First off a big thanks to BYOAC, without those guys I wouldnt have bothered with this project. So much help and resources in one place, just an amazing community.
Also thanks to: Andy @ www.ultimarc.com, Divemaster127 @ www.arcadeemulator.net, Randy @ www.groovygamegear.com, and Scott @ www.gameongrafix.com
All great people to work with, saved me money, and provided superior products and services. If youre ever building an arcade cabinet, everything you need can be found through them, dont go looking anywhere else.
The PC - XP Pro, P4 2.5GHz, 1GB, 430W, Radeon 9550:
Completed Marquee:
Completed Control Panel:
Completed Side:
Completed Bottom:
Completed Front:
Full Complete Cabinet:
Intro Video:
Full Complete Indepth Video:
Composite Video:
=====Original Post=====
So after seeing the thread about MAME brought up recently, I decided to take a further look into it.
Ive always wanted to build my own home entertainment room with leather couches, a great audio system and a huge projection system, however thatll have to wait till I get a big enough house. Whats goes great in an entertainment room though? An arcade.
I, like many of you here, grew up on arcades, theres nothing that beats an intense match of galaga, or a furious match of mortal kombat; sure you could do it on a video game system, but theres just something about standing up at an arcade, holding a joystick, bumping shoulders, and hearing the sounds of the buttons being slapped.
Anyone right now could be playing a MAME, all it basically is, is a bunch of emulators running on a PC, you dont even need a cabinet or control panel to do so, but that sort of takes the fun out of it.
Seeing that building an arcade cabinet is a fairly easy wood working project, I decided to look more indepth on the different styles and setups. There are tons of resouces out there, but it seems Build Your Own Arcade Controls FAQ - Step up to real gaming excitement! is the best place of gathered info. While the main site seems fairly dated, the forum and wiki are quite active.
There are three main parts to an arcade unit, a cabinet, a control panel and its inner workings (main board, audio and video). I decided that hardest part would be the cabinet. While not exactlly difficult, it sets the standard for everything else. I could start with the CP as it's more technically challenging (as you can see here http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/inde...ch=74701;image), but it's not really that hard once you understand whats happening; I could then build a cabinet to fit it, but that seems backwards to me. I also could start with the PC, but since those are a dime a dozen, and emulation is not a foreign concept for me, so that wouldnt be hard either. The only difficult with the inside will probably deciding on what kind of display to use.
Well then, since I decided to start on the cabinet, I began to look around and see what kind of designs are out there. I could of gone with the basic look, I wanted something a bit more eye catching, and then I saw this http://www.mameroom.com/images/UAIIQuadKit.jpg The second I saw it I knew it was going to be perfect. But how to figure out the dimensions? On their website you could buy a completed unit, a DIY kit or just the dimensions, and thanks to the internet I did a bit of searching and found some rough dimensions for it, and began to work off of those.
Using Visio I then started to work on the top portion and the bottom portion and ran in to various problems. Some of the dimensions didnt quite match up total wise, so I had to change a few, I also didnt like their pullout drawer for a keyboard, I figured I could easily fit a mico keyboard in the control panel, so I decided to raise the front kick plate, and I think it looks more like an arcade this way.
Here is part of the drawing I came up with. The other part is where all the dimensions are labled.
Fairly self explainatory which piece is what, and the blue part will help me find the points to cut out the red part. This is the hardest part solved, and as you can see in the final picture what it looks like put together from the side, and its height/width, 6'2x3'4 seems reasonable to me. With this part out of the way, I can fill in the front and back on the fly basically. Im not an expert wood worker, but I know a good amount.
I havent quite finalized on the max inside width, but im thinking 25", it seems most arcades hover around 23" to 35", but I think anything above 30" is too big, maybe ill consider going to 28". I dont need to worry about that right now though, I can size it up once I get the sides cut out. Id also how to find a display unit to match it's width, so somewhere between a 25" to a 33".
In terms of material, im thinking 5/8" MDF; while heavy, it's fairly inexpensive, and im going to try to keep this project sub $1000, which shouldnt be too hard. Most of my cost will come from the control panel and the display unit.
I still havent decided on how many players I should make the control panel either. I was originally thinking 4P, but honestly, there arent that many 4P arcade games, nor will I have 4 people regularly available to play. However I started thinking that there are a decent amount of 4P N64 and DC games out there, any maybe that might be a reason to go 4P. And then after deciding how many players, Ill have to figure out a button config. There are many games out there, ones that use 1 button, and ones that use lots, and it seems every aracade has a different arrangment. Im thinking 7 buttons per player, 1 8x joy each, with 1 track ball, 1 spinner, and 1 4x joy, and then some extra misc buttons.
Yes, as I forgot to mention not only will I be using this to play arcade games, but also the many video games out there. Which brings me to my next issue, the display unit. While an actual arcade display is nice for getting that realisim, getting one that displays newer games properly isnt common, and can be quite expensive, $600 for a 27". So then maybe a monitor? but it may not display the arcade games properly, but I found this guy Ultimarc, the Ultimate in Arcade Controls.� and it's bascially a video card that emulates an arcade display properly, so that may be an option. The easiest and middle of the road option would just be to use a good ol CRT TV, easy to find, and cheap, but would need an S-Vid at minimum, and it's hard to find one that has thinish sides, but I guess that will be an issues down the road.
And then even later down the road is all the small details like power buttons, lighting, and marquees.
So thats it in a nutshell at the moment. Has anyone ever built one, or used one before? I still havent come up with a color scheme either, the top sides of the cabinet will have print on it eventually, and im thinking about just painting the base black. I also need to decided on a trim color. Anyone have any ideas they want to toss out or anything? Any recommendations on a control panel layout? Ive one in mind, and ill probably make a quick mockup of one soon and post it.
But until then, toss me some questions/comments, and maybe thatll get my thought process going on some things that I may have missed.