as if i didn't have enough restoration projects i'm working on, i've decided to bring up centipede "in da house". i won't be working on it wholeheartedly for now, but in between i might have a look at it

. i had a first look yesterday and realized something which i had never realized consciously before: the odd placement of the fire button. i've read that the designer's changed this shortly before rolling the game out into the arcades because it would be more comfortable to rest your whole hand on the panel. if you look at the panel, there is a perfect spot in the left mushroom just below its current position. hell

, there are even "white rays of light" where it should go!

i've been thinking about the following (and all those people who are left-handed like i am might understand me): move the fire button down into the left mushroom, move the trackball left into the middle mushroom and create another hole for a second fire button (for the left-handed people) in the right mushroom. of course, this would mean
(a) filling a lot of holes in the metal control panel - never done that before
(b) drilling three new holes into the metal control panel - never done that before either
(c) editing a vector file of the overlay so that there are also "rays of white light" in the right mushroom.
does anyone have the vector file?it would then look like this:

what do you think? looks original, doesn't it?

question to the centipede owners: if i took that route, would the game still be playable as well as it is now or would be distance between trackball and fire buttons be too short?
one more thing: this "changing the control panel setup" only came to my mind recently, but i've already ordered the light blue european-style overlay (thx for that info, andré) from mamemarquees.com (imho the only shop carrying that overlay). in fact, i've ordered two, one for myself and one for an arcade friend of mine. both my friend and andré have installed their new cpos and you can see on both of them that there is a placement mistake on the overlay. the lower screw of the trackball should be in the middle of the right mushroom, but in fact it is not. have a look at the pics of the two refurbished panels. i think it looks completely out of place and distracts a lot - am i "too pussy" about it

we all pay good money for those repoductions and i think they should at least be accurate.


i've written an email to the seller, let's see what he has to say!
enough for now - your turn!
