So I've been thinking about doing some arts and crafts projects, and one thing that I thought about was making arcade cabinets. Because hey, I grew up going to arcades and I think nothing will truly match the feel of being in a dark arcade back in the 80s to early 90s, when indoor smoking was still allowed and multiplayer meant someone standing next to you. There are only two fully functional arcade that I know of in my city, but only one has classic, non-gimmicky arcade cabinets.
But this got me thinking, especially about unconventional or non-standard cabinet designs. Boxing cabinets like the 1987 Heavyweight Champ cabinet that you used two grip paddles to simulate punching (and moved them left and right to dodge) and even had a working bell that rang to signify the start of a match. Other ideas that weren't quite as big as Heavyweight Champ were simpler, but just as cool ideas as Q-Bert's knocker. You know when you fell off the cubes in the game, Q-Bert would go 'whoooaaa' as fell to the bottom, but the original Q-Bert arcade cabinets had a cool feature... a knocker that knocked the bottom of the cabinet when Q-Bert hit bottom, making it look like Q-Bert was a real character who actually fell.
Since I don't like doing simple stuff, I was thinking... how would you make such things? Especially when you're talking about emulation and you don't have the original ROMs or boards? I think homemade cabinets are pretty dope and I'd like to make one some day, even if it's just to show off and give away (or sell, at a reasonable price). What needs to go into this to make such a thing work?