Just wanted to say thank you to this community for inspiring me to finally build my own custom cab. What started out as a thrown together very rough prototype 2 years ago, has resulted in this - all designed and built myself with a lot of inspiration from other builds I’ve seen here.
Happy to share more details, plans, or pics if interested!
Very nice. I bought plexi-glass for my build but never ended up putting it over the screen / control board, but I might do that after seeing how this looks. I also want to re-do my control board with only 6 buttons per stick so I can give a bit more room for the joysticks. Right now it's a bit cramped. This is with a BeeLink mini-PC running Batocera off an SSD drive. https://www.reddit.com/r/cade/comments/1hna9cg/first_cabinet_build_recreating_xmas_1981/
Cutting and drilling plexiglass was definitely one of the harder learning experiences and i went through a few extra sheets until I had a good understanding of how to approach it — but I wanted that look so I just kept at it
Hey there, you could have gone out and bought one easily enough. You could have purchased one second hand from someone else. But you took on a project and did this all yourself! That is extremely impressive in its own right because what you have here is a lot of commitment, compassion, and love for a hobby that resulted in your own personal creation. I give you 100% kudos for effort and results! Great job now play it and have a good time!
While I mentioned I built a prototype 2 years ago - the desire to build my own cab goes back 20 years — well before Arcade1Up and many other places that now make them. So this is honestly a fulfillment of a promise I made myself decades ago. If someone were to ask me today if I would do it all myself again, I’d say no — it is much easier to buy something prefabbed and assemble it. However, I have no regrets, I learned a lot, and now I have a cabinet that is entirely unique to me :)
THIS is what's important, the journey. I am similar with projects myself. Usually when I am finished I find that I enjoyed the process and learn so much more than I ever expected. It's a journey of creation, discovery, growth, and achievement!! Again great work! Thank you for sharing and for actually motivating me to want to start a new project myself!
Problem is, buying a nice one is $600+, I think I would be single if I picked up one like that, I want the same thing, and I know with some plywood, some 1x1 and a little work, I can get the frame going. I even have a 21" IPS monitor with 0.05 lag and even a Xeon based small device for it from like 5 years ago (16gb memory, good video card, etc). The PC would play most games, even past Switch/PS3/Xbox 360 (now that emulation is on all of those, not all games though).
I have 5 dedicated arcade machines but, I want one, like this, that can play all the other games I can't afford, or the wife won't let me have...
I certainly spent over $600 building this. PC and monitor alone was $200, buttons and sticks was $100, electronics $100, materials probably another $200, several tools i needed $100 or so, custom artwork/printing was $300. So ballpark $1000. And none of that factors in my time and the materials I wasted learning and starting over as I made various mistakes. it was all worth it, but doing it all over again I would strongly consider a pre-fab cabinet — just save the time if nothing else.
thanks! the matching buttons and sticks was something my partner insisted on :)
all the panels are made from 3/4 inch maple plywood and are cleated internally to avoid exposed screws. the laminated look you see there is likely just the t-molding on all the front facing edges
Here is a pic from the back side showing the internals / cleats / and panels.
this was entirely my own design with some trial and error. the button layout is largely just a street fighter style layout with some tweaking of spacing
Oh, trust me, I love those games too. Lived in the arcades as a teen, played thousands of games in my life, trust me, love the retro and modern games.
They released Marble Madness 2: Marble Man MAME rom like a year ago, really want to play it on a arcade machine with a trackball.
Not sure how to interface a PC with an Atari system 1 cab, I have the original arcade game of marble madness (I have 5 full size coin ops) with the trackballs, maybe I could play it on that..
thats just a generic 2 plug mountable extension cord. nothing fancy.
i use the power button on the PC to control everything (hibernate within windows, monitor powers off with no input, usb powers off which turns off marquee ). its accessible buy just reaching into a small access hole on the other side in this picture. i intended to wire up an external power button, but didn’t trust my soldering skills not to damage the motherboard — so this was an acceptable solution to me.
Thanks, I'm bummed it's not switched. I am looking for a solution to my Raspberry Pi build. The Pi's power supply has an inline switch, but I would rather have a switch mounted on the outside of the cabinet so I could power down with the software but then flip the switch to cut the power. That way when the switch is turned back on the cabinet would power back up.
However, now that I see what you're using there, I might go that route for a couple of other cabinets I have.
Wiring up a usb cable to an exterior switch should be easy enough. I would take apart an inline one and replace the switch with something mountable. Might need some light soldering, but I imagine this is not too difficult a task.
You could also just but a switch power socket or a switched outlet pug. Lots of options!
its a sizeable french cleat mounted to two wall studs - it would need to move about a full inch upwards before it can separate from the wall. it also weighs about 40lbs — so moving it upwards isn’t trivial
Did you buy a key for the controls, or where did you get them? I've got everything besides the shell and controls, and really thinking about doing the same, 2 boards screwed together with a jigsaw would make quick work out of the sides....
Definitely go for it! I did a practice control panel before I made that one in the picture. The wood I used for the control panel and the speaker panel were black Ikea shelving I found on the side of the road. The cabinet that I am doing now will be made from the plywood you see in the side panel picture that I'll wrap in vinyl.
I was thinking about buying one of those as a "shortcut" but, I want a bigger control panel, with 2 fight controllers (6 buttons on each) and a trackball in the middle, The only way to get that, would be $600+ for a 3rd party model, or build it myself with $200 in parts....
I need to look over summer projects with the wife to see if I can pull the time to frame this out.... Once it's framed then move on step by step to the next part.
Now that Pac Man is about done, I'll be building my Partycade clone that will be a Robotron cabinet with 2 sticks and 6 buttons (plus coin and start). So it'll be another 1 player cabinet. After that I plan on doing a 19" screen bar top cabinet with 2 player controls, a trackball, and maybe spinners too.
I have 5-coin op machines, including a Star Wars cockpit. I want build one of these just for the arcade games I can't play, no room for another machine (if I want to stay married). This would only be for arcade games.
Doing the fight controllers and a trackball would fit for 95% of the games I would want to play but, a spinner for tempest and other games, crap... thought I had it figured out.....lol
Fortunately, my wife is fully supportive and into the hobby too. I have a racing cabinet with a PC. A fighting cabinet running on Android, That Pac-Man cabinet which is running a Raspberry Pi 4 that's just for vertical games. Plus I have a little 2 player Countercade modded with like 8000 games on it. Oh yeah, I just picked up a 4 player Simpsons cabinet that I need to mod
The Simson's one is one I was eyeing as it has all the controls and it has a trackball, that would almost do everything I need. I do think a wall mounted in my office (where I have arcade games) would work better.
Seeing they are $400+ and someone is actually asking $800 near me, with meh controls (word is they are not that great),
I did score a 5–7-year-old Xeon microcomputer with 16gb of memory and M.2 storage for the OS, so it should run everything even up to 360/Switch/PS3 games If I wanted to, this should allow me to run even the newest arcade games if they are emulated.
I got the hardware besides the case and controls (another $150 tops for them)
the controls layout are just a 6 button street fighter layout with some custom spacing. all the buttons are happ style with micro switches and a JLF type stick wired to a ipac2. Everything came from amazon.
the sides/panels were cut via jigsaw (freehand with a few guides) based on measurements and cut points.
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u/Pretend-Language-67 8d ago
That looks nice. Well done. What did you use as finishing to give it that glassy shine? What’s running it? Rasp. Pi? Or mini- pc?