Cabinet is now complete - final pics and video on page 3Original post...I've been fancying my own asteroids cabaret since i saw some of the builds on here by Shrunkenmaster, Tully and Minwah. Recently I got to play on an actual Asteroids cabaret and realised just how bloody good they are. Retro level 10 as we like to say in geek circles.
Anyway - i played around with some ideas and thanks to some pretty detailed documentation i had a good starting point for this build so thanks to the aforementioned for doing most of the hard work!
I tossed around some names for the cab: “Beam”, “Revenge of the laser” and I really liked “Into the Vector Sector” for a while but finally went back to basics and *think* I've settled on “CUBE”. Sounds vector-ish and goes with Blip. Nuff said. Even came up with a logo/marquee that I like:
Yeah i know it's another black, white and red theme like Blip but it works for a vector cab as they're the colours from the asteroids cabaret cpo. The next cab I'm making (and already fully planned) will look very different. But that's for later.
This isn't an exact Asteroids cabaret replica. More of a homage so I've taken some liberties with the design and taken cues from the cabaret, the deluxe standup and some other stuff I like and came up with this. It also happens to fit into the spare bits of wood I have laying around. Handy.
I'm trying to keep within the original dimensions as much as is possible but tweaking things to my personal taste.
I'm using a dynamic marquee again - even though you'll rarely see it - because 17” widescreen lcds are practically free now and this offsets the cost of printing hi res artwork.I've done all the work getting hi res marquees to display on my last cab so it makes sense to reuse that effort on this one. I considered using the AAE emulator but new versions of mame have some pretty cool HLSL vector effects now so that's what I'll be going with.
Main display is a 17” Sony crt running 1024x768 native. I picked it up for a whole £6 so this is a cheap build so far. In fact I’ve pretty much got everything I need bar vinyl for the sides and some white buttons so I’m thinking I can probably build the whole thing for less than £100.
Gonna start this puppy at the weekend - I'll only be spending a few hours here and there on it but should have it knocked out by Christmas.
Comments/criticisms / pointers always appreciated!