UPDATE 1/10/12: STENCILS!!:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=109040.msg1242127#msg1242127UPDATE 2/20/11: LIGHTED VOLCANO BUTTONS!!:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=109040.msg1163398#msg1163398UPDATE 2/11/11: Atari MAXI trackball re-build:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=109040.msg1161109#msg1161109Hey there everybody! I'm grateful to share progress so far on my current project, a multi-emulator cab, which was in another life, a Taito Jungle Hunt. I played the ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- out of this game, amongst so many others, as a 10 year old on Friday nights at the bowling alley while my dad bowled in a league night there. Over the course of a couple of years, they also had a Crazy Climber, a Front Line, Zookeeper -- I have since then considered this cab design an archetype of the era. One to eventually own someday.
I picked up this cabinet at a Super Auction outside Milwaukee WI in about 2005. It was a water-damaged gut job; a basket-case with nothing inside besides random bits of wire harness, the glass items, brackets, etc. A someday MAME project candidate. I paid $100 with fees, strapped it into the pick-me-up truck, and drove her back down to Chicagoland. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of her intact as purchased. Wasn't much to look at, trust me. It had been converted to a "Spiker" at one point before its demise, with custom [blow torch] button holes in the original control panel and a Leland Corporation generic control panel overlay.
Trust me, this thing was not coming back as a restoration. It was too far gone. Someone had also taken the term 'kick panel' a bit too literally. The area above the coin door was kicked in two; The coin door frame was bent at the impact area too.
It was cool to peel off the Striker decals from the marquee and control panel to see that it was actually a Jungle Hunt at one point. It's a bittersweet feeling to realize you cant always bring something back as it once was; Sometimes you just have to cut ties and move bravely forward. If you need a marquee and bezel for a Jungle Hunt , PM me....
So I tore it down. I had a plan. I loves me some vertical games; I loves me some horizontal games; I hates me some vertical games all shrunk up on a horizontal monitor. I have always liked the IDEA or a rotating monitor, but I found most implementations falling short somehow, or too overwrought for ME to implement; I wanted to keep things somewhat simple, for the sake of maintainability. I didn't want to end up with an arcade version of a Rube Goldberg device.
It was sitting in front of me. Literally. On my desk, I had an I-Inc 28" 1920x1200 LCD display. I tested Dig Dug and Scramble on the monitor via MAME, since I had them sitting in the office. Vertical games looked awesome on this thing, with no compromise in scale in a side by side comparison. I thought, "What if I could cram this thing into the TAITO?" Well, you can't...Unless you go wide-body!
I thought, I need to replace water damaged and broken panels already; since this thing basically bolts together, I could keep the side panels, and mill up new kick, speaker, and top panels, and any other various horizontal parts as needed at a scale large enough to house this huge LCD, and not look ridiculous. I still wanted this thing to fit thru a typical doorway. So I started to super-size it:
I measured all of my existing panels, and adjusted the dimensions to accommodate the additional width of the lcd panel, and cut and routed wider replacements out of 3/4" lightweight MDF. I added about 4.5 inches to the carcass to create a 26.5 inch interior width.
I used a Harbor Freight handheld router to cut the tongue and groove joinery, and lap/stack joints. That thing is worth MUCH more than the $25 I paid for it. If you need a router for arcade projects, it is the hot setup on the cheap. Its about the size of a tall beer can, and its easy to get into tight spaces. It works better than the laminate router I paid $200 for 15 years ago. I cant say how long it will last, but for $25, it doesn't have to...
The side panels had a sriously bad case of press board acne. Every area that had been abraded, scratched or scuffed in any way, and had subsequently gotten wet, had swollen like blisters. The lower 3 inches had swollen up like a sponge. Repairing this was a complete waste of time. I spent hours filling and sanding and priming and sanding and priming and sanding and filling and priming and sanding , when I could have just traced these and cut new LIGHTWEIGHT MDF panels.But somehow, to me, these side panels were the 'soul' of the cabinet. They HAD to remain. So I suffered through it, sucked it up and got it done.
I didn't take any pics of the sides before I got started, so I found this pic, which is somewhat representative of what mine looked like, except mine looked MUCH worse:
This is after removing the damaged finish and identifying repair areas:
repairing and priming:
rough finishing interior panels:
I mad an entirely new base, the old one looked like a mushroom. I made it taller by 1.5 inches while I was at it:
Trying to keep the cat out of the wet paint:
More soon...