(click on image to view larger)
A few weeks ago, my friend Liz Prince sent me a link to a blog post about this awesome custom-made Akira pinball machine. In the image above on the left, you can see an image of the original playfield, which was a 1980 Buck Rogers machine. Then, some very talented artist (I tried to follow the links but couldn't find the original source for this image - Tumblr - UGH! If you know who did this, let me know and I'll put up a link) re-themed the playfield art for the anime Akira.
This is SO tastefully done! Most of the scoring stuff is still the same, it's just that the characters and backgrounds have been replaced. Jon and I saw a few re-themed machines at the Pinball Wizard Arcade that were based on Boston-area sports teams (the Red Sox, the Celtics).
I think this is such a cool idea, especially for old machines, where there was no sound yet, and all the targets just award points. This is on my list of "someday" projects. It would basically allow you to have a custom pinball machine about whatever you want. Talk about a dream machine! Does anybody know of any other custom re-themed pins? Let us know in the comments!
I think the artist that did it was Katsuhiro Otomo. I have a copy of the "Akira Club" and there is a photo of the machine that Katsuhiro supposedly built using cells from the movie and illustrations.
ReplyDeleteAwesome, thanks for the info!
ReplyDeleteThe pics are out of the comic (not cells) and the machine was done by Young Magazine, as written on the machine itself. The machine is featured on the back of the japanese AKIRA 4 Paperback from 1987.
ReplyDeleteExcellent! Thanks for the updated information.
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