With all the photos we can found on the internet, we tends to forget that the orignal Famicom colors are plain white and dark red. Over the time, the white part tends to become yellowish. I know that the retrobright solution can revive such plastic color, but I actually find it over complicated when a spray paint can give a nice result.
This is the story of my painted Famicom…
Required materials
- A disassembled Famicom shell
- Plastic paint primer : I used an “Hobby Paint” spray from Vallejo
- White mat acrylic spray paint : I used “Permanent spray” from Edding
- Clear mat varnish spray : I used the same brand than the spray paint
- Some tape and a sheet of paper large enough to protect the motherboard, except if you do not plan to paint the front connector
- A cardboard to paint inside
- A sheet of transparent printable sticker to print brand new stickers
Painting
Before painting, all the stikers have to be removed. Keep them safely glued to any other surface while painting, so they stay flat.
My Famicom was very dirty, I washed it with some dishwasher soap before painting
The paint process that I followed was:
- Apply the primer over all the surfaces in 2 or 3 layers, wait about 40 minutes between each layer
- Apply the white paint in 3 layers, wait again about 40 minutes between each layer
- Wait 1 additional hour to be sure that the paint was completly dry
- Apply the varnish in 3 layers, wait about 40 minutes between each layer
- Wait 1 hour to be sure that the varnish was completly dry
New stickers
The dark red sticker on the front and the gray one on the back of the console are easy to keep as they are pretty thick, But the transparents was yellowish. Fortunately, I found a guy who recreated the original label and published it in PDF ! So I just printed the PDF on a blank sheet of a transparent sticker.
The printed sheet :
And here are the labels : the new one on the left and the original ones on the right :
Final result
A brand new Famicom 🙂
