I have been a rabid arcade game fan for over 25 years, and I have always wanted to recapture the experience of playing full sized arcade games at home. So I've decided to restore an arcade machine cabinet and run popular arcade/console games emulators such as MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) to play virtually every classic arcade and console games in one cabinet. Once you have all the emulators and the ROMS, you can play the games using a keyboard and mouse, but who wants to do that. I wanted the real experience of an upright arcade game, so I could play the games the way they were meant to be played.
I've decided to blog about my arcade cabinet project; kinda like my personal journal about it to get me going. This will take some time to complete and writting about it will hopefully give me the strenght, encouragement and kick in the butt to go thru with it and finish it. These type of projects requires lots of free time, money, patience and mostly passion about the whole idea to pull it off.
I already have the cabinet, the monitor, most arcade parts and some PC hardware; I'm waiting now for some new computer parts that I've purchased recently on ebay.. let me bring you up to date from the beginning:
How it actually got started..
Last summer, I saw an classified ad on
kijiji.ca about someone selling arcade cabinets; I didn't have much money for this but decided to answer the ad anyways. Turns out he needed to get rid of them fast since they were stored in a warehouse and needed the room. I offered him in exchange my SimpleTech 160GB external HD and pay him to deliver it to my place. He agreed!.. gaved him $50. That was a good deal! ~ Later, he called me up and ask if I was interested in getting the table top style cabinet and another full size cab since he was driving to my area, he only wanted $50. I agreed instantly! ~ Now, I should have thought about it longer, I really didn't have the space for 3 cabinets!!
Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator
Ever since they've started with the MAME project, the most famous arcade games emulator, I've always said to myself 'How cool would it be to own a real arcade cabinet' and play them the ways they were supposed with real arcade joysticks/buttons and full sized upright arcade cabinet. To play these games again with the nostalgia feeling of the 80's: PRICELESS! For the full effect, add some background Arcade Ambience Sounds and play some music such as Don't You Want Me (Human League), Electronic Avenue (Eddy Grant) and Tainted Love (Soft Cell)... aaah the 80's, what a fun time we had in arcades!
MAME is a free emulator that can emulate thousands of classic arcade games authentically, using the original ROMS from the games. It can be run on virtually any PC and there is a vast community of programmers constantly working to improve it and add even more games. Obtaining the ROMS is easy and configuring MAME using a GUI front-end (FE) like
MAMEUI and
Hyperspin is easy.
Mameworld.net is a good place to start for more information on front ends and other useful MAME resources.
Hyperspin FE
In such a short time
Hyperspin has taken the arcade community by storm. Clean graphics, smooth wheel navigation, and super sweet presentation make this hard to pass up as the FE of choice. In my view, it is the best FE for MAME and other game
consoles emulators; it is an animatable frontend allowing us to launch games (and apps) from a simple interface with a more artwork oriented approach to creating menu's. A fantastic way to catalog/view and enjoy your collection of games. This is finally the FE that made me want to built my own arcade cabinet; I just had to do it now!
The Arcade Cabinet
All 3 cabinets were in good conditions, the upright cab I am planning to use for my project had no monitor or PCB board inside, the back panel was there and the bezel glass was made of real glass instead of the plexiglass that were mostly used later in arcades. Overall, this is a very nice cabinet to work on!
The control panel on it had 2 joysticks and 6 buttons (2 per joystick & 2 player start). The inside had some spider web and was a bit dirty, it had some old wire harnest and some heavy power supply and junk.
I've noticed that a wooden shelf was added inside for the monitor, they must have replaced the original monitor at one time. This was great because I won't have too make one for my monitor. The front coins slot and money boxes were locked; without any keys in view I had to forced it open and now I will need to replace the locks with new ones. A few quarters were in the money box!
The cabinet must of have been converted a few times for different games. The marquee and front bezel of The Irem Skins Game was still on it. I'm trying sell this original IREM Marquee on eBay, hopefully I can get a few bucks for it!..
Even though I haven't finish stripping and preparing the cab, I'm already in the process of acquiring the necessary new computer and arcade parts.
My goal is to be able to run all arcade game ever made from the late 70's up to 2006, along with all the other console game emulators from the Atari 2600 to the Wii and even some old 8-bit computer games using the Hyperspin front-end for all of this. They are working also on a wicked Hyperspin media center add-on. I will also set it up to be able to play some of the latest PC games on it and use it as an extra multiplayer pc game station.I have no idea which arcade game was originally played in this cab. I've look at many cabs on
KLOV arcade museum website and could not find any that looked exactly like mine. However, it is quite similar to the Williams Robotron or Joust cabs.
Stripping the cab
I've removed the old t-modling, wire harness and various old parts inside and cleaned it all. I also removed the control panel and removed the joysticks and buttons. It was a pain to get ride of the old CP overlay; it was glued tightly. Got ride of the old mushy glue with Acetone. I have marked the position of the new buttons; planning to have 6 buttons per joystick, 2 player start buttons, and 2 at each top corners for menu and other functions. I will also add a button on each side panel to play virtual pinball games. Total: 20 buttons.It had been painted black; it seems it was originally red before. It had a slight water damage on part of the top (probably from a few spilled drinks) which was easily fix by sanding it. The corner of one of the left side panel at the bottom (foot) had a broken/missing part. I've fixed it by using the t-molding to create an hole and I've filled it with wood filler, let it dried and sanded it. Looks good now!
With one big can of Aceton, I was able to remove only the paint of the front kick panel, control panel and most of one side panel. I've used many old t-shirts and rags for the job. There were alot of paint to be remove; at leat two layers. It now look nice and smooth. I still need an other acetone can for the other side panel and top. With the paint gone, I have filled some small holes/stratches and even up the rim of the panels with wood filler. I will have to wait 'till summer on a windless day for the new paint job, have to take it outside to use a spray gun; planning to paint it in black.
Arcade replacement parts and PC hardware
Joysticks/Buttons & BYO BoardI have purchased from Xgaming their arcade bundle for 2 arcade joysticks, 20 buttons including the 1 and 2 player buttons and microswitches. Got it when they were on special at $29.95. ~ also got their BYO arcade USB/PS2 board kit which will allow me to connect the joysticks/buttons to the PC; they are fully programmable for re-assigning the buttons/joysticks to any input on keyboard.
Spinner - a must have!
I don't have much room left on my control panel to install a spinner permanently; would be too crowded. Many games works 100 times better with one, so not having one would be shameful.
I have found the Griffin PowerMate USB Multimedia Controller which is fully programmable and I've read very good reviews about it. People have tested it with MAME and are very happy with the results. It also can be used as a volume knob and should be perfect to rotate thru Hyperspin menus.
It also has a cool blue light glowing undernath. One good thing also is that I don't have to install it permanently on the control panel; I will place it on the side panel for volume control and anytime I need it to play a spinner game, I'll just put it on the control panel. Cool heh!?
USB Touchpad
For mouse control directly on the control panel, I got myself an USB touchpad from Ergonomictouchpad.com. Perfect since it is in his simplest form/size and connect thru USB. Not bad for $30.
SSD Drive
I also got a good deal at Canada Computers (Online Store) for a OCZ Solid Series Sata II 60Gb Solid State Drive (SSD) for only $99 (here's a review about it at Tom's hardware). This model can read up to 155MB/s. Perfect to boot the computer system much faster especially with Windows 7. I'm planning to use Windows 7 x64 bit.
Mobo/CPU
I have recently won an auction on eBay for this mobo/cpu combo: ASUS Rampage II Gene X58 LGA 1366 Micro ATX Motherboard with the Intel XEON W3520 Quad Core 2.66MHz CPU. This will be perfect. Need to buy some new memory now; planning on getting at least 4Gb.
I am currently looking at the Corsair Colling Hydro Series H50 CPU Cooler to keep my CPU at desired level when overclocking it to 4.0MHz. Seems to do the job. Still $70 though, might wait for a deal on this first and keep my CPU at default speed in the meantime. There's a nice video review about it on youtube here.
Rackmount LCD/Keyboard ~ a good idea!
I saw on auction on ebay for an used/discontinued APC AR821 1U rack-mount 15" LCD monitor/keyboard drawer, this is only 1½" high and would be perfect by placing it right under the control panel which will be hidden and integrated into the cab. It will be great to be able to pull it anytime to access the computer with its own monitor and keyboard/mouse directly without having to interupt Hyperspin or the arcade game. Guess what! I won it for only $26! (+50$ shipping)
I've received it, it was dirty with some normal wear but still in good condition; the LCD has 1 dead pixel but that's okay. These used to sell for $1500. Now, I will need to make a hole to fit this in and install some support inside the cab to hold it tight.
Monitor
Got myself a free Del CRT 19" monitor from my neighbour who's brother works for a company that were upgrading to LCD monitors. I have removed its big plastic case and couldn't wait to installed it inside the cabinet. I was able to securely attached into place. But now, that wasn't a good idea because I didn't paint the cabinet yet!.. But it looks better for now with it inside.. :)
Video Card
Haven't chosen my video card yet; will probably go for an Asus PCIe GeForce 9 EN9800GT 512M or 1Gb, if I can find a good deal somewhere.
Speakers
I am currently considering
Infinity car speakers to work with a standard 2.1 PC speaker sound system; I will replace the satellite speakers with good car speakers like the
Infinity Kappa 52.9i 5-1/4" Kappa Series 2-Way Car Speakers; you can find them for $70 or so. There's a video review about it on youtube
here.
One thing I like about these speakers, the dome tweeters can be rotated so you can aim the highs in any direction. One other interesting thing, they also have button to reduce the tweeter output by 3dB for a softer tone which might be useful been so close to them..
One other thing I like about these speakers is that they are 2 Ohm impedance instead of 4 Ohm normally found in most cars, this will use less power and believe it will produce better sound especially for an arcade cabinet.
Well, that's my story so far.. I will continue to upgrade this blog as my project advance. I will also post some pictures soon, so if you like you can follow this blog.
Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions, ideas or questions, feel free to ask them in the comment box below.
Cheers!
I'm not the only one who really enjoyed this movie, I've found a PC version of The Last Starfighter game that the guys at Rogue Synapse created in 2006 to play in their working replica of the arcade machine used in the movie… now that's wild! ~ They've done a very good job on the arcade cabinet and the game is still available for download for free! ~ Grab it before it's too late!.. (click on pictures to enlarge)
