How did Atari apply side art to Arcade Cabinets? – The Arcade Blogger

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One of the most fascinating sequences in Atari’s arcade manufacturing process in the early 80s, was the application of the fabulous artwork that adorned all of its cabinets from the golden age of arcade gaming. So this week, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how this cabinet artwork was actually printed.

The technique used is called screen printing (often called silkscreen printing), and it’s a world away from the large-format digital printers used today.

Let’s take a look at the process in action. This great footage shows the process in full. Shot in 1982, the cabinet sides being printed are for Atari’s Quantum arcade cabinet – it is interesting that this happened to be filmed at the time, as the cabinet run was relatively low, at only 500 cabinets:

Atari coin-op screen printing process

What you’re seeing there, isn’t a giant sticker being applied. Atari is printing the artwork directly onto the cabinet side panel. And here’s the key bit; it is being done one colour at a time.

To create a side-art design, Atari’s artists first had to break the artwork into individual colour layers. Each colour required its own printing screen.

For example, if a design contained light blue, dark blue, red, yellow and black, then five separate screens would be created.

Each screen contained only the areas for a single colour. When all of the colours were printed in sequence, one layer on top of another, they combined to create the finished artwork. Over time, Atari would get smarter at this process and mix say, a blue with a yellow on top to create a green.

The screens themselves were large rectangular frames fitted with a tightly stretched mesh. The artwork wasn’t painted directly onto the screen. Instead, artists created a separate piece of photographic film for each colour. These films were typically clear acetate sheets with opaque black artwork representing the areas that would print. Here’s an example from Missile Command:

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The film positive was placed over a screen that was coated with light-sensitive emulsion, and then exposed to bright light. The exposed emulsion on the screen below hardened, while the areas hidden by the black artwork remained soft and would then be washed away. The result was a stencil in the mesh that allowed ink to pass through only where that particular colour was needed.

In the footage above, you can see the side panel positioned beneath a large printing head. Let’s watch it again from the 50 second mark:

Atari coin-op screen printing process

A screen is lowered onto the panel and ink is spread across the...