The Marquee

The marquee on an arcade machine says a lot about the arcade. It advertises the game and attracts attention to the machine.
On a home arcade, it puts a personal touch on the machine.
My first two machines have marquees that are computer printouts laid out side by side and sandwiched between two pieces of plexi-glass.
I created my first marquees using Paint, which comes with Windows.
I got a lot of pictures off the net and pasted them onto the marquee, then I trimmed around them with black, and filled in the background with black.
When I printed out the marquee, it printed on 4 sheets of paper.
I had to trim the paper right up to the edge of the pictures, then lay them side by side.
A 2 foot fluorescent light illuminates the marquee from behind.
I wasnt too crazy with the result. You could see light through the edges of the sheets.
I am planning on finding a print shop that will print the marquee for me on a continuous banner.
But there are no such shops in my area of the world.

Here is the marquee I threw together for Benny B's Arcade:

This marquee measures 24.12" by 6.25"

And this is the one I created for Adam's Arcade:

Adam's Arcade measures 26.75" by 6.75. It is basically the same as Benny B's, just rearanged the pics a little and re-worded it.

I asked my son to design a marquee for his machine, The Rage.
Here is what he designed:

I like this design, simple and sweet. I still need to ask him how he made the neon font.
When I first saw the Paint picture, I thought about using EL Glow Wire for the lettering.
In case you dont know what El Glow Wire is: Electroluminescent Wire is a special wire that glows like a neon tube when current is passed through it.
So I had a bright idea to use El wire on this marquee so that will look like a neon sign.
I have searched the internet and cant find where anyone has tried this before.
It would be an added bonus if I am the first to use El Wire on an arcade marquee.
So I am going to give it a shot.
I have already routed out the lettering on a piece of MDF board.
I printed the marquee without the pacman pics and in black and white, to save on ink.
I then taped the printout to the MDF board and routed the letters through the paper and into the wood.
I plan on using the wire to lay in the groove that I cut into the wood.
At this time, I only have the lettering routed into the wood that will be used as the marquee.

Here is a picture of what I had after the router was finished:

I need to touch up the rough lettering a bit with wood putty.
I also plan to use a 3-1/4" hole saw to cut two holes on either side of the lettering.
I plan to lay the El wire in the routed slot, put the pictures of Pacman and Donkey Kong over the holes, then cover the whole thing with plexi-glass.
We couldnt find a good clear picture of Ms Pacman, so we decided to use Donkey Kong instead.
Two 12 volt bulbs behind the marquee will light up the pictures, or maybe I will use super bright LED's.
LED's will create almost no heat, and they should outlast the bulbs by many years.
I will post any progress on this marquee as the work continues.

----------