Here is an amazing piece of Willis aftermarket artwork, the Phoenix upright control panel overlay. With 8 screen printed colors, die cuts for the buttons, quality 3M materials, and a good overall design. One of my favorites and they seem to be easy to find. I played a ton of Phoenix back in the 80’s at the old Down the Hatch restaurant in Schaumburg IL. They had a couple of cocktail cabs in the waiting area and I’d always ask for quarters whenever we stopped there for lunch. That’s where I learned how to line up the birds on the screen edges to make them easier to shoot, fun times!
This example still has most of the die cut pieces intact, with location marks on them. It also carries the early text ©WILLIS IND. INC. 1981. This particular stiched scan of my overlay was cleaned up beautifully by KLOV member redfivexw V. His cleaned up images look much better than my scans, so big thanks. Would you leave this installed on your Phoenix if you found it that way? I would. If the artwork on this overlay looks familiar to you , it should. Take a look at the original control panel artwork below.
The artwork has very similar features and colors because Willis was producing all the artwork for Centuri at the time. They advertised the various manufacturing relationships they had in their color brochure. So they produced the original and then tweaked the art to make an aftermarket replacement. No question that this one would work well on the cabinet. If you have one on your game, I’d love to see it, drop me a line. Thanks to QuarterArcade.com for the image of the original CPO. If you’re looking for one to buy, he has it.
