The cabinet concept:
I wasn't planning on another project for a while, lord knows I have too many things going on as is, but I was presented with an opportunity early last year to get a bartop kit from Haruman and couldn't pass it up.
Lee's deal was simple: I do some artwork for him, he sends me a one of his Nintendo bartop kit's. This isn't the first time I've done these art-trade deals (I've still got a couple to make good on).
The request was to create an updated version of R-type II's original artwork, updated from the old soft airbrushed look of the limited art released back then. But of course, to fit his Nintendo bartop kit. Since I love R-type as well, I figured I'd create the same cabinet in tandem of his. So the artwork was created to fit both our needs!
I didn't play much of R-type II BITD, the arcades I frequented only had the original R-type. Only till the SNES days did I get exposure to Super R-type, which featured many of the stages and mechanics of the arcade sequel.
But R-type II never had a dedicated cabinet. This sequel was released as a conversion kit, and according to the manual it came with Side, Marquee, and CP art. But I've only ever encountered the marquee (I owned the original PCB and Marquee), which was based mostly on this flyer image:
Personally, I felt they cheap'd out on the art, especially since the original R-type art was so great.
So after rubbing a few brain-cells together, I came up with an idea of how to start with the art concept, taking queues from the R-type I as well as paying homage to the original Nintendo cabinets. In R-type I, the side-art featured our beloved R-9A Arrowhead ship fighting against Dobkeratops, the first boss in R-type.
In the sequel, you fight Subatomic, an armoured version of Dobkeratops in the Ruins stage. I ran with this and started a (ugly) rough draft of the battle:
This was the base of the side-art, so I continued each revision, included the Ruins stage and some elements from stage-1.
I wanted to go with a more painterly style, as opposed to all the vector style work I've been doing in the last while. It had to feature the laser weapon, missiles, turrets, your force options...
It turned out looking like this at it's final pass:
For the player facing graphics, I really wanted to pay homage to Radarscope, the sacrificial lamb of Nintendo cabinets. I remember the bezel artwork was so cool because it looked as if you were peering into the cockpit!
The Marquee's concept was an easy one: Have the Ship and Force Option flying towards you, almost like an entry into the Ruins stage:
For the CPO I took influence from the R-type II port on Turbografx, the in-cockpit view at the beginning intro sequence -- mixed that with the look of R-type III:Third Lightning's cockpit view from the load-out selection screen. It was the only reference I could find for being inside the ship, but it worked!