Arcade Artwork
Atari’s I, Robot Monitor Bezel Sticker Reproductions
I came across Classicade.com this morning, Bret Pherson’s website about his arcade games. Apparently he reproduced I, Robot monitor bezel stickers / bezel decals / bezel artwork, whatever you want to call them. He did both versions of the self adhesive bezel sticker, one was yellow and red, and the other bezel sticker was blue, red, and yellow, measuring 5-1/8″ x 15-1/4″. Visit Bret’s writeup and website here.
I am sure most collectors know about this I, Robot artwork, the reproductions sold out. I would expect as much if Bret was the first person to ever do “I, Robot” reproduction artwork. But there were only so many Atari I, Robot machines made if you base the demand solely on collectors who would apply the artwork. I would guess if another run of artwork was done, more arcade collectors would buy it just to have it. But it is good to know that Bret has the artwork if he ever wants to do another run of I, Robot decals.
Now I wonder, what other pieces of the artwork for I, Robot have been reproduced? Does any other collector out there know? Do you have any links to sites?
Moon Patrol Bezel Reproductions
I had to give a shout out to Jamie and his “Noise Land Arcade” who is in the final stages of making some reproduction bezels for the classic arcade game Moon Patrol. Jamie started this project because he could never seem to find a bezel in good condition.
The vector artwork on the Moon Patrol bezel was pretty straightforward, but the lightning type pattern in the background night sky was the real achievement. Jamie separated out the vector pieces and the raster pieces and worked on them separately. The raster artwork on the bezel was intense, I don’t know how he struggled through touching that up to a point where the Moon Patrol bezel could be reprinted, but he did an awesome job. Here is what he says on his website;
I’m getting very close to finishing my Moon Patrol restoration. I got the cabinet back in December of 2006. Since then I have been looking for a decent bezel on eBay, and was having a hard time finding one. They just don’t seem to turn up for some reason. I finally found one recently, which was in horrible condition.
I contacted Rich from ThisOldGame.com. He makes great repro art for Space Invaders, Burgertime, and other games. He said he would reproduce these if I can get him a good vector drawing of it! So, I’m now in the process of working on the redraw/cleanup for this using Photoshop and Illustrator. It’s coming along good so far.
Above is a larger view of the whole completed Moon Patrol bezel, and here is a smaller view showing the detail put into both the vector and raster portions.
Good job Jamie. Can’t wait to see the final product. Rich at This Old Game is doing the repros. Knowing his great work, I am sure they are going to be great. I can only imagine there are a ton of other collectors out there with their partially completed Moon Patrols who are going to be geeked to get one of these
Zookeeper Sideart Stencils
There was a topic recently on klov about someone wanting to get the sideart from the Taito arcade game Zookeeper vectorized so that they could make stencils.
I posted on the Zookeeper Stencils topic, mentioning that I could do the vectors, but I wanted to see the sideart scan to see how complex the artwork was. The Zookeeper artwork is very complex, with all of the little splatters, and the irregular line work. I posted on the topic asking how bad the party wanted the vector tracing of the sideart, but I never heard back.
I was surfing the other night and came across VectorZorg’s artwork again, and noticed that he had about 70% of the Zookeeper artwork already vectorized. The only part he didn’t have finished was the splatters on the sideart.
So I emailed him and started a dialog to see if I could get a copy of the file that he had and finish the remaining splatter effects. He emailed me back asking who was interested in the Taito Zookeeper Stencils, and I sent him a link to the thread.
You can see a larger version of the Zookeeper sideart if you click the thumbnail. I just took this from VectorZorg’s website. I’ll post any updates if I get them here first.
Update Nov. 18, 2008
Due to some unforseen health issues, Brian Jones has some time on his hands and it appears as if he is about one hour or two into finishing up this piece of vector artwork. All that was left were all the little textured blobs on the bricks, moon and everywhere else.
My guess is that stencils for re-painting Zookeeper artwork will be available sometime in late January of 2008 if not sooner. Will keep you posted as I find out more.
Jr. Pac-man vector marquee progress
Taken me longer than I thought, but I got through another vector piece of the oversize Jr. Pac-man marquee. I was going to go to the billboard behind Jr. Pac, but decided to Jr. himself.
The next piece of the vectorization process for the Jr. Pac-man marquee header will probably be the lamps, or something simple, like the blue ghost. The detail on Jr. was about what I figured, it wasn’t a breeze, but it wasn’t too hard to trace the lines either. It just took time.
I still hope to be the one person to have a whole set of artwork and produce it as a Jr. Pac-man kit to make your own machine, specifically for converting a Mappy into a Jr. Pac-man. But only time will tell.
Mr. Do! History Topic on KLOV
Interesting topic going on right now on the klov forums. One user was looking at the Mr. Do! entry on klov.com, and wondering which of the three versions there was the original dedicated. The correct answer is that there is more than one Mr. Do! that is “factory” dedicated, but only one directly from Universal.
Here is an exerpt from one user;
The other “dedicated” units were done by ops who wanted the games to look as good as possible. I have an old Play Meter article that talks about a lot of vending companies going out of their way to make Mr. Do! kits look like dedicated games… some even making cabinets just for them.
Lost in the collecting world is the fact that, in 1983, Mr. Do! was one of the biggest hits. 7th highest earning game that year, meaning only 6 dedicated games in 1983 out-earned Do!. 30,000 legal Mr. Do! kits were sold, roughly 10 times more than most Golden Tee kits sold nowadays. Only about 2,000 dedicated Do’s were sold.
Opinion or not, pretty interesting information of how many Universal Mr. Do! units were sold vs. conversion kits. Even more interesting is a quote from another member here in Indiana (Shacklefurd) that actually investigated into my coveted White Mr. Do! cabinet with clown artwork;
A had series of E-mails with the former CEO of universal from the 80’s a while back and here is what he said. The white one with the red yellow and orange strips came from Japan. The wood grain and the white with the clown side art were factory built by smaller companies on the east and west coast that bought the rights to release Mr. Do and other Universal games. So they are all “Dedicated”, but the Universal from Japan is the one collectors think of as dedicated.
I should get in touch with Shackle and see if he has the CEO’s information still and try to track down the company that made the White Mr. Do!
Until this forum thread surfaced, I had posted here that I was thinking it was a company by the name of Gleeb who made the cabinets and that Gleeb was also based out of Japan, not here in the USA.
Update: July 2013 I now have photos from inside two different Ladybug machines, machines that have very similar painted illustrated artwork to the white Mr. Do!, that show Universal serial numbers. Check out this post on two different factory Mr. Do!s.
Circus Charlie – Vectored Ringmaster
Today I started on vectorizing one of the Circus Charlie photos I straightened. The ringmaster artwork was fairly simple, and was one of the more clear photos I got.
The vector artwork will have to wait on the textured splatter effect on the colors. For now the colors are just solid. I would imagine eventually I will need to find a piece of NOS Circus Charlie sideart and get it scanned and use the scan for a raster effect.
Food Fight Chef on Kickplate finished
Today I finished another piece of the Food Fight Kickplate vector artwork, tracing the white chef near the upper left corner of the kickplate. The vector artwork was simple, and a breeze to do. I think the next piece will probably be right top corner with the other watermelon slices, since I traced one slice already on the kickplate lower left corner.
I know this particular section of Food Fight artwork looks weird, but the chef is the only full piece I had. The photo had pieces of other fruits and vegetables, but nothing in full, including a pie. I will probably need a close up photo of just those artwork items.
