My First Cabinet: Controls and Monitor?

[TheOnlyShad0w]

My dad and I are working on building an arcade cabinet and we're trying to figure out what controls and monitor to buy. We'll want to play MAEM games as well as consoles like NES, SNES, GNES, and other 8-bit/16-bit ones. On top of that, I just discovered this whole Visual Pinball thing. We are huge pinballs fans and would love to incorporate that into the machine as well.

We'll be doing all our own woodwork (with help from my uncle who is a woodworker by profession) and we'll either use a PC we have lying around or build a new PC (depending on what Visual Pinball requires).

This is the arcade stick I've been looking at: http://www.xgaming.com/store/arcade-joysticks-and-game-controllers/product/x-arcade-tankstick-includes-usb-cables/
I'd rather not have to do a bunch of wiring to put my controls together and this offers everything I need (besides a spinner for Tempest but that seems like a lost cause anyway).

For the monitor I was thinking a 32" 1080p 60Hz TV in vertical orientation would do well, offering more play field for pinball as well as arcade games.

I'd really appreciate your guys' feedback.

Thanks in advance!

[ChanceKJ]

I could give you direct answers, so could anyone here, but a lot of what people would say is really subjective.

Your best bet is to do some research. I planned for a solid month before even thinking about building my first project. I looked at dozens and dozens of builds on this forum and others. Made a list of the goals I wanted and went out and read as much as I could on how to solve those problems. There are some amazing builds in the project announcement forum.

Here's my subjective advice: a decent 32" TV will go a long way. Pick something up that has a VGA connection on it. A lot of cheaper models from the common name brands seem to be lacking it these days. It's nice to have especially if you want to add a hardware scan line generator for that classic feel (an SLG mini from Crafty is the way to go there). Toshiba, Samsung, Etc doesn't matter, just make sure that when your looking at the TV in store you turn it on its side and get an idea of how the panel looks at the approximate viewing angle you'll build it into your cab.

Controls: yes, those tank sticks looks appealing, and easy. Sure, go with one if you want. But there's noting more enjoyable in this hobby then building your own. Figuring out what games/systems you want how many people will actually be playing, picking a couple sticks and some buttons, designing your own button layout, building it, and learning to wire it yourself.

If you want, read over my Flynn's build (link below). I'm standing on the shoulders of giants with that one. It should answer some of your questions in that incredibly subjective way.

good luck.

[TheOnlyShad0w]

To be honest, I'm not really into the electrical work and I don't see the actually building part of this becoming a hobby. I'm a gamer first so I'm most interested in being able to play the games with some nice controls. If the tank sticks will do that for me, I'll be happy.

Also, I don't think I care about scan lines either so would it be fine to just use DVI or HDMI?

Cool, I'll check out your build.

[ChanceKJ]

Meh, suit yourself.  But as a fellow gamer, I'd strongly suggest scan lines if your going LCD over CRT.  You can do them with the emulators, but I think the hardware solutions work/look much better. Especially on SNES, NES, SEGA, and NeoGeo games.