As far as I can remember I've always wanted an arcade cabinet, especially when I saw that arcades in malls actually sold them. Since full-size cabs are like at least $1,500, that was kinda out of the question for me. I saw a pretty simple (wiring wise) Pac-Man bar-top arcade made of Legos early this year and basically got inspired.
Here we go. I opted for a bar-top cab because I basically didn't want a full-size cab and don't have space for one. I also didn't want a really heavy one either. So instead of 1/2" plywood or even MDF, I got 4 pieces of 3/8" 2'x4' ply from Home Depot.
The plans for the cabinet I built are from here. The only thing I changed is how big the control panel would be.
After laying everything out on the pieces of plywood, I asked my dad to borrow his jigsaw but he gave me a spiral saw to use instead. :| It worked, but it felt more like I was routing wood than cutting it. Whatever.
At first I was gonna put everything together with a hammer and nails but just used a nail gun instead.
All my arcade parts, including the game board I got from Jammaboards. The guy that runs the site is great! He ships fast, everything is very well packaged and theres plenty of arcade information on the site. Much recommended!! The speakers come in a pair, the joystick is a 4 and 8-way one. The buttons are shipped w/ switches and Jammaboards even sells power supplies. Because of the plans I was limited to pretty much a 15" monitor and smaller. Trust me, if I ever build another one it'll have a bigger screen. Since monitors that small are pretty much outdated, I found one on ebay for $80. :) I went with an LCD monitor cuz it was the easiest and the lightest w/ basically no hassles.
After drilling holes for the joystick, the buttons, the speaker and two holes at the top and bottom for fans, everything was sanded down in two stages. I didn't prime because the brown I choose is actually a primer... Ok, I did prime. I think thats why I went with that brown instead, two birds with one long arrow. Two coats of primer/color, then a coat of gloss clear. The screen is just a piece of plexi-glass from Home Depot which I painted the sides black.
The back panel is held on w/ magnets that you find on cabinet doors. Two horizontal supports keep the monitor in place which are t-braces that I made w/ the extra wood I have laying around. The fan holes are pill shaped because they are cut out of two laptop cooling pads that I found at Micro Center for like $6.
For the graphic on the control panel, I layed down some masking tape, then free-handed all the text on. Free-handing text w/ paint requires a lot of skill, especially text and I am nowhere near that confident to paint text w/o masking.
Then took an xacto knife and cut out what needs to be painted. After all the paint dried, I sealed with 2 coats of clear. When that dried I finished the control panel w/ the buttons and the joystick.
Two pictures of the back of the control panel.
I opted to not go with a lighted marquee and just painted Domo Kun eating all the Pac-Man ghosts, because I felt it was easier that way. Now that I look back, it would of be a visually cool thing. Oh well. For the side graphic, I just painted a HUGE Domo Kun. Since the cabinet is brown anyways I was going for Domo Kun standing in front of a brown wall. I don't know if it really looks that way though......
So this is basically how everything looks like inside. There where a couple of places I decided to use quick disconnects instead of soldering. Wiring everything together isn't nearly as complicated as it looks or as I thought. If anything, sorting through the jamma harness's massive bundle of wires is what took the longest. What you see is basically as organized I could get it. Wiring the buttons and joystick was easy too, even though the system test showed that the joystick wiring was flipped around.
Finished. Oh, I forgot to mention what game it plays. Theres actually 60 games on that board. They are all old school 8-16 bit games, even Pac-man and Galaga. Two games I love to play. I turned off some games because they were trackball games and I wasn't really into those game anyways. In the end I'm pretty happy with it, but down the road I might strip off all the paint and work out alot of the imperfection of the wood. Like I said in at the beginning, if it wasn't fall into winter I wouldn't have semi-rushed through the prepping stages. This was my first and my first time really getting into woodworking, so I've learned what not to do. Once the power is turned on it goes through a boot sequence then into the 10 page menu of games. Oh, about the four buttons. Later on, I plan on getting a bullet hell game; a version of this game, from Cave and it requires 4 buttons but right now theres only need for two buttons, rarely three.
I did go through about a day and a half of trying to figure out why my controls didn't work and in the end it was because the system default is set to take quarters to play. I didn't install a coin door and for some reason it didn't hit me when I saw the 'Free Play' option was set to 'No'. :p Roughly, this build probably cost me about $500-600, maybe $700. I started this at the beginning of October and was only working on it on the weekends, so about a month worth of work. So thats it. I probably forgot some other things, but can't think of it right now.
Next project: Mini Ninjas v1.5 and some retractable claws for a psycho kitty.
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