Asteroids Deluxe CP

Time to clean up the control panel on this beast.  I'm guessing an operator, trying to clean this cabinet up a little, painted the control panel black and slapped this aftermarket Asteroids overlay on as a quick fix.

There really isn't anything special about this job.  I ordered the correct Asteroids Deluxe control panel overlay from Arcadeshop.com.  The old panel peeled off easily after setting it to warm in the sun for about 20 minutes.  The panel needed a good once over with a wire brush followed by a good sanding with some 200 grit and then 1000, just enough to remove the small amounts of rust.

At this point I basically rummaged through my collection of spray paint and found a can of Rustoleum primer.  The whole panel was sprayed three coats and then a final coat of Rustoleum satin black on the inside and edges.  The important thing here is to leave the top portion of the panel white.  This helps the overlay graphics to look bright and colors to stand out.  If the whole panel is painted black, the graphics on the overlay tend to look muddied and dull.  After this, I set it aside for an entire week to allow the paint to cure.

So the hardest part of this project was getting the control panel overlay to line up properly with the button hole locations.  I clamped the new one in place with a pair of wood clamps, and adjusted it by looking through the button holes in the back to align with the blue line along the top row of buttons.  It's not exactly perfect but looks pretty close.  I considered using the original buttons, but they were all pretty much stained, like maybe the guy who played this most was a chain smoker. I replaced all 5 buttons with new leafswitch buttons from TwistedQuarter.  So here is the final product, with the Rustoleum primer and new overlay, it should last a good long time.