let me know that Darin at Phoenix Arcade did these Sinistar CPO’s and he just had a few he bought and now is re-selling them. I visited Phoenix Arcade, and I must have missed the listing of Sinistar before. Maybe the control panel overlay’s had sold out before 2006 when I got into collecting.

I would guess that Phoenix Arcade might have had the original Williams Sinistar films. I did a quick search on both Google and the arcade.collecting usenet group to see if there was a mention of the Williams films but I didn’t turn up much of anything I didn’t already know. I already knew that Darin produced the Multi Williams artwork for a number of successful runs up to 2004 and then he ebayed the files. I also found a mention to Illinois Pinball.com, but I assume they would have Williams films for for pinball artwork.

Any of the Sinistar artwork is a challenge to reproduce because of the detail in the splatter / speckle / pointilism effects. Like always, Darin did an awesome job, whether he scanned an NOS CPO or he had access to the original Sinistar films. Wikipedia says gives credit to Noah Falstein and John Newcomer for co-developing Sinistar. I don’t know which of them actually created the artwork, but maybe they were the inspiration for the “Idle Hands” movie:) (Surely, you must have a love of detail to create artwork like that, it would make you, and your hand crazy way before completion.)

Since I already “hunger” to share Sinistar news, how about jkoolpe in San Francisco scoring a Home Use Only (HUO) Sinistar.

Here is some backstory on his Sinistar Aquisition;

According to the guy I got this from, this baby was originally owned by a Cinematronics game designer…he also had a Boxing Bugs as this was the game that this previous owner had helped design (a fellow CAX staffer got the BB).

The Boxing Bugs designer who originally owned this machine was named Jack Ritter. For whatever reason, he apparently did not take the 3 games he had owned with him when he moved from my area and the new home owner assumed custody.

The 3rd game was a Defender that I think was also HUO (not 100% sure), but it needed a marquee and bezel, and the CPO was lifting. Otherwise, the cabinet was also in GREAT shape and worked fine (after I replaced one RAM chip)…he is also looking to sell it so someone will get a nice Defender once they replace the aforementioned items.

I still haven’t played Sinistar in person, but I love it on the William’s game collections for the playstation, even if playing causes pre-mature arthitis. I am sure as time goes on, over the next 20 years, as we see some of the original developers move into the later stages of life some of their classic games, artwork, notes and other materials will start to come up for sale. But Jon (jkoolpe) got a find this time and bragging rights for the week.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Acquired Sinistar Marquee
• Sinistar for $200 Craigslist – Phoenix Arizona
• Up to 15% off artwork from Phoenixarcade.com month of April 2009
• Sinistar in Joystik Magazine 1983
• Sinistar shirt from Williams development team sold on ebay

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