The Control Panel
I created a vector image in Adobe Illustrator CS2. (I couldn’t use CS3 as I am running Win2K still – not exactly sure what i am going to use when I migrate to Ubuntu). I got the two biggest images – the galaga logo and galaga bug from http://www.localarcade.com/. Everything else I screen-captured whilst playing Galaga and traced them in Illustrator.
I provided the final Illustrator vector image to Wild Digital. One of the layers in the Illustrator image indicate where the edging should be routed and where holes for buttons, joysticks and the trackball were required. Wild Digital provided the acrylic (3mm perspex) and did all the cutting.
The final image was reverse printed directly onto the underside of the acrylic. They then put a white protective layer over the printed image. They did a fantastic job. It came out much better then I expected.
I was originally going to purchase a piece of laminex and do all the cutting and routing myself, but after seeing how good the Wild Digital job came out I am really happy I let the pro’s do it. It would have been cheaper if I did it myself AND didn’t make a mistake. That’s a pretty big if on the mistake.
I was originally going to use this design:
Galaga was/is my favourite old-school arcade game, so I thought I should stick with what I know.
I’ve uploaded the Galaga Illustrator files to localarcade in the homebrew section.
