Space Invaders decorative tiles to push your gameroom over the edge
Once you’ve hit the capacity on your gameroom, and your collection is set, one of the most engaging ways to stay involved in the collecting hobby is to start pimping out the home arcade with slick decorations. These specially cut metal tiles are just the cure, and cheap!
Arcade decorations for your drop ceiling
The ceiling of an arcade usually sees one of a couple of treatments – painted artwork, stenciled or by hand, mounted arcade marquees or it is just used to hang other memorabilia. In rebuilding his own gameroom, Brian in Minnesota whipped up the above Space Invaders tiles using some old composite aluminum.
How are those 8″ x 10″ tiles mounted? With industrial strength double sided tape. Ouch! There needs to be a better mounting system, but seeing the colored spectrum of reflections from all of the games is inspiring. Many ideas come to mind.
One idea proposed was finishing those tiles with some black light paint to give them some character other than silhouettes in a dark gameroom.
Brian let me know that he is currently selling these tiles for $1 a pop plus shipping. There is no minimum order, but the available colors are limited to what scrap is left over. This will give you an idea on total cost;
- Up to 8 Invaders – $8 Flat rate envolope Priority
- Up to 16 Invaders – $12 Flat rate box Priority
- Up to 32 Invaders – $15 Flat rate box Priority
Other ideas for these decorative gameroom tiles
What if these tiles were made out of a lighter material? What if they were just sheets of diffused poly that were then backlit? Mounting a lighter material would be much easier.
Or what if the ceiling tiles were the diffused, translucent panels and not the fiberous material. You could have a whole lighting system in the ceiling, and you could easily take the cutouts with you if you ever moved instead of a fixed solution.
Would you do the metal arcade characters? If so, how would you mount them? If you didn’t, what ideas did this treatment inspire?
Leave a comment if you want to purchase a set, I can supply Brian’s email to serious inquiries. If / when Brian launches a website and starts to sell these metal arcade tiles online, I’ll update this post with a link to his shop.
Jan. 16th, 2011 – Post updated up additional information. Color options for the tiles listed below.
- Metallic Optimum Mica Platinum Titanium (Long name for a Metallic silver variant)
- Metallic light Copper Bronze
- Metallic Champagne (Lighter bronze / silver)
- Metallic Silver
- Metallic Pewter (Silver variant, similar to metallic silver but darker)
- Peru Bronze (Dark brown, listed as ‘metallic’)
- Bone White
- Deep Blue
- Standard Red
Here are some similar arcade posts
- New Space Invaders Website Design – Game Stencils.com
- Arcade Gameroom Decorations
- Super Punch Out Decal Reproductions
- Tip – Mounting A Reproduction Galaga War Games Header
- Re-useable Arcade Game Stencils
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
The invaders are made of fairly lightweight material. According to my shipping scale, my four weigh 1.25 lbs. That’s roughly 5 ounces each (very roughly since this isn’t the best scale for this low amount of weight). They aren’t going to take a massively strong mounting to stay attached.
Mind you, I wouldn’t want one falling on my head but that’s more due to the sharp corners than the weight.
The little critters are 8″ high by 10″ wide and less than 3/16″ thick.
If I can find a way to hide the wires without a lot of work, I’m considering backlighting mine with LED’s when I hang them on the wall (near my cocktail Space Invaders machine).
@BigO: Thanks for the insight into the weight. When you get those Space Invaders tiles backlit, send a photo.
Do you have plans to paint them?
Depending on how subtle I decide I want the overall display to be, I may paint one side the same as my wall color. But, the ones I got are a really nice, bright, brushed metal finish so I’ll probably leave them as they are.
Jeff, this is right in line with what I want to do in my game room. Please email me or pass my address to the seller.
Thanks!
@Adam & @Julia – I sent Brian an email with your contact information, to let him know that you are interested. Julia, I apologize for the delay, hopefully you are still interested.
Leave a comment
Your email address is never displayed and cannot be spammed. If your comments are excessively self-promotional you will be banned from commenting. Read our comment privacy policy.
December 30, 2010
I saw these and have contacted him about getting a handful of them. As far as hanging them? I was wondering myself. 24×24″ tiles are fairly inexpensive so I thought about grabbing 6-8 “cheap” tiles from Home Depot / Lowe’s, painting them flat black (or possibly primary colors) then mounting them with the industrial double faced tape like he’s suggesting (storing my good tiles. The other thought was to just get the metal hooks that connect to my ceiling tile grid with hanger wire.