Heh. As the specific sentence excerpt from late comedian Dennis Wolfberg's comedy bit goes in Dennis' speaking voice: "...Good....we knew you could do it....."
ps: 'Avoid that Johnson guy next door....' *kidding*
The various Midway baseball games backdrop pieces for artwork look good.
With the various Midway baseball backdrop pieces being supported, gameplay will be a bit easier to understand without having to make guesses of what is going on such as during Tornado Baseball gameplay in case user has Tornado Baseball set to run in an upright cab arrangement when running MAME.
The only part I did was buy the piece from a seller on ebay many years earlier and I then handed the backdrop piece to Mr. Do for eventual artwork support.
>I know one guy who may still have a 1977 Taito Bazooka backdrop that I could try to >photograph using your technique.
Someone will have to take an interior photograph of the cab for starter and then a rear photo of the back interior cab after back door is opened. These would be cab reference photos before carefully removing backdrop piece......assuming backdrop artwork piece can be removed from cab without the backdrop piece being damaged. If backdrop piece is stapled or bolted inside cab, not worth removing for a closeup photograph because backdrop piece being brittle plastic might break into pieces if not carefully removed.
If possible, it is better to find a spare parts piece from a discarded cab like I was able to do since the backdrop piece I bought came from an upright Midway Tornado Baseball cab that was no longer repairable, but the spare parts that could be salvaged were likely purchased by others to repair other Tornado Baseball cabs at the time. The Midway Tornado Baseball backdrop piece I had purchased was also in poor deteriorating condition and probably not usable for restoring a different Midway upright Tornado Baseball cab.
> How did you do that? I know one guy who may still have a 1977 Taito Bazooka backdrop > that I could try to photograph using your technique.
First... bought a good blacklight... fluorescent-tube shaped (long and skinny).
Waited until after sunset, so it was dark outside... setup in my bedroom, door closed, lights off, hall light off... so room is pitch dark with no light on.
Setup the tripod and the blacklight, with the backdrop at a few different angles... took about ten shots of each backdrop I did (yup there's more), and picked the best shot.
RELAX and just have fun. Remember, it's all about the games.
- I found a nice still of the game in action. Looks like you shouldn't worry too much about whether the score lines up with the boxes since it didn't line up in the original machine. -
I probably only played Tornado Baseball once or twice way back in mid 1970s. I don't know if the score images ever aligned within sticker boundary regions. This is probably one of the rare artwork entries where a text disclaimer could be added on artwork page web site indicating the actual upright cab scores video output probably did not align with the stickers. Other than that, Tornado Baseball is what it was meant to be imo.
Nice work Mr. Do. A real black light certainly looks better than trying to simulate the effect. Any chance of getting a little more light on the sky background?
This is the best photo I have of Extra Bases. Looks like the single, double, etc over the stadium is replaced with a "Midway Field" scoreboard. Also maybe the infield is a darker green than the outfield, but that may just be the photo.
On Tornado, the score stickers have "TO PLAY" text under the "INNINGS" (since the innings count down rather than up as they would on a real scoreboard).
> Nice work Mr. Do. A real black light certainly looks better than trying to simulate > the effect. Any chance of getting a little more light on the sky background?
I'll give it a shot.
> This is the best photo I have of Extra Bases. Looks like the single, double, etc over > the stadium is replaced with a "Midway Field" scoreboard. Also maybe the infield is a > darker green than the outfield, but that may just be the photo.
The problem on that one is the shape... if you look at the game with just the screen, it shows the "dirt" between 1st-2nd and 2nd-3rd... the playfield aligns with that. To "fake" it with the existing photo, I would need to reshape the whole infield, and then as you pointed out, fix the whole "crowd in the stands" in the outfield." Maybe later.
> On Tornado, the score stickers have "TO PLAY" text under the "INNINGS" (since the > innings count down rather than up as they would on a real scoreboard).
Thank you... thought that was what it said... I "had" the stickers, and scanned them, but can't seem to find the scans at the moment... I'll get that fixed.
RELAX and just have fun. Remember, it's all about the games.
These 3 backdrop pieces won't be available for downloading until some official future artwork update takes place.
These backdrop pieces needed some effort to set up photos (read details) to capture artwork the way it might appear with blacklight visual effect if ever playing an actual upright cab of each different Midway ball game.