It’s been awhile folks. The Retroforce Game Museum has sat idly by since September while I busied myself with schoolwork. I couldn’t bear to see it sitting there all half finished any longer. I’ve been putting in some hours the past couple of days to push it closer to completion. Advice to cab builders: don't make your cab playable until it's finished.

Here’s my progress report:

-covered control panel in wood grain vinyl
-added speaker fabric
-secured speakers
-added marquee light & reflective backing
-designed and printed marquee
-attached marquee (sandwiched between 2 pieces of plexi)
-designed and built screen bezel

All that is left to do is get a big piece of plexi glass to cover the viewing area and get the side art printed.

But enough jibba jabba, pics or it didn’t happen right?


Here’s the marquee I designed. I just used some of the assets from the sideart, along with more inspiration from Galaga.










Love this shot.


My room mate Kaiyan rockin some SFII

And a special treat, the cab in action!

Undead Cyclops Boss from The Behemoth on Vimeo.

There is a new “making of” video on The Behemoth Development Blog. It shows Dan Paladin creating the Undead Cyclops boss. The video includes everything from drawing to animating and even effects. It is pretty long, just over 19 minutes. Plus, the footage has been “sped up about 650% from its original form,” so that just shows how much time and attention to detail went into every nook and cranny of this game. Very interesting to a prospective student in the animation/game fields (like me!). I've only dabbled in Flash before, but lately my interest has been rekindled. I plan on experimenting a lot more concerning making characters for games. If anyone is interested in learning about some basic Flash techniques, check out the Angry Animator. He has a few very well done tutorials that go over the classics like the bouncing ball and walk cycles.

Attention RetroforceGO! fans! I'm looking for retromazing pictures of you wearing your RetroforceGO! t-shirt. I want to add these to my artwork portfolio. While the focus is on the shirts, please feel free to get creative as you want with the pose and props like this fine gent did (you could stand by an old arcade cab, etc). You can either post them in the comments or email them to me at adamwelker [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks so much for your support!

I got a lot of work done on The Retroforce over the long Labor Day weekend. But unfortunately, things have come to a temporary halt as I spent all last week moving. The cab has survived the move with only a minor scratch, but it will eventually be covered by the side art so Iā€™m not worrying about it. Anyway, on to the pictures!

Used some spray lacquer to seal the exposed sanded MDF.


My ā€œDestructoid-greenā€ t-molding arrived just in time!


Retroforce, meet Retro-Prime!





This is towards the end of a two-day long cycle of paint-sand-paint-sand-paint-sandā€¦rinse and repeat. It was a lot of work, but it looks fantastic! All glossy-like :)






So after everything was all dry, I started to attach the t-molding. Since I didnā€™t have a rubber mallet, and since the stores were closed, I had to improvise. A little Yankee ingenuity later, and you have a rubber mallet replacement! (aka: a hammer wrapped in a towel)



Sorry for the crappy photo... I cut a notch in the t-molding to go around the corners.


Sexy!


Installing components, beginning to wire it up!




Ground wire is daisy-chained.



In the middle of wiring/packing, what a mess!


Here she is all rigged up and in a playable state at the old apartment, sorry for the crappy cell phone pics, my camera had already been packed away. Iā€™ll take some photos of it in action in the new house when I get home tonight.




Hopefully Iā€™ll get settled in the new place soon and I can continue work on The Retroforce. Hereā€™s my remaining checklist.
-finalize/order artwork
-make a screen bezel
-buy plexi glass for the screen/bezel area
-cut plexi glass for the control panel
-rig up marquee light
-tidy up my game lists/install other systems

So close!!!

As of last night, I am 95% done with the woodworking on The Retroforce Game Museum. I added the speaker shelf and the back door, and then I used wood putty to smooth over all the areas where I had countersunk the screws. That way, when it is painted, youā€™ll never know they were there. I realized I needed an extra hinge for the front door, and Iā€™m waiting on my slot-cutting bit from t-molding.com so I can route the edges. Just those two things left and itā€™ll be ready for prime and paint. Iā€™m so glad to finally be finishing the woodworking!!! Iā€™m hoping by this weekend Iā€™ll have it painted and then Iā€™ll start the wiring.

Here are some pictures of its current stateā€¦

Speakers! I drilled the holes and then routed out 1/2ā€ in the back to set the speaker units in. I need to figure out some way to secure them to the wood, I just threw ā€˜em in there to see how it looked. I may de-case them. Would that make the sound quality bad? Iā€™m no audiophile, they just need to be LOUD.



The rear door is installed. Note the authentic lock! (For some reason Iā€™m really excited about those locks :)



Here she is all wood-puttied up, and posing with the retro-vac! Like I said, the front door isnā€™t attached yet because I need to get another piano hinge, but I just propped it up with a 2x4 to see how it looked. It will also get a cam-lock like the back door.


Playerā€™s eye-view. The controls sit at the perfect height for standing, even though the unit is rather small. The monitor is at a roughly 30 degree angle.


Control panel close up. Iā€™ve since sanded the trackball area flat and flush with the rest, it wasnā€™t dry in time for this shot.


Before I settled on the final side art design, I was toying with the idea of having these ā€œD-toid Kidsā€ as characters. I guess they would battle the evil Mr. Destructoid, destroyer of rubikā€™s cubes. They are obviously heavily inspired by Mega Man/Astro Boy. I decided they were unnecessary, and I didnā€™t end up using them, but I thought you might be interestedā€¦




Today I reworked the artwork for the Retroforce Go t-shirts, and sent it off to Dyson. While I was mucking about in Adobe, I thought; why not make a couple desktop wallpapers? If youā€™d like another size, leave a comment or PM me. I just figured these are probably the most common, well theyā€™re the ones I use anyway :)
1440x900
1280x960

Woo! Front page-GET! Thanks Hamza :)

A little update today. I'm out of town this weekend, so I haven't been able to work on my cabinet. I did order some green t-molding and the slot-cutting bit I needed from t-molding.com. I also worked more on the artwork pieces for the cab.

So I'm finalizing my design for the control panel overlay (CPO) and I can't decide which version I like best. The inspiration behind this is the Atari 2600 and it's retro-wood-grain-goodness. Maybe you guys can help me, which CPO is better; real wood grain or illustrated wood grain?