To TMNTFreak and any others who care.
On occasion I pop into a thread like this to reiterate a point. Before I do, to all you printers providing art for otherwise artless cabs, thank you for your services. Double thank you for taking the time to take what's out there and clean it up to as close to NOS as possible.
I'm a fairly low-experienced arcade collector/repairman but my slight OCD kicks in when it comes to artwork.
I own a dedicated MK3 cab. These bad boys are hard to come by. I'd rate my cab a B+. It has a few initials carved in it, could use a cleaning and the front CP art is worn from all the years of folks rubbing up while performing fatalities.
For the longest time, I wanted to work with someone to scan/clean/print new side art. My lack of knowledge and procrastination paid off a year or so ago when new DEDICATED art showed up for printing.
Being the anal guy I am, I wanted to know WHO did the scanning, and where it all came from. I found they originated over on the BYOAC forums, by a user who started with the non-dedicated art, and worked with someone else's dedicated cab scans to extend/clean it all up. At the time, I was able to get a hold of the guy who did this work, and paid him for a DVD of the PSD files.
I also talked to some folks who had these printed through some means, and asked for a comparison. What I found was, this art was "off" in two ways.
1. The scans were over-corrected for clarity. When these cabs were silkscreened in the factory, the silkscreening process left a "stippling" effect on the print close up. Many cabs from the 90's with raster-like images display this effect. I'm betting the same is true for TMNT. Often times this art is being scanned for folks that want to manipulate it for MAME purposes, so they would rather have clearer art than more original art. To truly approximate the original art, this should have been left in the image, or at worst be reapplied though some sort of post imaging effect.
An example of Stippling:
http://roberthodgin.com/stippling/
2. According to folks I talked to with the MK3 art, they also noticed the prints were glossier than the original side art. I have a feeling many printers out there, don't have the luxury of printing to different sheen's of vinyl. Or if they do, a person with a dedicated cab hasn't worked with them to match it up yet. Again, I know this sound picky, but many folks that collect the MK series like to line these bad boys up, and when you can see the change in look, it bothers some.
I bring these points up so that folks know the downside to covering the original art, and hopefully to draw attention to an area that can be improved upon by the very helpful arcade art printing services.
Art from 80's machines get handled with white gloves. When something is "off" about a print, this community is great at pointing it out, and referring you somewhere else.
Art from 90's machines is sadly not treated with as much respect by the folks doing initial scans I'm afraid. As a 30 year old, these are my generation of machines, so it pains me more than most.
I would love to see proper stippled/glossed art for games like MK Series, TMNT, Area51, NBA JAM, KI Series, and many others. Until then, what you can get out there suits many just fine, and is indeed a service to us all. Especially, when you don't have any decent art on your cab.