MAMEWorld Forums - MAME Artwork: Official - Digital Eclipse

So Atari 50 came out today... lot of cool stuff in there, especially all of the timeline stuff, with videos, interviews, etc.

But damn... they could have put some more effort into the artwork for some of the games:

Firetruck: they used the current MAME artwork, which is a photographed bezel from 2006 by Bobby Tribble, which is also slightly disproportioned. I have a scan of the real bezel... just haven't gotten around to cleaning it up yet... will look so much better when done.

Asteroids: I did a little bit of cleanup to the internal bezel on the last update (November 2020)... looks like they used an older version, that still had a couple "tear marks" I had fixed

Breakout: just sad... spent all that time cleaning up the original scan, and they use the inferior PSD version from the BYOAC/CAG artwork. Wrong yellow color for the bezel; "scanner skip" error in the artwork was left in there; wrong font on the instruction card; missing part of the instruction card (this might be for aesthetics). At least they fixed one thing I missed; adding the text for the number of balls. I'll take care of that next update.

Food Fight: again, they used the BYOAC/CAG PSD version. "Throwing" is misspelled as "trowing." I verified a long time ago that the actual bezel is not misspelled. (Side note: the recent New Wave Toys reproduction of Food Fight has the same error).

Warlords: I updated the backdrop artwork in 2009, with a better photo and black light effect. It looks like they used the old MAME.net version from 2004. And the font is wrong on the bezel instructions. Also... the artwork is of the upright cabinet, but instead of using the overlay colors from the upright, the version of the game emulated is the cocktail, color monitor version.

Black Widow: they used the "custom widescreen" version that an online artwork reproduction site uses, which they themselves based on an internet photo. The version lamprey cleaned up is way nicer.

And reading the credits is fun, too:

-- Looks like they reached out to Dan from Flyer Fever for a lot of the flyer archival material, so that's nice that he got credit for doing all that work. Happy for him.

-- Evan Amos gets credit for all the photography from his site. Again, happy for him; all of that work is amazing.

-- Nathan Strum is in there; he photographed the current backdrop for Asteroids Deluxe, that has been used everywhere since. I'm guessing this also might have to do with him being an active member at Atari Age forums, though... there are multiple people from that site that are listed under credits for "Additional Art Clean Up." Probably has to do with box art?

-- The above mentioned artwork reproduction site gets credit for Black Widow.

Don't get me wrong... I get it... I don't have any actual rights to any of the artwork on my site... everything there, credit goes to the original artists from when the games were first released.

But the work I've put in, along with all of the other individuals who donated their time cleaning up artwork, that's still our work.

It looks like other people rank high enough to get credit for artwork cleanup and stuff, including a website that literally offers bezel artwork for sale that has been lifted from my site... not sure why people that put in time over the years for MAME Artwork still get left behind. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Other notes:

-- Maze Invaders... totally lifted from the cleanup done by Antny
-- Space Duel... the inner frame is the cocktail artwork that I scanned, on loan from Gene at VAG, and was cleaned up by James Roach
-- Akka Arrh... that came from photos that Trevor took, from an arcade collector

It's just like Midway Arcade Origins again... good thing this type of stuff doesn't discourage me. I guess it's because I have the internal satisfaction of knowing that you can still get a better gameplay experience using the artwork here?

RELAX and just have fun. Remember, it's all about the games.