Anyone here who uses my pinball skins know what a perfectionist I am concerning accuracy and sharp artwork, so for my first foray into 3d modeling, I wanted to remodel several existing older cabs from scratch, using more detailed geometry and higher resolution textures. With that I present the Nintendo Ninventory - 16 cabs, several of them never before modelled, representing Nintendo's well-known (and some not so well-known) early 80's lineup.
While I'm all for more and better detail, I have the highest respect for Peter's initial run of models when he released 3dArcade. Then the "diet" models of Baraka and Pariah gave us numerous cabs designed to be simple and efficient, but I found the lack of detail and accuracy in both the geometry and the textures to be disappointing. I figured the faster computers and graphics cards of today were now equipped to handle a more "high definition" model. So, much time has been spent scrubbing the images used, and in many cases creating them from scratch, as there were no usable textures for the more obscure games like Radar Scope and Helifire.
First up we have Radar Scope, two versions of Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior and Donkey Kong II: Jumpman Returns. The red Donkey Kong cabinet represents the earliest run of 2000 machines, which were actually Radar Scopes converted over to DK because they were such a flop. Donkey Kong II is a romhack for existing DK machines, and an artwork package and paint codes were available to convert the cabinet to what you see here.
Next we have Donkey Kong 3 and Mario Brothers. These were both conversion kits, and so could be found in any of three colors: light blue (converted from a dedicated Donkey Kong or a Popeye), orange (converted from a Donkey Kong Junior), or red (converted from a Radar Scope or a Donkey Kong that was originally a Radar Scope). They're each a different model so you can have all three colors in the same arcade.
Lastly, there's Helifire, Popeye and the Nintendo Vs. Unisystem Conversion Kit. Helifire is a very early Nintendo game with a cabinet that's slightly different than the rest of the lineup. The Vs. conversion cabs are available in light blue, orange and red, depending on which game they were converted from, just like Mario and DK3. Personally, I got tired of having a row of Vs. games that were all light blue!
New marquees will be included with each model, as I've spiffed up each one to remove artifacting and color-corrected them (and, in the case of Radar Scope, Helifire and DK3, created them from scratch). I've got some final tweaking to do but they should all be available soon. There are actually two other Nintendo games that didn't make it into the Ninventory, Space Firebird and Sky Skipper, because I couldn't find ANY images for either, except the marquees. I believe Sky Skipper was a Japan-only release anyway. If you come across a Space Firebird, please take lots of pix; it uses the same cabinet design as Helifire and it would be nice to have those two side-by-side.
Thanks go to Fossil and Btribble for the modeling help, and CamaroMurph from the KLOV website for his Helifire photos.
A well played 500 post!
