One of the things I really wanted to do for this cabinet was to create some original artwork for the various pieces. A lot of MAME cabs end up looking pretty similar, kind of like my first one. I figured if I'm going to spend all this time building, wiring and finishing it (not to mention spend some $$$$ on it), then why not go all out and make some serious artwork. Plus I just like graphics.

I used Illustrator to get the best possible resolution for the shapes and characters, and photoshop to put them all together (I use them all day at work anyways...sometimes I can sneak these projects in during some down time heehee).

I knew I was building the bottom part first, which meant I started on the control panel overlays first. I also knew that I wanted each one to look different, and so I came up with three themes: Fighter characters, Tron-ish, and Assault-ish.

The main panel is the fighter panel, but it also has a 4-way for the really old games. I wanted to keep the design simple so I picked 3 badass fighting characters (Bison, Akuma and Morrigan) from the internet in crappy GIF resolutions, traced them in illustrator (I made a tutorial about this, hosting courtesy of arcadecontrols.com) and placed them on a stylized background. I made smaller overlays to go over the blank spaces between the control panel and the monitor.

For the analog layout I went with a design inspired by Tron (an awesome game AND movie!). I will probably add a cold cathode UV light to the top part, I left room in the red loop in the center- it will light up the trackball and stick even more! You can see the space for the trackball mount in the center - the squarish empty space.

Similar thinking for the dual joystick panel - I wanted to play rotary games like Ikari Warriors but also dual games like Total Carnage. 2 players at a time. In the center, you can play Assault pretty well with the top-fire joysticks. Assault inspired these next few overlays.

It sounds corny, but I really wanted to put 110% into what this cab would look like. After all I knew it would be a major piece of 'furniture' in my living room!

So those were the control panels. Next I came up with some side art - I'm not a big fan of text or reading stuff on the cab so I wanted something big and colorful.

Finally, I struggled with the marquee and came up with some real stinkers at first...but this one makes the process worth it.

It combines elements from all 3 different control panel overlays and has the universally understood name of "ARCADE". Heh Heh. I like to think these are successful because I've gotten lots of positive feedback and many requests for me to send them to people. Especially the marquee :)

Future plans include a monitor bezel which continues the red/blue gradient from the fighter panel and sideart. Perhaps I will put some simple instructions on it for other people - but I don't know. There's no hurry because I didn't even get the tinted glass yet to cover the monitor.