I've been on and off searching for a 2 Player Astrocity Panel on eBay. A few weeks ago I spotted this one and couldn't pass it up. After speaking to the seller - it came from an actual Astrocity cabinet that was sold off to a local arcade in the Cincinnati, OH area. The seller was really cool and elaborated on some of the history behind the panel - saying that it has been to the seasons beatings tourneys and some of the greats (justin / daigo) have actually played on it. Cool, but when I received it it was not in great shape. What you see above really doesn't describe what it actually looked like. The shell itself was not in bad shape (just needed some magic erasing), however the actual metal panel was completely rusted out. To hide the rust, the seller actually cutout black cardboard and then installed a clear plexi panel over it. I spent alot of time cleaning up the panel and ended up sanding out the rough edges and painting it over with some primer.
After doing some research online I managed to find templates for the original artwork and had them reprinted and installed them. Also since I was going to make this into a console stick I drilled additional holes on the sides for select and home buttons.
Here it is with all the artwork installed. I purchased all the sanwa buttons / sticks in the original color scheme of the arcade cabinet via focusattack.com and proceeded to wire it all up. Never thought I would be buying these color schemes for a stick but when it all came together I couldn't have been happier with the result.
I used 2 left over PS360 (not the PS360+) PCBs. I decided to keep it to a 6 button layout for each so that I left it as original as possible. Notice that there is no bottom for the panel due to it being from an original arcade cabinet.
Just for kicks I decided to purchase a Micke table from Ikea and install the panel to the front using the pull out drawer as a frame for it. The desk was a perfect fit as it included a little bay for cable management. I also installed a mount for a console to be strapped in (seen on bottom left). Probably going to use a PS3 as the main console for it and try to find a white gaming monitor - Already spotted THIS on newegg.com. More updates to come..
Update 5/30: Here it is all completed with the new white Asus monitor....
