Asteroids DIY Reproduction Screen Bezel

markboettcher

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I've been working on creating replacement screen bezels for the original Asteroids upright and looking for feedback/suggestions. Trying to get as close as possible to the original colors. This is the second pass.
 

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You know these are available for sale, right?
 
Arcade shop shows them as out of stock. I'd inquire.

 
Then you have this one. A bit pricey, but BRIGHT colors.

 
Okay, here it is all taped up. Haven't added the side piece yet.

Figured out that it was my crappy phone camera that was messing up the images. Seems to want default to low-quality JPEGs. This one should be a little more accurate. Years ago I worked at HP's inkjet division in Vancouver WA, mostly doing R&D with the color science group. Years working on AAA games before that. Stuff like this totally makes my OCD side crazy.
 

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For anyone interested, I started with a scanned Asteroids bezel PDF from Mike's Arcade and did a bunch of tweaking in GIMP. Mainly contrast/brightness and hue/saturation tweaks. Printed on 100# stock at the local print shop and backed with poster board using 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. Printing was less than $20 for five 13" x 11" sheets. Stanley knife to do the cutouts.

This was the second experiment. First one came out pretty dark. I'll probably do a third one.

Mike, bless your heart for putting that up!

 
One of the issues I see with the Mike's Arcade image is that it has a bit of darkening around the inner edge where it makes contact with the screen. I suspect it's cigarette smoke that has been attracted to the monitor (you'll definitely know what I mean if you have ever cleaned an Asteroids bezel and screen.) I'm not even sure if the paper is actually white to begin with. This would make it really hard to properly color correct the image. Thanks for the inspiration!
 
Installed the new bezel a little while ago. This game's sitting at the local pizza place. Fixed it earlier in 2024. Blown flyback diode, totally recapped, replaced bunch of burnt parts on the XY board. Big blue replaced. It was a basket case. Here's a pic
 

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Does anyone have any experience with XL's Bezel? Looks pretty nice in the photo.

Thx!
KB-

I know this is an older thread and you've probably already moved on with some solution, but I decided to try the XL Arcade bezel since I was doing some other maintenance on my Asteroids cab. I thought I'd report my experience here for future searchers.

The colors are indeed great; bright and vivid. But the cardboard is much thinner than the original, which was pretty thick and sturdy. The XL piece is more comparable to oaktag or manila folder stock. This made it a bit of a bear to set in place. It was sort of flopping around and not standing up the way I wanted.

I eventually managed it, but it was sort of a chore. The stiffness of the original bezel cardboard was an asset in that regard. It does look pretty good, though. YMMV.

Patrick
 
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Stumbled across a relevant post on FB this morning. Looks like Darin at Phoenix Arcade will be making a cardboard Asteroids bezel. He's expecting to have it for sale in the next few months. FYI.

Patrick
 
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