New Project - Pac N Pal Themed Mame. Need help/suggestions...new marquee added

[2PacMan]

OK, i'm beginning to work on my new project, it's going to be a MAME machine based on Pac N Pal.  I want this to look at authentic as possible.  However, since to my knowledge, no upright Pac N Pals were made, I sort of have to guess on the artwork.  I'm going to be using a regular pacman or ms pacman cabinet.  There's not a whole lot of artwork based on this game floating around the net, but i found the flyer and an instruction card in japanese.  here's what i have so far for the side art and the marquee.  The marquee seems a little plain as the other pacman games always seem to have characters incoporated into their marquees.  I'd like to put Pacman and Pal and maybe a ghost in it somewhere, but not sure how.  And I need idea on the control panel overlay art and kickplate art.  And remember, I want to try to make this look at authentic as possible, like a dedicated Pac N Pal.  Any suggestions, or if anyone wants to take a crack at designing some kind of artwork for my machine, i'd appreciate it....on with the pics.

[2PacMan]

OK, I just designed my CPO, what does everyone think?  I know I need to center and square some things up, but does this look OK?  I need to see if I can find some pac-man type font for the "fire" text.  I'm trying to make this as if it was a dedicated PacNPal, so it's not supposed to look too flashy .

[rlemmon]

It looks OK but maybe it would be better if you used one of the pacmans from the flyer ( i would use the tennis racket one) to give it more of a distinctive look from the other pac games

. What are you going to do with the bezel ? You might want to somehow tie it in with the cpo like they did with the pink boarder on the ms pacs.  For the sides maybe a blown up pic of pacman and the green chick with a solid color back ground. not sure if i would use the same pac and pal marquee logo on the sides (if a logo at all) it may look kind of tacky.

I guess if you did it this way it would have a similar look to the pac and ms pac cabs. Im guessing you were going for something more different but that's what i would probably do. Here is a crappy paint pic of what i meant for the sides. I would also put a small namco logo on the bottom to make it look official.

Another thing would be to use something more simple like the bottom pic and just match the color of the stripe to the cp.

Good Luck post some progress pics as you go.

[2PacMan]

Thanks for the feedback.  I haven't even thought about the bezel, but you're right, the do usually tie in with the control panel.  I'll have to see what I can do.  I think i'm going to incorporate the tennis pacman and the skiing pacman into the kickplate art, but i'm not sure yet. 

I'm trying to decide what color the cabinet should be.  I want it to be different from the other pacmans.  Pacman is yellow, ms pac is blue, super is a navy, baby pac is yellow, Jr. pacman is light blue, so i'm leaning towards black for Pac N Pal.  What do you think?

[polaris]

looking at that line up of cabs, not black , it may not grab you , but pink , or orange seems more obvious to  me

[2PacMan]

hmm, orange is a definate possibility, hadn't thought of that....that's not a bad idea.

[polaris]

add the two characters to the marquee and thats job done i feel.
the cpo and overall look are not there yet IMHO

[2PacMan]

Thank you Polaris, I agree.  I'm pretty bad at art programs.  I'm hoping to get a pretty good draft of what I want and then maybe hire someone to touch everything up and make into a printable form for one of the online printing places to print for me.   I just got done creating the Pal character to put into the marquee, so I should have that done in a day or so.  I'm thinking if I make the cab orange, then I shouldn't have so much orange in the control panel overlay.

[polaris]

im too impatient for the design programs . im trying to work out a design for you, itll be drawn in crayon if i come up with anything
 

[2PacMan]

OK I added the characters to the marquee.  I think it turned out really good, sort of in the same vein as the baby pacman marquee.  Now, what background color looks the best?  I'm leaning towards black, but the navy is different.

[leapinlew]

For your cab, I vote blue.

[ChadTower]

Have you done any work/design on what goes inside the cab?  I usually design things in the opposite direction - electronics first, cabinet second, artwork dead last.

[2PacMan]

Well, i already have a MAME cab, but i don't like it.  It was the first one i ever built, and i was a total newbie.  It's in a huge dynamo cabinet, and just doesn't flow right with the rest of my arcade games, which are mainly pacman sized midway cabinets.  Plus, I feel I did a really crappy job, but it was my first one, so it was a neat project to get my feet wet.  So, now i want to basically transplant the computer/monitor/electronics into an empty pacman cab and go from there.

Only problem is, I don't have an empty pacman cab right now, i can't find one.  So, i'd like to get the artwork and everything finished and printed out so the minute I find an empty pacman/galaga type cabinet, i can just insert everything and apply the art and it'll be done.

[2PacMan]

Here's a rough idea of what i'm thinking for the kickplate art.  I'm showing it with the orange cabinet, which is the color i'm leaning towards right now.  What do you think?

[MinerAl]

Get some artist type to make a surfing pac-man for the beach/ocean top part of the kickplate art.

Cool stuff.

Use the distinctive green Pal color for something.

[Crowquill]

A cool project for a game that doesn't get near enough recognition.

Personally, I'd make the cab white. You could make it white with navy, red, and yellow artwork. Kind of like a reversed Super Pac. There were plenty of the Namco games that were in similar white cabs (Galaxian, Bosconian, Mappy). You could use either navy blue or orange t-molding. I was always thought the orange cab was a bit much when looking at Burgertime.

The marquee looks pretty good but I'd reverse Pac and Miru (the pal) so that they are next to their appropriate names.

You might be able to incorporate the power-up items into the artwork too (Galaxian, Rally-X car, Trumpet, Snowman). What's on the instruction card? I'm assuming it'll be incorporated into the bezel.

Just out of curiosity, have you tried playing Tinkle Pit? An insane amount of Namco characters make cameos including Miru.

[polaris]

The marquee looks pretty good but I'd reverse Pac and Miru (the pal) so that they are next to their appropriate names.

i'm gonna sound anal here, but , that isnt consistent in other pac marquees , the pac isnt always by the name pac.

i wish i could work out photoshop ive got a nice idea i cant produce

[Crowquill]

The marquee looks pretty good but I'd reverse Pac and Miru (the pal) so that they are next to their appropriate names.

i'm gonna sound anal here, but , that isnt consistent in other pac marquees , the pac isnt always by the name pac.

i wish i could work out photoshop ive got a nice idea i cant produce

Yeah, but all the other marquees are only one character's name. It matters less where the character goes. Granted, we're talking about Pac-man here, so I doubt anyone's going to get confused which character is which. Also, if you look at the pac marquees, the majority still have the pac character on the left (Pac-Man and Super Pac being the exceptions).  With a marquee, the title is really the most important part and the rest is just decoration. If they were just in a random place or together I think it would matter less, but since they are two distinct title characters in seperate places on the marquee, they should be presented in the same order as the title.

What's the idea you can't produce?

[polaris]

i might just draw it and scan it , i started sketching a marquee and it was quite nice but i think ive chucked it in the bin