Hey Everyone,

Just a quick one to let you know that the few video’s featured on the site are now being delivered through the awesome Vimeo.  I decided it was high time to use a service that would allow a more social element to the clips and make them more accessible.  If you’re a Vimeo user feel free to say hello and comment at your will :)

Thanks!

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

I’ve been tweeting a lot about this arcade project of mine for quite a few weeks now (or maybe months actually) and intended to put a dedicated site up about the build.  Well, me being me and never having 5 mins spare, I decided to throw a quick blog post up instead.  There will eventually be a site, but just not quite yet.  For now, here’s a few piccies of the project during the build and the final finished shots will be posted up very soon.  I’m just tidying up the edges at the moment.

Step 1 – Shopping!

Ok, so initially I started ordering in all the parts, which was just going to be…

• Bare cabinet
• Monitor
• Controls
• Jamma wiring
• Power supply
• 1 jamma board, most likely Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition

Well that didnt quite go to plan, as my games collecting madness took control and I decided to order a few things more…well…a lot more.  This is when a few of the large boxes started arriving…

Before I knew what had happened, I’d gone and blown my budget on the following games…

• R-Type Leo
• Golden Axe
• Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
• Street Fighter Alpha 2
• Darkstalkers
• Vampire Saviour 2
• Super Street Fighter 2 X
• Metal Slug 2
• King of the Fighters 2001

…Ooops.

Any arcade geeks out there will also spot that I had also gone had grown the complexity of the job 4 fold, as this was no longer just an old school Jamma cab, but also a Capcom CPS2 cab, a Neo Geo MVS cab and also a Sega System 16 cab.  Now I really had blown my budget, by a further 50%! Time for another oops.

Step 2 – Jazzing up the rusty old 4-Slot Neo Geo MVS motherboard

It looked nasty, and I wanted it looking pretty.  A clean up, black powder coat and some lovely SNK decals later, it was looking super sexy!

Step 3 – The CGA monitor and the bare cab

Finding true arcade CRT CGA monitors is damn hard these days as nobody makes them.  I wanted true classic CGA goodness, as there is nothing prettier than those damn fine scanlines! Forget HD, forget scaling up to large res LCD monitors, nothing compares to CGA!  I was lucky enough to find a seller on eBay called Digital Systems Design that had bought all of Pentranics CGA stock when they went bust, so he had 100′s of brand new, old stock monitors in stock! RESULT!

The bare cab arrived soon after (Which was made by a cool company in Wales who sell them via eBay)and was ready for building! You’ll notice my other machine in the background, that one is a MAME machine, which is great, but I wanted to a true Jamma classic machine, original boards and 100% true to its roots.  I cant express the warm glow I have knowing I own original 1980′s arcade boards!  These things have been shipped around the world for over 20 years, played by probably 100′s or even 1000′s of people and are now being loved by me :)  Oh, you also need a very understanding wife and spare room ;)

Step 4 – Testing the purchases!

I enlisted the services Barry Parsons from www.gamesroomservices.com to do the build as I already knew Barry and knew his skills were unrivalled, the guy is a pure genius when it comes to electronics and arcade/pinball building.  So, we started by test wiring everything up and testing the monitor and each game board.  This was rather exciting :)  I was especially excited about seeing Golden Axe in all its glory, as I never actually saw this in the arcades back in the day, and had only ever played it on the Megadrive.  It looked SOOOO AWESOME!

Step 4 – Testing complete, time to build!

With all the the games tested, it was time to build everything in!

Wires, speakers, boards, its arcade heaven!

Monitor in…but oh no, it doesn’t fit! The cab turned out to be too shallow, DOH! Some modding was required to the back panel, but nothing too major.

The CPS2 motherboard was mounted on the right side and the MVS on the left, with the Jamma on the shelf above.  Barry had done a truly first class job planning this baby out!

Step 5 – The artwork.

Ok, so this step isnt photographed as yet, I need to tidy the games room up, sort everything out, finish of a few lose edges and get some photos taken :) Watch this space!

I hope you enjoyed the article!

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

Well, that was the first 2 weeks break in over 2 years, and boy was it good!  I’m now fully re-charged and ready for action!

I’ve got a mountain of emails to work through, so if your awaiting a response, I’ll be with you as soon as I can :)

I was greeted back with one enquiry that has really made my day too, from one of my all time favourite old school games companies!  I cant say any more than that for now, but boy am I excited!

I’ve got a whole ream of new releases to get into the portfoio pages too, including trailers, games, websites, the lot, so watch this space!

Thanks!

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

Just a quick one to let you know that all of a sudden I’ve just recieved a whole swathe of great press!  I just had to let out the excitement somewhere :)  My dinosaur character that came to life on my iPad has been featured in .NET Magazine and Mac Format! And to add to that, Voodoo Controllers has been featured in .NET Mag too, scooping site of the month!  What a lovely contrast to all that god awful hacking and copying!

You can take a look at all the coverage over in the press section.

Oh, and I also got a rather lovely mention in the 3 Circle Studio Podcast last week too!  They ran a podcast on ‘The Most Inspiring Creatives‘ and they chose to include little old me (about 33mins in)…flattered is a bloody understatement!  Thanks guys!!

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know that Fully Illustrated has been under attack recently from some unscupulous hackers and pirates.  This past week has seen the site hacked and copied a number of times.  I’ve got a number of people helping out at Media Temple, WordPress, Codefor plus assistance from a kind friend Ben Hogan, so a quick thanks to you guys for all your continued support and help, its much appreciated!

Fully Illustrated gets ripped off about once a month, but recently the site has been copied no less than 6 times in 4 weeks, which is very annoying and time consuming, as speaking to the relevant hosts, infringer’s, and my solicitor, becomes a full time job.  But rest assured, anyone that copies this site will be followed up via legal channels.

A quick thanks to the kind folks that let me know when they see my work being used elsewhere too!!

So, if you spot any strange goings on, on the pages of Fully Illustrated, it will be down to this, so please bear with us as we sort the issue out.

Thanks.

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

Just a quick one to let you know that I’ve recently been interviewed for a quick few words over at Spicy Web Designers.  Take a peek if you fancy :)

http://www.spicywebdesigners.com/

Thanks.

Mike.

Hey everyone,

I started playing around with my old Hard Boiled Baddies recently, and as I realised I’m probably never going to shell out the £1000′s needed to make them into toys, I thought I’d go all generous and turn them into iPad wallpapers!  So you can download whichever ones you like, stick on your iPad home screen and show them off to the world.

If you like’m, feel free to send the link around to your friends, spread the love.

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UPDATE! May 2011…

iPad Moods are coming the AppStore sooooooon!

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Enjoy :)

Hey Everyone!

Wow, things have been ultra quiet on the site recently, sorry about that!  I’ve been buried under some sersiously intense deadlines for some seriously fun projects.  Here’s a few specific updates to let you know what’s been going on…

Websites:
I’ve been working on a whole host of sites recently, all of which are awaiting release and most of which (bizarrely) are MMO related!  I’ve gone from doing almost no MMO related games and sites to working on 5! Crazy and immense fun at the same time!

—————————————————–

Games:

Wii:
I’m back to work on the Wii game that I started over a year ago (which was paused for about 6-8months) so there will be loads more info on that beauty as it becomes public.  I’m bloody loving this project!

Steam & X360:
For the past few weeks I’ve been working (hard…very, very hard) on the menu’s, HUD and general UI for a kick ass new game that’s due out on Steam and X360.  This is one of, if not the most amazing project I’ve had the honour of working on, its been a blast!  Again, more info soon.

iPhone & iPad:
Man, this industry is booming right now and the amount of iPhone related enquiries I’m seeing is mind boggling.  At the moment I’m working on (working on also includes completed and as yet un-released) 4 new iPhone games and 1 iPad game with a mixture of companies, all of which have been great to work on!  Unfortunetly, none of them are under the Joystick Generals as JG is on pause for the next few months until both Chris and I can settle our current crazy schedules.

Web:
Yep, I’m dabbling in some web games at the moment, actually, more specifically Facebook games on the whole, creating the UI for 3 MMO’s.  This is fairly new territory for me and has been amazing to work on.  I cannot wait to get them into the portfolio.

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Email Delays:
I know I post this message about every 2 months, but its back again.  Due to my workload there has been A HUUUUGE backlog on my email replies and I am doing all that I can to get back to everyone, so if your waiting, thanks for being patient, I havent forgotten about you and I WILL be back in touch as soon as I can.

Thanks everyone, watch this space, there is lots to be released :)

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

Well this bloomin Pogo Sketch Stylus took absolute age to arrive, but its finally here!  Worth the wait?  Absolutetly!  While its still nowhere near as accurate as a good old fashioned, well sharpened B pencil, it is a lot more precise than my chunky index finger!  It feels more akin to drawing with an unsharpened 8b I think.

Anyway, decided to have a play last night in front of the telly and this is what arose.  It feels a lot cleaner than the finger paintings (but it is still very, very rough) and has in some ways allowed for some more fluid movements as I’m not constantly trying to see under my finger tip.

My only concern with this Pogo Sketch is that while it works, I fear that the sponge nib has a limited lifespan, as while I was using it on this illustration, a couple of bits of it fell off, so I’m guessing that it will last about a few months with daily use.

I’ll post up some more sketches over the coming weeks.

Hope you like it :)

Mike.

Hey Everyone,

WOW, thanks for all the downloads everyone!  Super Turbo Action Pig held onto 8th yesterday, so we’re keeping it FREE…AGAIN!

If your feeling generous, why not drop us a vote http://www.freeappaday.com/app.php?day=27&month=04

Thanks again for the support!!

Mike.