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Saturday Supercade Arcade Cabinet
vanrose72:
I started this project six months ago with the goal of modding a Space Invaders Deluxe cabinet and turning it into a MAME machine. I was very happy with the results.
When I bought the SID cabinet, it was almost completely gutted. The only parts left were the monitor, mirror, and cardboard backdrop with blacklight. I tracked down the coin door, speaker grill, and control panel from a few online sources. The original SID CP had only a few buttons, so I used it as a reference model and hired a woodworker to build a new CP based on my new layout with extra buttons and joysticks.
I was going for a retro style when I created the control panel and bezel. My inspiration was the 1983/1984 cartoon series Saturday Supercade. I couldn't find any high quality images of this cartoon out on the Web, so I used my graphic design skills and created my own illustrations based on scenes from the show.
I have installed Happ competitions sticks and True-Leaf Pro buttons from Groovy Game Gear. The bezel backlighting comes from four 12-volt LED modules. The computer is running Windows XP with a Maximus Arcade frontend.
Overall, this project was incredibly fun. I learned a lot about arcade cabinets in the process and have even more respect for classic gaming than before. I'm looking forward to hosting a game night at my house so that others can enjoy playing classic games as they were intended - on an arcade cabinet.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read my post. I welcome any feedback or questions you may have!
jimmy2x2x:
Very tidy job, looks great!
Do you have any pics of the innards?
dugg8:
Neat looking machine.
vanrose72:
The innards are less than spectacular. The control panel is relatively small, so it took some finessing to get the leaf switch pushbuttons adjusted. It's not pretty in the least!
Interestingly though, I removed the original Space Invaders monitor (which was horizontally-mounted) and installed a shelf by bolting a board into the existing mounting holes. It was super easy to set a flat panel monitor on the shelf, eliminating the need to attach it to anything. It's just sitting in there like it would on my computer desk.
iceman87:
sweet!