Pac-man cocktail build finished

[Osirus23]

Completed my Midway Pacman cocktail cab this weekend. Built it using Kyle Lindstom's wonderful blueprints. Construction on this project took off around mid-December of last year.

I opted for stained oak plywood instead of verneer as I think it looks a little nicer.

Monitor is a 19" CGA from 8liners. Artwork is from pac-man.com; glass, clips, controls, coin door, and other misc parts are all from twistedquarter.com; control panels are from arcadedepot.com.

[D_Harris]

Nice. What was the total cost and man hours into that project?

Darren Harris
Staten Island, New York.

[Osirus23]

Nice. What was the total cost and man hours into that project?

I estimate between $1100 - 1200 for all the materials.

There's probably around 35-40 man hours of work into it, with 2 people working together for most of the construction including cutting boards, assembling, stain, varnish, monitor mounting, setting up the electronics, etc.

[Erik]

Very nice!  Looks better than original

[DeLuSioNal29]

Very nice.  But just curious...  Why did you go with bat tops and not ball tops?  Wouldn't ball tops be more authentic to Pacman?

[Osirus23]

Wouldn't ball tops be more authentic to Pacman?

Yeah, I don't really like the sticks I have now, I was being cheap when I bought them.

I plan to replace them with red balltops in the future, I just wanted to get it going right now because I was tired of waiting for parts to arrive in the mail.

[Smeghead]

Is that a restoration or Mame?

either way it looks amazing! Nice job

[Osirus23]

Is that a restoration or Mame?

either way it looks amazing! Nice job

MAME cab, using all new parts and materials.

[BigJon]

Looks beautiful.  I remember playing one of these puppies at the local Pizza Hut on Friday nights.

[jipp]

yeah, it looks better than the original.. you did good

chris/

[ark_ader]

Great Job! 

[piecesof8]

Very nice. 

+1 on replacing the bat tops with ball tops, then it'll be perfect.

[opt2not]

Nice scratch-build!  

Though something about that wood-grain seems off to me. I can't really put my finger on it, perhaps its a bit too grainy, or the pattern feels too condensed. I don't know...I would have went with the original wood-grain look personally. Either that or an updated darker stained look. But that being said, it looks pretty damn awesome nonetheless.

I'm glad you went with a CRT rather than LCD. A lot of people tend to do that with scratch-builds.

Great job!  

[Osirus23]

I was really close to using an LCD for this build. I figured with CRTs getting rarer and rarer I should get one while they're still around, very glad I went with CRT instead.

[extendedplayarcade]

Great Job on the build.  I agree with everyone about the joysticks but the detail on the stain is amazing.  Did you stain it then poly it?  Or did you use the stain and poly in one?  Or accrylic?

I have a cocktail cabinet waiting to be stains but I am still on the fence what color to stain it.  I was going to go pecan to give it a lighter look



still can't make up my mind but i have the same coin door as you from twistedquarter.com   Did you hook up the coin return button into a but with a leaf switch?  I seen a few people do it here with hot glue and a leaf switch and they use that button to add coins to mame.  It seems like a great idea just wonder if you did the same?

Thanks for the post of photos.  Can you post more of how you mounted the monitor?  I bought a LCD monitor but I might go CRT seeing I don't like how the LCD looks in the cabinet.  But cost wise I might be stuck with LCD seeing I am broke but if my event ( thekongoff.com sorry shameless plug ) goes off well I might buy a crt for my cabinet.

Thanks again for the post and sharing with us.  It came out awesome

[extendedplayarcade]

oh yeah is arcadedepot.com still in biz?  Is that where you got your cabinet?   I contacted arcade depot a few times and never answered back to me.

[Osirus23]

I built the cabinet from scratch, only the metal control panels came from arcadedepot. I ordered them a couple of days after Christmas and got them about 10 days later.

I mounted the monitor using fabricated monitor bracket from MikesArcade.com http://www.mikesarcade.com/cgi-bin/store.pl?sku=CTMONBRKTSM after finding out that standard mounting hardware won't fit in a Midway cocktail. These brackets replace the sides on the monitor and attach to the top of the cabinet in the 1/4" recess around the monitor cutout.

The stain is Minwax Dark Walnut and it has four coats of Minwax satin polyurethane.

In case anyone thinks the joystick isn't centered, it's because there are 2 pushbuttons to the right of it as well which you can't really see in the photo. I had to sacrifice some authenticity to be able to play more games than just Pac-man.

[opt2not]

I was really close to using an LCD for this build. I figured with CRTs getting rarer and rarer I should get one while they're still around, very glad I went with CRT instead.

Good choice. CRTs will outlast an LCD and the image looks better and more authentic.