From afar the control panel looked decent. Up close it looked cancerous. The only cure for this skin cancer is to peel it off and start over. Here is the "before" picture:
Here is the "after" picture. I just started peeling at a corner and the whole thing eventually came off (leaving some of the image behind, but the image has no thickness).
In the previous picture, you can see the metal plates where the joysticks were mounted. The joysticks do not attach to the plates. They are only there so that the dust washer can be floating underneath the top of the control panel. When I removed the metal plates, there was quite a lot of dust trapped in the cavity. So much that it probably limited the joystick's movement. Too bad there is no way to clean out that dust without destroying the control panel overlay. The dust washer works better when it is mounted on top of the control panel, but I guess that was problematic in the old arcades (would people bend them?).
I ordered a new control panel overlay. Good thing they're still being made.
