Astro Fighter Restoration: A Granola-Style Challenge!

shawncruiksh

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I acquired an Astro Fighter tonight, thanks to @lgsteelers (and @CharlieG for telling me about it)! It's my first Gremlin granola cabinet, and I'm super excited to take on the challenge! 😆

First look pictures are attached. The list of definite/immediate needs are:

1 - Game PCB (I have some leads)
2 - GO7 chassis (I have a donor)
3 - Monitor Bezel (looks like EPO has them)
4 - Coin Door Mech
5 - Control Panel Button
6 - Lots of wood hardener, and some Bondo at minimum
7 - A back door (can make, but if someone has dimensions, that would be helpful)

Ideally, I would like to do a more extensive sand and Bondo job in order to secure the edges and stop/eliminate the swelling, but that would get into needing to secure a side art source. And if I'm going in that direction, I might as well laminate the sides.. but until I can find a source, I'll stick to a light touch.

If anyone has any leads on some side art or a PCB cage, please let me know!
 

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A replacement PCB arrived from @Mrhide, and I will most likely be trying it out this weekend ( A HUGE THANK YOU! )

In the meantime, since it looks like no one has any reproduction or NOS side art, I will try scanning and re-creating it.

Using a flatbed scanner, I pieced together about ten scans in Photoshop and am working on vectorizing the image. This has gone well for the logo, stars, moons, and gridlines, but it's becoming challenging with the ships. I'm using Photoshop to select a color range, convert the selection to a workpath, and convert it to a shape. While doing so, some detail is lost, and I think the only way to fix this is to go around and adjust the work path by hand. I've attached an image showing the original (light grey), and the workpath result filled with darker grey, so you can see where the light grey isn't captured.

If anyone has any pointers on vectorizing (or how to approach this kind of work), I'd appreciate it! More this weekend, hopefully!
 

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Yeah... you *could* use the tracing options in Illustrator, but to get the absolutely best results would be to recreate all the vectors from the ground up. Lots of tedious work; but great results if it is done.
 
Yeah... you *could* use the tracing options in Illustrator, but to get the absolutely best results would be to recreate all the vectors from the ground up. Lots of tedious work; but great results if it is done.

I decided to go this route. It's time-consuming but rewarding!

Fortunately, the art is virtually identical on each side (except for the mirrored logo). Attached is a before and after! I expect to be done with it in the next few weeks (hopefully)
 

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Thanks, I still have a way to go! Every time I look at it, I see something wrong/missing.

Yeah, I can see stuff at a glance as well. That being said, it looks AMAZINGLY better. The starfield by itself would be maddening; but as you can see, it is taking wonderful shape. It's like proofreading text. We all have to do it to catch things to fix.
 
Wow, I commend your patience with this.
I also have an Astro Fighter and have almost finished restoring it after buying it in December '22. I wanted to create a new cardboard bezel last year but shortly after scanning it in I hit the brick wall. I don't have the skills (nor the time to learn them) to do a good job. It's a pity because mine's a bit rough. I didn't know EPO has them, so I'll check their site, though I do like the authenticity of keeping it original.

EDIT: I just checked and they don't have a like-for-like replacement of the original cardboard bezel.


About the CPO... I had trouble getting one I was happy with.
I first got one from ThisOldGame and it took months to arrive, once it arrived the colour was off and the text was slightly offset but the quality of the print and the print material itself was great. It was REALLY sticky. They fixed the colour and sent another one but this time one of the layers must have been disabled because the print was missing the enemy icons on the right hand side. I got a refund.

I then tried EPO but while the colour was better the quality of the material seems worse - thinner and much less sticky. The first one that arrived had partially separated from the backing, presumably while in transit. It was also scratched in several places. They sent another one quickly but that had a speck of dust (or something else) under the top layer, which is a shame. It manfests in a similar way to when you get dust under your cell phone screen protector. At this point I was so fed up of waiting that I just kept it and didn't bother them for another. The edge keeps trying to lift off the metal CP but I just used strong double sided tape to get it to hold, which helped a bit.


Anyway, I'll watch this thread with great interest so please keep it updated with progress!

If you have any queries, please let me know. If I can help, I will. There doesn't seem to be much info about this machine out there.
 
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