Back in July, I had the opportunity to purchase a Bally/Midway Demolition Derby project from Chris Rhoades (Chris25810). Chris had a new CNC cabinet cut locally, he slowly removed the original artwork in order to reproduce new artwork, powder coated brackets, control panels and coin doors but unfortunately he lost interest in this project (one of many) and had no desire to complete it. So, instead of him selling off all the parts and trashing the cabinet I was offered the project first because Chris knew I was one of the few collectors that would be able to complete what he had started in OCD fashion.

Before committing to the purchase I had to get past my largest obstacle (besides getting the wife’s blessing and getting it through the doorway) “logistics”. I mean, Chris is located in Minnesota and I’m located in Michigan. I “technically” could’ve contacted a freight company but the expense of shipping a project game just doesn’t make sense. But luckily for me, Chris’s friend Allen (alejandromad) was heading towards Michigan and we were able to work the logistics out at a minimal expense.

Pile-O-Derby back in Minnesota

Dropoff Location – Battle Creek, Michigan

Demo Derby Cabinet and Parts Loaded in Van

When I arrived home it was time to empty out the van. I stacked multiple boxes and parts in the garage and immediately hauled the cabinet into the basement. Unfortunately, the cabinet was a much tighter fit than I had originally thought so I had to remove the door and remove the weather stripping (and a little elbow grease) but we got it safely down there. I believe this may’ve been the first time I’ve ever been told by the wife that I was “Seriously Messed in the Head and that I needed serious help” and I almost think she might be right!!!

Demo Derby Parts Safely In Garage

Exterior Door Weather Stripping Removed

Demo Derby Cabinet Officially in its New Home

After the cabinet was hauled to the basement I discovered a small battle wound which happened somewhere between Minnesota and Michigan. Just a little bit of filler and a small piece of “pica vinyl” and it looks good as new.

Demo Derby Cabinet Repair

Before I discuss the artwork installation I wanted to discuss how this artwork package became a reality (Readers Digest Version). Back about three years ago when Chris purchased this project he painstakingly removed the original artwork. From there, he had it scanned and turned over the scans to his sister-in-law to vectorize. Then eventually he turned the files over to Rich Lint at This Old Game which he color matched, solvent ink jetted and applied screen printed clear coat to the artwork. The end results are top notch and best of all, Rich and Chris printed enough to go around!!!

As far as installing the art. Well, it’s pretty much the same as any other installation. You just need to measure, measure again, tape it to be sure it doesn’t move and apply the artwork. The biggest difference with this restoration (more like an official Chris Rhoades snap together Demolition Derby restoration kit) versus other restorations is that there are 10 pieces of artwork / vinyl that needs installing (actually 12 if you count the Control Panel Overlays). So, this time I decided to start out with the sides then I will come back again in a couple of nights to do the rest. This will force me to “take my time” and avoid any accidental goof ups.

What did I do different this time? Instead of doing the typical “wet method” when applying art I decided to use a 4″ Soft Rubber Roller by Speedball. Rich and Chris have sworn by this method for some time now and decided this would be the perfect project to try it on. So far I really love the results!!!

That’s all I have for now. Check back in a few days when I finish installing the artwork and start assembling the cabinet!!! I really look forward to smashing some cars with my kids!!!

Side Art Installation

Rubber Roller Makes Vinyl Installation Much Easier

About a year ago I picked up an Pepper II in order to complete my Exidy Row. Unfortunately my Pepper II was pretty trashed and was missing side art. But lucky for me Rick Ford (RoadRunner) was kind enough to loan me his New Old Stock (NOS) side art in order to reproduce the art for my restoration project.

When I received the art months ago the first thing I did was look over the art to decide how I was going to tackle the project. Lucky for me the art was fairly simple and not tons of details. One thing I did notice that unlike Atari art the line work wasn’t very clean and I was very surprised how bad line work was including the rounded corners (if you can call them that). However, it had a lot of character and I knew it was going to be next to impossible to vectorize the line work without loosing the original feel of the art. So, I decided mixing both raster scans with vectorized art was the best way to handle this project.

First, I did a 300 DPI scan of this art and knock out all the color fills and halftones along with some minimal retouching. After I felt the lines were cleaned up as much as possible I converted it to greyscale, then to a bitmap then saved it as a TIF. By saving it this way it allows you to import this image into Illustrator and add vectorized fills behind the black line. The final art will be solvent ink jetted so vectorized fills will give you lots of control when color matching.

After I had the line work imported into Illustrator I added my vectorized fills.

Next I rescanned all the halftones at 600 DPI and also converted and saved each halftone to a bitmap TIF (as I did with the raster line work). This allowed me to import each halftone into the Illustrator document and add a color fill to the halftone.

No Halftone Fills

Black Halftone Fills

Color Matched Halftone Fills

Next I did a little color matching and add a high resolution scan of the “Exidy” logo.

A couple of test prints to make sure the colors were as close as to the original as possible. Be sure to check out the images below comparing both the NOS artwork to the reproduction artwork and I think you’ll agree… It looks great!!!

Original

Reproduction

Original

Reproduction

Original

Reproduction

Original

Reproduction

Original

Reproduction

Original

Reproduction

Original / Reproduction

Original / Reproduction

A great big thank you needs to go out to Rick Ford (RoadRunner) for loaning me the NOS artwork and Rich Lint from This Old Game for help with color matching and printing the artwork.

Unfortunately, my restoration hasn’t been started but at least the side art is now complete and available now!

Ever since Chomping Quarters manufactured an accurate reproduction molding for standard plywood cabinets I’ve been getting lots of requests to reproduce the dreaded “offset” molding. The need for offset molding has plagued many arcade collectors with Nintendo particle board cabinets for years. Well, your prayers have been answered and Nintendo “True Offset™” molding is NOW AVAILABLE in our store!!!

This T-molding is the same profile as what Nintendo originally used on their particle board cabinets with an offset T-molding slot but is much more flexible than the original.

“True Offset™” T-Molding Features:

1) Flexible PVC Material
2) Exact Shape to the original
3) White (Matches Color of True-Flat™ T-molding)
4) Satin finish (Matches Finish of True-Flat™ T-Molding)
5) Offset T-molding Slot
6) Approx. 0.65″ wide

The price is $22.50 + $7.50 shipping handling in the continental USA for 20 feet of molding which is enough for one standard Nintendo cabinet (Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3, PlayChoice 10 Single Monitors PlayChoice 10 Dual Monitor, Punch Out or Super Punch Out).

So, what are you waiting for? ORDER TODAY!!!

Well, it’s true… Sometimes you don’t pick the game the game picks you… or something like that.

Last week Rob (Robran68) over at KLOV started a thread asking about the value of a dedicated “Mr. Do” in good condition. Mr. Do is a great game and actually, I was looking for one a year or so ago but due to space (lack of) I just didn’t look too hard. However, Rob is fairly local to me and I had to at least inquire about it. Well, it turns out that he was selling it for someone and best of all the game was only minutes from my home.

When I received photos of the game the condition was unbelievable. I mean, not as mint as Jeff Rothe’s Mr. Do but the cabinet is very clean and all the artwork (CPO, Bezel, Back Glass and Marquee) are about as perfect as they come. What you need to be aware of is that side art on a Universal cabinet is kind of a formica finish and it’s near impossible to duplicate this finish if you choose to restore one (Not saying it can’t be done). So, it’s in a collectors best interest to find a cabinet that is in as clean condition as possible (if not mint). Even better is that the “wood grain” T-molding on this “Mr. Do” is near perfect!!!

So, what are my plans for Mr. Do? A very good cleaning, detailing and restore the coin door is in order. However, the first thing is to troubleshoot the monitor chassis (vertical collapse). I do know it’s not going anywhere but the game room. Let’s just hope I can figure out where to put “Mr. Do”.

Serial number appears to be number “0129″ (Model 336)

Near perfect cabinet.

Very nice looking coin door.

Near mint Control Panel and CPO.

Mint Marque, Bezel and Back Glass.

Insides is a little filthy but still pretty clean.

Best of all there is a licensed Mr. Do’s Castle PCB installed.

After close to a year and a half the Ice Cold Beer side art reproduction project is finally complete!!!

When I originally committed to this project for Chris Rhoades it appeared to be much more straight forward than it actually was. I pretty much figured I’d just scan, tile it together, retouch and print. However, it was much more involved than that.

The most complicated part of this project was “color matching”. Trying to get raster colors and vector colors to match at the same time turned out to be no easy task. I ended up vectorizing close to 80% of the art. Mainly vectorized fills “behind” the 600 DPI black line. Unfortunately, the halftones added some “fun” to this vectorizing process.

The halftones were already retouched so instead of trying to create these halftones from scratch I decided to create several 600 DPI files with the halftone fills and saving them as Bitmap TIFF’s. This was a little trick I’ve discovered years ago. You basically need to eliminate the background color, turn the color image to black and white, adjust brightness / contrast (you might need to play with the levels and curves), turn to “bitmap” then “save” as a TIFF. By doing these steps you can insert this bitmap images into your illustrator file, put a “solid” vector fill behind the bitmap then you can select the bitmap image and fill with a color from the Ice Cold Beer color palette. This turned out to be some of the most useful knowledge in making this project near a perfect match to the original.

Retouched raster file.

Illustrator document with all raster and halftone fills removed.

Bitmap TIFF’s “placed” into Illustrator document.

Bitmap TIFF’s filled with appropriate color from color palette.

Vectorized fills “behind” black line-work and halftone fills.

Solvent Inkjet with screen printed clear coat.

Close up of vectorized Hair, Lips, Eyes, Face and Flower.

Close up of vectorized dress and bow.

Following these steps allowed us to have much more control when color matching seeing we could specify colors from the printers color profile and as you can see, these added steps were well worth the effort!

A great big thanks to Chris Rhoades (Chris25810 from KLOV and CoinOpSpace) and Rich Lint from “This Old Game” for all their help to make this happen!!!

If your interested in purchasing a set of side art for your Ice Cold Beer you can purchase here!!!