Arcade Restoration RSS

After you've found your game and finished any body work and primed it, it's time to talk about the graphics kit for your game. Let's look at Ms Pac-Man a super-popular arcade game with lots of cab options.

The most rewarding part of bringing an old arcade back to life (other than firing it up and playing it) is when the your game is prepped and ready to install new artwork.    A lot of prep goes into getting a cab or cpo ready for art. it's a blank canvas that needs filled with love and bondo first so that control panels that look like swiss cheese can be filled and turn out like these before and after restoration pictures.      Once you've labored sanding and priming the side, it's time to lay down some fresh arcade...

What to do, what to do? You have an old arcade game, beaten up and weathered and you'd like to restore this fine piece of your childhood. The great thing is, you have options today you didn't have a decade ago. Stencils are a great way to keep it classic and original but they can also be a hassle. You need a lot of time and a lot of space. You need time for each layer to dry before adding the next color layer.     Decals are not original but do offer a simple, quick and easy solution for...

Restoring arcade graphics is a long arduous journey but well worth it. We are always looking for scans or original art to scan and recreate. If you have an arcade piece we don't have, Contact Us and we'll tell you how to get your scan or art to us. We have a large flat bed scanner for side art, Control panel overlays and translites (marquess and bezels are too thick to be run through) a hand scanner and a smaller table top scanner.   After the scans, it's time to trace the image in order to create a vector image...

It all starts with a scan or a decent photo that is straight-on. We load the pic into a tracing program like Adobe Draw on the iPad and begin tracing each line and coloring the pieces as we go.   Screen shots above - in process pic below: Here is an isolated pic of the new drawing without the background image. After the hand drawn lines are complete, we load it into Illustrator to make perfectly straight lines (like the rainbows and stars). Loads of layers and colors combine to make the final piece. When the file is complete, we...