The Space Invaders

Entry posted by Crazy Climber September 9, 2014

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My First Project was a Space Invaders set. It all started when I was laying on the floor of my arcade (long story involving a gyruss marathon, lol) but I was looking up at how plain my ceiling looked. Just plain white Fiberboard tiles with various nicks and scuffs from when a pool table had been down there years ago. I always wanted my basement to have that arcade feel, that no matter where you looked you would forget it was a basement and get lost in the nostalgia. Looking back at things, most "real" arcades didn't have anything special about there ceilings but I guess it's different when it's your own house. To really get that mind set you have to change it so drastically that you can even fool yourself. I really do think nostalgia creates a drug like response in the brain, because I am definitely addicted to it, but hey it's harmless fun right?

What I did was take some scrap composite aluminum from work that was left over from various construction jobs we have machined over the years. It's very high quality expensive stuff and it comes pre painted professionally! I then drew the Space Invaders sprites in autocad and CNC machined the pieces on a Router at work. Using a strong double stick tape from 3M they were attached to the existing fiberboard ceiling panels. I was now happy with my ceiling and able to further achieve my nostalgia drug feeling for arcade machines

Here are a few different colors I made for some of my arcade collecting friends...

They are rather large, here they are next to a VHS (for the younger gen, this is like a DVD for poor people)

They even make an appearence in this arcade/videogame store front, woah, cool!

Overall I was very happy with these. The complete gutting of my basement a while ago unfortunately ended up with the removal of my ceiling so all thats left is this picture....but the basement is slowly on the rebuild, and I'm sure the Invaders will be back. Just like the game!

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