Lately I've been getting the itch for a good project and I'm considering doing something similar to http://imgur.com/a/BuhLP.

I've been pouring over info on the internet for the last few days and it's fairly daunting, so I was hoping someone on here may have some advice.

What I'd like is a 4 player panel that can just plug into a TV via HDMI and be as "portable" as possible. I'd like to have the actual computer or even a raspberry pi running MAME inside the controller itself if possible.

How viable is this for a complete novice to build? I've built a couple of PCs for myself and know emulation fairly well but that's the long and short of my hardware knowledge.