Some nine years ago I posted my Retro-Futuristic MAME cabinet project called Astro -
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,88912.msg933239.html#msg933239It was a curvy very different looking thing with a half spherical top to it and a rotating monitor. The project went on and on slowly losing momentum, never quite finished. It had issues, some of which I shared here, some of which I didn’t. The thread grew popular and LONG (to many pages) early on I posted almost daily progress with lots of detail of my ways of woodworking, painting and fabricating parts. I gained a lot of experience and learning along the way, problematically this also meant I became increasingly critical of my own early work as my skills grew. Circumstance happened to move against me and the project foundered. So Astro died lying in a corner gathering dust neglected and forgotten.
One day I pondered, “what if I could just fix anything and everything that bothered me about this project?" Issues like warping of timbers over many years, cracking of joints, aesthetics and functionality I no longer cared for.
I’ve been a fan of retro futurism for years, I also grew up in arcades and around arcade machines in the late 70’s and 80’s. I was never much of a gamer I just hung out with my friends in these places, I have that nostalgic view of the golden age of arcades because I was there. The future that people in the post war US imagined in the 50’s and 60’s interests me. Movies like Forbidden Planet, posters, artwork and in particularly advertising from the period. I wanted to apply that baby boomer vision onto an alternate universe of arcade game design. A world where arcade games were conceived in the late 50’s right alongside the family television. What would it look like? What would promotional flyers and advertising look like? For this to be fun again the project had to have a strong theme, a (fictional) background and point of conception. When it was all complete I imagined the machine, the company that manufactures it, advertising brochures and ancillary props like a comic book and collectibles to go with it. I called the re-born retro-futuristic alternative universe multi-game playing machine………
I have new self- imposed rules for project progress. Hi realism render posts are not allowed and are for my own design purposes only.
Designs are just CAD style line art shown here:
The coin slot motif also had to be re-fashioned and re-imagined. Within the Sprocket Rocket sits the Core. The Core provides the (fictional) power source to RoToron. I imagined something like Hals eye combined with Iron Man’s cold fusion reactor.
I’m currently working on the old husk of the cabinet body. The top spherical shell is in excellent condition due to its tough covering of fibre glass. The bottom section not so good. I’ve decided to give the entire bottom section a skin of fibre glass. Next .... the new shell.