Tuned in to the thread, noticed the picture of the sweet sit down driving cab and smiled. Then I read the rest of your post. A three person seated semi enclosed console cab? I am not attracted to the idea of sitting that close to two buddies while playing games. Maybe my friends are sweaty-er than yours, but that sounds like a recipe for awkward man-closeness. Can I ask why you want this semi enclosed design? Seems like a couch and a stand alone entertainment center with a 65" LCD and all of your consoles displayed nicely in it would do the trick and not be so potentially...uncomfortable?
I like the idea of an enclosure. It will have open sides, like the commercial sit down cabinets like this
To reply to the rest of you guys, no I don't want to just sit down on a couch and play games on a TV. I want a sit down enclosed cabinet with my 32" CRT as the screen, and a comfortable multi-person seat. I am leaning towards car bench seats because they are sturdy and would be easy to mount onto a wooden frame.
The reason I want to go with consoles is because:
1) I already have most of the consoles I need, as well as all of the cables and switchers necessary for the setup I proposed in the OP
2) I prefer to play games on original hardware through a real CRT
3) this is a weirder reason, but I've noticed having the option to play ANY game makes people like likely to play any one game or play it through. I'd rather have 15 great games for each console in my setup and play them a lot, than have an emulator with 100-200 games/console that I just log onto and play 5 minutes of
To the person with the Leo meme, yes that is what I propose. A cab enclosure, using commercial consoles rather than arcade boards, but designed to fit multiple people. Perhaps stadium seating, with 2 rows of 2-person seats, would work better? The one spacial problem I can see is the need for increased width for the wide seating that would need to be tapered towards the monitor, or it could just a huge square thing.
It's a shame I'm not a draftsman or else I could mock up what I'm talking about, I think my description was insufficient based on a lot of these replies. Really what I'm looking for is advice on how to build the thing, like how to design it spatially. Here are a few more pictures that share some commonality with my vision:
Imagine in that last picture, on the out facing side behind the monitor, that there is an exposed shelf to hold consoles that are connected through switchers to the monitor framed in the cabinet.