Back to the Arcade - Part 2 - Control Panel Configuration

In the last section I talked a lot about the controls for the various games and how they cannot be properly replicated through a keyboard.  In this section I am going to discuss the control panel configuration that I chose to maximize the amount of games that I could play.

I already mentioned Defender which is one of the games I really enjoyed as a teen.  The only problem was that my quarter didn't last too long because I never really got very good at it.  There are some games that I can distinctly remember the place that I played them the most.  In the case of Defender, it was a place called Magic Carpet Golf, a miniature golf and arcade in South Lake Tahoe, CA.  This is a place that I frequented with my friends in the early 1980's.

Anyway, back to Defender; this was probably the game that inspired the layout of my future control panel the most.  I really wanted to play this game so I started sketching out a panel that would work for Defender, and other, more standard panel configurations.

This led me to start thinking about some of my other favorites that used controls other than the standard joystick with 1 or 2 buttons.

The images to the left are early sketches that I created with the games that I would eventually like to have in my collection. During this process of my research I was reminded of games that used 8-way joysticks as well as 2 and 4-way joysticks.

At this point I was still many years away from building an actual cabinet because I had nowhere in my house to put it if I were to finally get it built.

The years went by and I continued my research off and on. Throughout that time I continued to collect ROM's of games that I remembered in my youth.  As I remembered games, I had to re-think the layout of my future control panel which went through many iterations.  One of my later renditions is shown below.  This configuration would allow reasonable game play for many of my favorites.

Early control panel configuration layout

Up to this point I had been using Microsoft Excel and the drawing tools to sketch out my potential layouts.  That would change once I decided to tackle Photoshop.   I went through many iterations until I finally settled on the following as my permanent layout.  This final layout and design was largely inspired by the Defender panel art and maybe a little subliminal inspiration from the LCARS computer system in the Star Trek universe.

Defender inspired panel art

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Continue to Part 3 - The Controls

Intro | The Games | Control Panel Configuration | The Controls | Control Panel Lights | Research | Specific Games | Hardware & Software | Game Configurations | Cabinet Build | Artwork | Bonus | Leaderboard | Summary