Introduction

Design

Model

Construction

Finishing

Result

In the early part of  2000, I discovered my newest addiction and its name was MAME.  I immediately found myself hooked playing all of the old video games that I spent so many hours in front of as a kid.  Video games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Defender, and Joust, just to name a few.  But there was something wrong - playing these games on my PC just didn't feel quite right.  I couldn't move the joystick and pound the buttons like I could in the good ole' days, not to mention that the games looked blocky on my PC monitor.  Something had to be done.  I had to run MAME in a true arcade cabinet...but how?

I started researching on the web to find out how to accomplish my goal.  I found many sites where people had built their own MAME cabinets as well as sites, most notably Build Your Own Arcade Controls, that are dedicated to the art.  The cabinets that provided the most inspiration for my design are LuSiD's Arcade Flashback, The ULTIMATE Arcade Machine, and NYLatenite's Gamer's Paradise.

I started out by setting forth some ground rules for myself::

  • Do not "maim" a classic arcade cabinet
  • Use a large, realistic arcade monitor that is horizontally mounted
  • Have a flexible control panel without cluttering it with too many specialized controls
  • Do not make it too flashy or my wife would not let me keep it in the house

There were several reasons I didn't want to "maim" a classic arcade cabinet.  The first reason was that I didn't want to destroy a classic cabinet for preservation reasons.  There are only so many of these classic cabinets around and I didn't want to feel guilty destroying one.  The next reason is that I wanted the cabinet to be a certain size and shape.  The last reason is that I thought it would be fun to build one myself!

I decided to use a large, horizontally mounted monitor rather than trying to make some rotating contraption like a few others have done.  With a large monitor, vertical games would still be a decent size and I could change games without constantly rotating the monitor.  I also decided to use a realistic arcade monitor instead of a TV or PC monitor.  One reason I chose an arcade monitor was that I wanted the most authentic look I could get.  PC monitors make MAME look blocky and cartoonish due to the fine dot pitch and high resolution.  I decided against using a TV to avoid the trouble of converting the video card output to NTSC and also to avoid having to figure out a solid way to mount it.  I settled on a hybrid arcade-VGA monitor, the Wells-Gardner U3000 27", instead of a true 15.7 kHz arcade monitor.  The reason I chose a hybrid is that it still has the authentic, fuzzy look of a true arcade monitor but also supports higher resolutions for vector games.  It also uses the VGA output straight from the video card without any special wiring adapters.

The next objective was to decide on the controls.  I knew I wanted a do-everything control panel but I knew there was no way I was going to fit it all on one control panel.  I had seen some examples of detachable and rotating panels on the web but I thought they would be more trouble than they were worth.  I thought of some of the games I like to play that have special controls: Ikari Warriors, Heavy Barrel, Smash TV, Centipede, Tron, Xenophobe, Tempest, Arkanoid, Star Wars, and some others.  I came up with the following list of controls to play all of these games properly: rotary joysticks, dual joysticks per player, a spinner, a trackball, a yoke, and a pistol grip style joystick.  The problem was that I knew I wasn't going to fit all of these controls on one control panel so something had to go.  What I decided upon was to have a spinner and trackball in the middle of the control panel, and dual joysticks for each player, one a rotary joystick and one a top-fire joystick.  This seemed to be the best possible solution since I could still play Tron without the pistol grip joystick by using a top-fire joystick and spinner.  The only real draw-back is having to play Star Wars with a mouse instead of a yoke.

The last requirement was to make the machine palatable to my wife.  This meant not using any bright, flashy artwork so I decided on a basic black paint job with side panels of plastic laminate.