So a bit of background for everyone- Shortly after the 1st edition Project Arcade book came out I decided to jump into the arcade building arena and using the resources on this site I built my first cab. Unfortunately I fell into the trap of turning the computer on before completion and began playing games on it. Of course it was never quite finished after that (stalled at the Control Panel). Fast forward 6 years and one flooded basement later and the unit had to be destroyed due to it soaking up water and becoming a black mold factory.
More recently I attended a party at a co-workers house and low and behold he had an 18 machine arcade in his basement! The arcade bug ate its way into my brain once again and I immediately went to work planning! After studying many of the more popular threads here in the Project Announcements forum I have made the necessary design decisions and figured it was time to create a thread here. I figure hopefully the support of the community will help me get through this project to completion! Well... that and adding the USB drive will all the games on it as the absolute last step!
For my initial cabinet attempt I ended up settling on an Ultimate Arcade II cabinet. This time I want to go all the way and build a totally custom cabinet. I ended up combining several style elements from different projects on here. After playing around with several different styles I came across the Vewlix cabinets and loved several of the design elements, but hated the fact that they are sit down cabs so I decided to create a full standup Vewlix variant with several classic cabinet features. Using Lukensteinz gorgeous
Mortal Kombat cabinet as a template and adding in several stylistic elements from Griff/Maximus’
MvC Revolution cabinet this is the design I have settled on-
Design-- 3/4” MDF for the cabinet and control panel, CNC cut
- Two piece body to help with moving
- Blue, black, silver color scheme
- Use a HUD style design for interface and overlays
- Traditional overhang style marquee/speaker setup
- 2 player control panel based on Maximus’ control panel for MvC Revolution (minus the tablet and cupholders!
)
- Dual-entry over-under coin door
- Custom control panel overlay, sideart and marquee artwork
- LED lit buttons, joysticks, marquee, coin door and undercarriage
- Painted using Ond’s painting technique for a plastic-like appearance
- Aluminum diamond plate kickguard and accents
Here is my current cabinet mockup in SketchUp-
Technical Bits-- 32” LED 1080p TV for a monitor
- 2.1 audio system (Genius SW-G2.1 2000 system)
- 2 bat-top Ultrastik 360 joysticks,
1 ball-top J-Stik joystick (4-way), 1 TurboTwist2 spinner, 1 Electric ICE-T RGB trackball w/ two buttons
- USB connections for future AimTrak support
- IL Concave RGB/LED buttons with some mods, eight button arched layouts
- Modular design utilizing Molex connectors for quick disconnects of parts
- Computer- mini-ITX motherboard, Haswell i5 CPU, 16GB RAM, nVidia 750Ti vid card, SSD for OS (Win 8.1 or Win 10), 4TB of storage
- Frontend- Custom Maximus Arcade skin
Progress-1. Initial planning, design and budgeting (complete)
2. Order Computer Parts (complete)
3. Assemble Computer (complete)
4. Finalize cabinet design (complete)
5. Design artwork for CP and marquee (complete)
6. Order Buttons, Joysticks, Trackballs, etc. (complete)
7. Assemble Pushbuttons with LEDs and microswitches (complete)
8. MOVE (complete)
9. Design artwork for sideart (complete)
10. Work with CNC woodworker to cut MDF (complete)
11. Building the lower cabinet (complete)
12. Building the upper cabinet (complete)
13. Building the control panel box (complete)
14. BONDO! (complete)
15. Build a Paint Room (complete)
16. Paint! (complete)
17. Get artwork printed- Lucian045 (complete)
18. Assembly Part 2! (complete)
19. Artwork applied (complete)
20. Power wired (complete)
21. Sound system wired (complete)
22. Front IO Panel (complete)
23. Control Panel wiring (in progress)
Current Issues-1. Waiting on my Dremel sanding and polishing supplies to arrive from China
So that is all I’ve got for the moment! Over the next few days I should be able to post the control panel layouts and some initial (okay, I am already on fourth revisions…) artwork for the CP and marquee.
Enjoy and as always all advice is welcome!