My new shmuppin' setup, "Danmaku"

[XYXZYZ]

Lately lots of people have been posting pictures of their rooms of dooms and shelving catastrophies, and that reminded me that I haven't posted about the newest addition to my game room! Some of you may remember that a few months ago I made a post here requesting a hi-res scan of the Megadrive Gaiares box, for a little project I was working on. DJSquarewave came through on that. (thanks DJS!)


And what kind of project? Well, my Sega Saturn and dedicated tate TV is a great way to play shooters, but I wanted something a little closer to home.I also wanted another arcade game, so a few months ago I bought a Strikers 1999 machine, which had a really nice 25" monitor. (Actually a vertical Dynamo cabinet with a Strikers kit slapped onto it, formerly a Raiden DX I think.) The plan was to MAME it for general shmupping use, but it looked so dull and drab... It's time for a makeover!

BEFORE- (on loocation)


Lots of guys that make MAME cabinets name it something, like "TimeWarp", "Ubercade" or "Cactus Flack's". Since this was a shooter oriented machine, I named it "Danmaku". (Shmup fans know what I'm talking about) I wanted it to look like the old cabinets that have cartoons all over them, but I thought it would be really cool if I used 80s Japanese mecha style art. So I made the marquee with the Gaiares scan, and a good scan of a Gradius phone card. I made the logo myself, I think it has kind of a Raiden look to it.

Marquee


The bezel was going to be a crappy upscaled version of the Xevious bezel, which I like very much. But then I remembered an illustration for a Famicom game called "Replicart" by the artist Kenichi Sonoda from 1987. (Anime fans may recognize his work from things like Gall Force, BubbleGum Crisis, and Gunsmith Cats) I really liked it and I always thought it would make great arcade art. So I scanned it from a Kenichi Sonoda artbook, cleaned it up and did a little cut and paste onto an original background. (I had to move stuff around to get the screen in the middle of the bezel) The control panel was difficult, It took me forever to come up with a design that I liked. I wanted it to look like spaceship controls, like many of the classic space game CPOs. Had Mamemarquees.com print it up, they did an outstanding job as usual.


I won't bore you with the details of the guts, just a PC running MAME connected to the cabinet with a J-PAC. (Kind of a PC > JAMMA converter thing.) Surprisingly, the PC's on board soundcard has enough power to drive the cabinet's speakers by itself.


And here it is, all finished-






All that's left to do is change the joysticks, I don't like the American style bat sticks for shooters. I want to replace them with Seimitsu LS32s, but I can't find any in the US. However I did dig up some of Happ's older joystick bases with the little actuator tabs, for a much tighter throw. That helps alot.

So what do you think?

[heybtbm]

Incredible.

[Pantechnicon]

I like all the artwork, especially the control panel. Please tell us what you're using for a monitor?

[mario2butts]

Beyond awesome.

[Aussie2B]

That's actually really cool and I'm normally not that impressed with MAME cabinets. So many of them are drowning in buttons because they're devoted to every type of game under the sun (especially fighting games) and they'll have really corny marquees and art. Yours is so slick, though, and I love how you designed it just for shooters. All of the art looks great on it, and, yeah, that logo is totally Raiden.

[PSerge]

Nice Job... That is fantastic... Makes me want to go work on my MAME cabinet..


Love the artwork too..

[FVJVMVP]

Was Danmaku the original name?

:EDIT: nevermind, I was just impatient.

[mills]

I always say "If you're gonna do something, do it right."

Fantastic work my friend.

[Damaramu]

Awesome work and inspiring!

[cyberfluxor]

I'm speechless. That is just so fantastic to see. I have a huge arcade situation to tackle between myself and some friends that'll take many, many hours to do. Congrats!

[DigitalSpace]

Great work, that looks awesome!

[RCM]

I'm so jealous. Amazing.

[FoxyGamer]

That is seriously delicious. Excellent work on the scans- as a graphic designer, I appreciate good clean up work <3

[Captain Wrong]

All pro! What a beauty.

[Cryomancer]

Could you show off the scan of the Sonoda artwork? I love me some Sonoda.

[velvet396]

do tell what that monitor is - looks sharp and stunning.

[dgordon86]

this is the coolest mame cab I have EVER seen!
Truly inspires me to make my own and get lost with the extreme details!

[KingCobra]

Awesome! Nice.

[XYXZYZ]

Wow, I'm floored by the responses, thanks guys! Here's some more stuff I hope will entertain at least one or two of you.

Pantechnicon and Velvet- To tell you the truth, I don't know what kind of monitor it is. The way the cabinet is built makes it really hard to get in there and look at the board without pulling the monitor out completely, which I don't need to do. I think the cabinet is a Dynamo Benchmark series, 1989 or 1993 or something like that. I don't know if those had standard monitors or not.

Cyromancer- Sure, I loves me some Sonoda too.

First, this is the original illustration for the Replicart FDS box art-


And here's Kenichi Sonoda's version-

According to the artbook Sonoda made this in 1987, and the game's release was in 1988. I wish I knew why they ended up not using it. Probably contract type stuff.

Basically I took a scan, scaled it up, cleaned it up because it looked like shit after scaling. Then I made a new background from scratch, to go with the grid on the control panel. So I cut out the Dragon, the vehicle thingy and the little satellites and moved them arround on the new image, cleaned it up and there she is-


It was being printed on adhesive vinyl, so I made use of the screen area that would be cut away to print up some SEGA logos for another project, which I'll reveal sooner or later.

And while I'm showing pictures, Here's the skins I made for the MAME frontend, AtomicFE. I have games categorized into shooters, classics and general, which is any other kind of game that uses a vertical monitor. (Contra, Ikari Warriors, etc.)


I made the category select skin from the flyer to Pepper 2, and an image from a really cool looking arcade. The word balloons originally said "An angel of a game..." and "...With a devilish twist to it!" The shmup skin was made from a scan of a Xevious bezel, with my own bits drawn in. The other two are original stuff I whipped up. Each time you move the cursor to a game, it shows that game's promotional flyer in the window.

[cyberfluxor]

XYXZYZ:
People as good as you make people like me look bad. It's impressive other members can create such vivid detail in this hobby and proves I am a great distance from that level. Although I have a few friends in animation and design it'll take awhile for us to create a cab that nice.

[Vectorman0]

I was so impressed the first time I saw this, I didn't realize it needed to go to the Arcade forum. It is very nice, I wish I knew how you got the marquee and monitor bezel looking so good.

[Drag0nsfyre]

Fantastic!!! I love the artwork! You did one hell of a job on that project. I can't even think of what to say at the moment but WOW! Outstanding!
Awesome man, truly awesome.

[Fuyukaze]

I knew you were good but never this good. Amazing work. Wonder if you've considered custom art for console systems much. Should drop by the IRC room so we can catch up.

[XYXZYZ]

Originally Posted by Fuyukaze

I knew you were good but never this good. Amazing work. Wonder if you've considered custom art for console systems much. Should drop by the IRC room so we can catch up.

Well, I did this a long time ago...

I was a big Pink Floyd nut then.

Do you mean the vBender or the AnimEigo IRC room? Are guys like Felis and Shatter still lurking around?

[shadowzack]

could anyone tell me what the games being played in the pictures are?