Some History!!
First off, I had a real hard time with my marquee. Mostly because I couldn't figure out what I wanted. I new that I wanted something fairly simple that also let people know I was using MAME. I also see it as a tribute to the MAME project and the hard work all the developers have put into such a great piece of software. Anyway, since I started getting serious about building a cabinet, I started to mess around with different marquee designs. I even had a poll to pick my marquee since I couldn't decide. Thanks to all those who voted.
Most people thought that this one was the best:
I do really like this marquee, but I had one glaring problem with it that I couldn't get over. It wasn't mine. I made a few modifications to it, but none the less I didn't have that pride of ownership. Whoever made it really did a nice job. It also didn't fit into the "simple" category. Enough people in the poll said to try again that had me back into paint shop for another shot at it. I finally came up with this marquee:
I took this image to Kinko's had had them print it on high gloss paper. It looked good, but I ruined it when a bead of sweat dropped on it and all the colors ran. This turned out to be a good thing, although I wasted money, because I wasn't overly pleased with its appearance when it was at full size and light was shining through it. All the flares made it look blurry. On the new one, I new I needed to clean it up and make the darks darker and the lines much cleaner so there would be more contrast. Anyway, that is how I came to the marquee that is currently in the B-Box.
Technical Details
I used JASC Paint Shop Pro 7.04 to create the B-Box marquee. The dimensions of the marquee are 26 x 6.5". I had my final marquee printed on Matte paper with a laminate finish. I built a frame out of long, thin pieces of pine. I got the material from the fine wood section of Lowe's (where they keep the wooden dowels and such). I had every intensions of using the marquee retainer from Happ's, but I'll be damned if I could figure out how to use this and still have my cabinet look good. The wooden frame is glued into place on the top, bottom and both sides. The marquee is glued to a piece of plexi glass and screwed into the wooden frame that I made. I drilled through the plexi with a regular drill bit running at a slow speed.
Now for a little more detail on mounting the marquee to the plexi. I have read of a dozen different ways to do this, but
ultimately I settled on just one piece of plexi and the printed image glued to the glass on the outside with Elmer's spray adhesive. The first thing I tried was to glue it from the back side so the plexi was between the player and the logo, but it looked like crap because of the air bubbles that formed between the marquee and the plexi. My wife
actually told me I should just glue it to the outside. I hadn't thought about that, but since the marquee is laminated, it already has a protective surface. Anyway, it looks good. Maybe a little to much light coming through (and I put a piece of paper on the back side to help defuse the light), but it looks good. Anyway, here is a finished shot of the marquee in my cab!
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