This is the my new control board. It's used to play classic arcade games emulated on modern systems. I don't actually play video games often. In fact, I probably played more in the course of testing it than I had for mere entertainment over the last decade.

Nevertheless, if you plan on playing the greatest game of all time, then this is the way to do it.

This board was the sequel to Astro-Hog (see below). Everything was bought specifically for this project, most of which I collected in 2001. Shortly after, I took on different interests for my projects and the parts mostly collected dust. Over the last eight years, I worked on it in fits. I finished assembling it late last year and put it through some testing early this year

Functionally, the board works as design. Originally I planned on doing a single overlay graphic, but my printer refused to output predictable scaling. Even these partial overlays didn't match the graphic dimensions as well as they should. If I were to do another, I'd just pay a professional printer to do it.

This is Astro-Hog. He came from spare parts. The buttons came from a kiosk project. The wood came from a desk I was throwing away. The sticker was an extra included in a model airplane kit. The electronics were pulled from a keyboard and modified. Even the paint was leftovers from a grammar school (not mine) art project.

I had a pruning saw and two screw drivers when I built this. That's it. Powered by lots of cursing, the woodwork got done during a long Saturday. By the time I got to the New Board, I had assembled a much better toolkit.

I completed Astro-Hog shortly before Thanksgiving in 1999. It worked sufficiently for the emulation of that time.