The Willis replacement control panel overlay for Atari Centipede is arguably one of the best CPO’s made by Willis. I not talking about finished product quality, as all Willis products had high production standards, I’m talking about the aesthetics. All too often Willis gets bashed for their “crappy” artwork, well this one does the game justice. Perhaps that’s why it’s so hard to find a Willis Centipede overlay that hasn’t already been applied to a control panel. The partnership breakup between Wico and Willis might also be a reason, check out the Wico Centipede overlay here.

The artist that worked on this one made an effort to do some color and design matching for the layout so the cpo wouldn’t look out of place on the game. He(?) even worked up a cool looking Centipede to add to the CPO, an element that was missing from the original design. Good color, cool Centipede, mushrooms and horizontal stripes. What else could you possibly need? I’ve only been able to find a couple of hacked up versions of this overlay and I’m on the lookout for a nice example. Check out my Willis artwork page for more information about Willis and their history.

I would like to add one of these overlays to the Willis artwork archive. If you have a nice example of this control panel overlay for sale or trade, drop me a line!

Way back in 1979, Atari released the soon-to-be-a-hit game Asteroids to the coin-operated world. I love its simple yet addictive game play, beautiful side art and huge, easy to use control panel. Big enough to set a drink on if you dared. This popular, money making game took lots of abuse on location. Worn, crappy looking games didn’t make as much money as newer looking ones, so what did operators do? When the artwork has been worn away by scores of eager gamers, it’s time to paint or replace.

Operators were notorious tight wads and didn’t like to spend money on OEM parts, often turning to Willis for their more cost effective products. While not always the best looking, they were better than a worn or ratty original (in the ops eyes at least). So here we have the Willis Asteroids cpo, released in 1981, and measuring in at a whopping 26-1/4″ x 23-1/3″. This thing will completely cover the original metal control panel.

Now with every Willis overlay the production quality is excellent, and this overlay is no exception. 3M backer paper and adhesive, artwork screen printed on lexan, and die cut button holes. This particular example still has the majority of the die cut outs in place. My favorite little Willis men adorn the p1 and p2 buttons, but there isn’t much more to say about this one. Very simplistic, kinda boring, and lacking in color variety. I’ll add it to the archive anyway.

I recently got a peek at Brian’s amazing, scratch built Zoo Keeper arcade cabinet, and it got me thinking about this under rated classic arcade game by Taito. Released back in 1982, it combines simple yet challenging game play, with full cabinet artwork. A welcome break from Taito’s typical cabinet scheme. Somewhere in my artwork stash, I knew I had one of these.

This particular Willis replacement overlay does a good job at trying to keep the original feel of the game. With bright colors, fun character’s from the game, and the brick motif, it could actually be used as it was intended – to replace your worn out original overlay. NOS overlays are tough to find and reproduction cpo’s have long been sold out, so this replacement might be your only choice. Insert coin to continue…

I purchased this one from a fellow collector along with a handful of other Willis overlays. I’ve seen it in pictures on other sites but have never had a chance to examine it closely. It is supposedly for crystal castles by Atari and I have no reason to doubt that. One thing is certain though, it’s not a Willis product.

Besides lacking all of the usual clues that identify a Willis overlay (can you name them all yet?), it is one flimsy piece of art. Cheaply made and probably one of the thinnest overlays I have in the archive. (more…)

I’ll be polite and call this one interesting. Someone decided to bootleg a moon patrol control panel overlay, using the reverse screen process, 3M adhesive and die cuts for the buttons and joystick. Unfortunately they neglected the most important part, the artwork.

I’m not sure why so much effort was put into this bootleg, perhaps it was for one of the foreign made knock-off pcb kits that were so popular with some operators. Maybe it was just for a local group of operators that had a half dozen or more Williams Moon Patrols needing fresh overlays. (more…)

Another collector tipped me off about a Willis Elevator Action overlay for sale at the Eldorado Games website. I bought it because I had never seen the Willis version before, only the bootleg Spy Agent version. Well, I still haven’t seen one because this overlay is a bootleg.

How do I know? There are lots of reasons, the first one is that Willis never copied existing work. (more…)

Not the most exciting piece, but even boring control panel overlays have a place in arcade history. If you hung out at the arcade back in the late 80′s or early 90′s, you probably saw more than your fair share of generic control panel overlays.

This one is a standard space theme overlay, meant to be used with any number of space conversion kits or simply as a cheaper alternative to the pricey OEM* replacement parts. (more…)

I’m on the lookout for a Willis Vanguard cpo, at least I believe it to be a Willis piece. I saw this control panel on eBay, but didn’t bid since the overlay was already applied. As much as I like Willis artwork, trying to collect examples attached to games or game parts would become space consuming real quick. I need my space for actual games!

If you happen to have or come across an NOS Vanguard overlay, or any NOS Willis artwork, drop me a line.

This is the second NOS overlay I picked up from Troy Smith (vidgameseller), the first was a Popeye cpo. Troy got a whole bunch of NOS parts in a bulk buy when IPB sold off most of its parts inventory in an attempt to downsize operations. (more…)

I was watching this frogger control panel overlay on eBay, an odd variation that I hadn’t seen before. The seller had it listed as Willis, but it didn’t see the usual markings to identify it as such. (more…)