NES in a Nintendo cab

[tcleary]

Pretty simple project here but I think it cool and would not mind suggestions/feedback.

Have a DK/VS cab and got fed up with it having problems.  Already replaced the monitor, have had power issues, and latest the sound has been giving me trouble and one of my VS boards started resetting.  So I'm done with it.  Sold the VS boards and pulled everything from the interior and the monitor which I'll also sell.

So idea was to get a NES and crt TV in the cab, wire up some controllers to the vs joys/buttons, add some decent speakers with a sub, put in a plug in light for the marquee.

So I've done all that and it was pretty easy.  Great thing about the Nintendo cabs is there is already a shelf at the right angle so putting a TV in the cab was easy.  I just added a few little boards behind the TV (19 inch sharp) to get it close to where the monitor was.  For the speakers I just put them on top of the cab.  I'm not a huge fan of the crotch speaker on Nintendo cabs so decided not to use it.  Dual mono with a sub on top looks strange but it sounds great and puts volume control in easy reach.

I bought a few of the vs carts from retrozone so I can still play those and with the powerpak I can play pretty much any nes game.  So the only detriment is video quality.  Eventually I may pick up a Sony pvm and get a nes rgb modded, but that is fairly expensive so not sure if I'll bother.  As it is I'm happy with the cab.  I tried contra and Mario and Mario plays exactly like it did on the original vs hardware, its awesome I really like the nintendo sticks/buttons.  For me its all about the games/gameplay and having variety available so I think this was the best solution, I can live with the drop in video quality for all the benefits I'm getting using a tv/nes instead.

One last thing I need to do is get some buttons available for player 2 select/start.  I'm using p1/p2 start that is there for p1 select/start.  I think I'll just drill a small hole in the wood piece at the top of the control panel, feed some wire through and just have two small buttons kind of sit in the corner of the player 2 side unless I think of something better.

Detriments:
Video quality, can be remedied but expensive.  It's not that bad though.
Not arcade hardware, but I can't tell a difference gameplaywise.
Looks goofy with the speakers on top

Benefits:
Sounds better with speakers/sub on top.  Easy to control volume.
Plays the same as vs hardware
Opens up the entire nes library and is still running on Nintendo hardware
Replacing any component will be easy and cheap.

if anyone is curious I can post about my other cabinets, almost all of them are projects, not arcade original hardware.
the others are:

4p slikstik mame

2p rotary/vertical/mame in an ikari cab with a dell ips lcd for all rotary games and vertical games (most lcd monitors have awful viewing angles when vertical, the dell ips do a lot better and look pretty good even if you view them at an angle)

MK hybrid cab with an xbox 360 running MK9

Defender with pc mame in the cabinet running it.

arcade hardware cabs:
neo 1 slot
super gt twin
candy cab jamma.  the boards I usually use in it are:
sft turbo championship, golden axe with a jamma adapter, ghosts n goblins with a jamma adapter, ataxx, rastan

I like my cabs to be versatile and play multiple games.  so really other than defender and super gt the rest do that.

a few pictures.  i'll probably tidy up the speaker wires a bit.  Running the retrozone vs super Mario cart.
2nd picture, NES easily accessible through the coin door.

[tcleary]

played a lot of contra tonight on the cab, it's great.  I beat it with just a continue or two without the code.  The game seems easier to me, I guess because I'm partial to arcade controls.  I'm curious how some other NES games will play.  I'm kind of glad the arcade hardware was giving me trouble because I only had a few VS games and changing them is a bit of a pain, well compared to swapping NES cartridges.  I think having the sub up top works out too because it's nice to adjust the bass to where you get a bit of feedback from the sound of the game.  unlike holding a controller, it's a lot more satisfying.  I have a decent sub in my MK and it's the same thing with that.  hits just feel better when you have some bass in the audio on an arcade cabinet. 

[Louis Tully]

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[tcleary]

I like your ideas, thanks for the suggestions.  I think I will do something with the speakers.  they do have the little volume/headphone jack unit thing, it's the little round thing to the left of the sub.  luckily my NES is pretty solid after I replaced the pin connector, have not had a problem with it resetting. 

thought about the extra buttons a bit and maybe I can just drill button holes in the wood piece at the top of the control panel, put one on the left one on the right and use them for p1/p2 select.  that would be more clean than my original idea.  I don't want to drill holes into the metal control panel.

[keilmillerjr]

This is such a cool idea. You could definitely clean it up. Use the original donkey kong speaker and throw your "system" away. You could power the speaker with a lepai amp, which will accept rca from the nintendo. Crack open a power strip and wire it to a remotely mounted switch on the back. Leave the nintendo power button always on. Set the sound on the amp to a reasonable audio level. Done! Just some ideas.