My Mini Arcade Project

Although this blog does not concern a robotics project, it does fall under the category of electronics, so I'll go ahead and share. A few years ago in college I began to wonder if it would be possible to build my own arcade machine. At the time I was learning Visual Basic and programming up a storm. The first game I programmed was a pong clone. It worked . . . almost. But hey, it got me thinking about all those years I had spent plunking coins into an arcade machine.

I love anything associated with classic arcade style gaming. I even own a few pinball machines. So when I started poking around and discovered that I could build my own arcade I was ecstatic! I googled and googled over the course of a few years after college discovering as much as I could and growing more and more comfortable with the idea. I kept up with the MAME scene but held off starting the actual construction of my arcade until I had the time, space, and tools - none of which existed while I was in college.

Once I was ready to start my project I began look for a donor computer. My fiance had an old e-Machine laying around gathering dust. That seemed like the perfect place to start. I installed the MAME32 software and made sure that the PC had enough speed to handle most games without lagging - which it did, much to my surprise. The next step was to decide on the type of cabinet I wanted. Standup arcade, tabletop (also known as bartop) arcade, or cocktail. Ultimately I chose the bartop MAME option for it's small size, portability, and ease of construction.

Portability is really where bartop cabinets shine. If you are college age, you can pack your cabinet around to every party. If you have kids, you can take your bartop arcade with you for Thanksgiving at grandma's house. That way you can set up the cabinet on a table in a spare bedroom and keep the kids out of your hair. That works better than bringing the kids console gaming system with you because grandmas always seem to have one TV, and its always in the livingroom where everyone is trying to visit - not an ideal location for loud kids playing loud games.

There are numerous websites detailing the construction of various types of MAME cabinets so I won't get into that here. If you're interested I'd recommend you start by visiting Build Your Own Arcade Controls. I'd also recommend a great book on the subject called Project Arcade: Build Your Own Arcade Machine by John St. Clair.





Once I decided to build my bartop MAME things came pretty easy. I had researched the project for several years (literally) and had read Project Arcade from cover to cover. Therefore I was able to avoid most of the problems one might have when constructing an arcade cabinet from scratch. However, that's not to say there weren't problems. There were several, some of which took me weeks to figure out. But over the course of a month around the Christmas holiday I was able to build a functioning arcade with several hundred games.

That left me wanting more. I decided to tackle a larger project. Building 5 cabinets at once for the purpose of selling them. Costco and a few online retailers sell arcade cabinets with around 100 classic games. I even offer 3 full size arcades in Amateur Robotics Resources Online Store. I planned on selling cabinets with over 2,000 games. It was a tall order, but I was confident I had ironed out most of the kinks with my first prototype. Just to be sure I built a second smaller prototype with a faster, newer computer. This "beta" version handled a more current version of MAME32 and ran many newer games that the first cabinet choked on.

I teamed up with a friend from college to help with the project. Curtis had a background in both computers and business, so he seemed like a good fit for the project. His job was to figure out the marketing aspects of the project as well as the legal issues. My hope was to license the games for legal use in the arcades. It was also agreed that he would get the "beta" cabinet once completed.

While Curtis was working on that I was busy designing the layout of the cabinet parts so they could be professionally CNC routed from 3/4" melamine. That way they would all be 100% identical. I purchased 5 new PCs from Dell and began the process of disassemble and integration into the arcade cabinet. Not an easy task.

I ordered various arcade parts from online suppliers including Ultimarc, Happ, and GroovyGameGear. Once they arrived I was able to begin the tedious process of assembling the control panels and testing the cabinets.

In the group photo above, you can see the huge "alpha" prototype (front row left), Curtis' smaller "beta" prototype (front row right), and the 5 production cabinets. You can see that the 5 cabinets haven't had their LCD panels installed, nor any of their buttons, joysticks, trackballs, or spinners. You can also see that there were two design options, 1 player with a trackball and spinner, and 2 players with a spinner, but no trackball. The finished cabinet in the first picture is a 2 player version. There were also a few color options. The sides of the cabinets were either black or yellow with black or red t-molding trim.

After months of tweaking and frustration, I finally finished the arcades. Sadly, Curtis was little help throughout the project and never figured out the legal or marketing aspects of the endeavor. I have since moved for work and the project has been shelved (not because they aren't finished, but because I don't have time to figure out the legal aspects of selling them).

If you or anyone you know is interested in details about one of these cabinets, write a comment that includes your contact information. All comments are private until I have a chance to review them (to prevent any inappropriate comments) so rest assured your contact information won't be published here for everyone to see.

**EDIT**

I've gotten a few requests for the specs on the computers I used for the 5 arcade cabinets. I've included below an image of the original order from Dell.