Sources of arcade cabinet artwork for Konami's '92 X-Men
Hi! A while ago I've started looking into all the artwork used in Konami's 1992 X-Men arcade game, the cabinet art as well as some of the ingame credits sequence with panels from the comics. I've found around two thirds of the sources for the various artwork but I'm hoping some of the people here who are way more knowledgeable than me might help me out find the rest. If we do manage to find most or all of them, I'll make a comprehensive post here (as well as on other socials) as a nice resource for whoever might be interested.
It's important to note that whoever designed the various X-Men arcade cabinets (2, 4 and 6 player variants as well as a seemingly rare hourglass or x-shaped cabinet) used character art from various comic book cover art, posters as well as redrawing some of them to fit the character design for the game - for example they took Cyclops from Jim Lee's big "The Best is Yet to Come" poster which has the 90s blue and yellow redesign with the straps and redrew him to look like the earlier classic Cyclops suit. They did some similar edits with Storm as well. This means that some of this artwork might look like a character from an earlier era but it could be edited. Though in any case, it can't be later than early 1992 since that's when the game came out.
I've gone through hundreds of X-Men related issues and art at this point but I can't seem to find some of these sources so any help would be appreciated!
So here's the artwork I can't seem to find the sources for:
- Brown suit Wolverine on the joystick control panel for the 6-player cabinet.
- I actually found an instance of the art on the Marvel: Year In Review '92 on page 36, but that issue uses tons of pre-existing artwork from all kinds of sources and unfortunately the credits page doesn't cite them, only the artists for some of the original art for this issue, so I doubt this Wolverine was made specifically for it.
- Wolverine on the monitor bezel art, has a similar style to the control panel art but that doesn't mean much because a lot/all of this has been redrawn for the cabinets.
- Cyclops and Dazzler on the top marquee art for the 6-player cabinet. I have an idea for the Dazzler art (it's the number 6 image) but no clue for Cyclops.
- A possibly rare variant of the cabinet with some different Cyclops and Nightcrawler art but the Cyclops one is a much higher res version of the marquee art, only without the optic blast. I only found out about this cabinet variant today so I haven't found this Nightcrawler either but it looks like a pretty early version.
- A Fleer Ultra X-Men trading card with Dazzler pointing her finger like shooting a gun, very similar pose to the top marquee art but obviously a completely different face and art style, but could've been the inspiration.
- Cyclops on the control panel art in a very dynamic pose with an afterimage swoosh of his visor that's possible added in.
- Same as 7. just cropped in on Cyclops' face.
- A good look at the 2-player cabinet side art, specifically interested in Cyclops in a running pose that I can't seem to find the source for. Dazzler as well but the next image has a better look.
- Another variant of the side art, this time with a better look at Dazzler. I'm not expecting to find this one since this Dazzler is specifically inspired by the Pryde of the X-Men animated pilot so who knows what the source might be, it could even be a completely different female character redrawn to look like Dazzler for all we know, but it's worth a shot.
Well I think that's it! If anyone has any ideas or clues on the sources for some of this artwork, I'd very much appreciate it. Thanks!