Arcade Machine Project

I wanted a pull-out drawer for a keyboard and mouse, so that's what that's for.

Here's some of the first cutouts.


Fitting together to check dimensions and add supports in the corners.


Cutting vent holes in the back panel for the PC and monitor.


And here are some of the pieces coming together. This is where I got to on my first day of construction.

I put in the monitor suspension panel. I had to tear out that monitor plate from the stand that came with the monitor and just screw it down to the wood panel. Also added are the control panel board and the bottom computer access panel.


Here it is with the monitor installed and the computer panel open on its hinges.


I'm holding the control panel down with a couple of clamps on the edges. I tacked on some small wood cutouts under the panel to help with positioning before clamping. I also added some thin plexiglass over the monitor.


And this is where I managed to get it by the end of the second day. I built up the keyboard drawer, cutout the speaker panel above the monitor, and installed the marquee light at the top.

If I simply wanted a PC that could handle most MAME games, I would've bought a cheap P4 PC. But in the spirit of the project (and wanted to at least be able to handle SSF4AE, which isn't alot anyway) I built the PC with parts from Newegg.
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The Sanwa joysticks arrived, as well as the buttons and keyboard interface (not shown).


Boom! I decided I wanted it to have light guns too so I could play Time Crisis, House of the Dead, etc. I was happy when these bad boys came in.


I configured them to the PC and went to town on some zombies for a few hours. Not good for getting work done.

Applying wood putty and sanding it down happens to take a LOOOONG time on something this big and intricate. Wasn't fun, but after that I was able to put down a few coats of primer shown above.


After the primer comes the coats of black paint.


My boss' 3-yr-old daughter always wanted to help out, but couldn't because of all the power tools needed for construction. I knew she loved painted though so I let her choose whatever color she wanted and paint the inside of the computer panel. Naturally, she chose pink

I designed a control panel layout in Inkscape and printed it out to lay over the control panel board. Then I just drilled out the holes through the template.


Here it is after installing the joysticks, priming, and painting.


And again after installing the buttons and joystick tops. Looking pretty cool.


This is what the underside of the panel looked like with the buttons and switches. Still need to connect them all...


That's a hell of a lot of time right there. Went through a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Band of Brothers before finally finishing. Got 'em all wired to the keyboard interface.

I loaded up X-Men and started wrecking shop on some sentinels. Run up and get done up, Magneto! I've got MAME, NES, SNES, PSX, Dreamcast, Saturn, Genesis, Gameboy, SSF4AE, and free PC games on it for hours of fun. I'm still working on mapping them all to the frontend (I'm using Mala) but it's coming together very nicely. I even have internet connectivity on it to play SSF4AE, SSF2T, and more online.


And finally here's a pic of its current state with the marquee panel installed. I have a smart power strip inside so when I power on the PC, everything else comes on as well (the monitor, speakers, and marquee light). When I power down the PC, everything else follows. Lastly, I installed a button on the back of the top panel and ran wires all the way down to the PC motherboard where I spliced them to the power signal connection. That way I can just press that button to power on and off the entire system, just like an arcade machine. Really happy about it so far! It's so fun to play and even funner knowing I built it from the ground up!