Half-size Pong (with hidden bar fridge)

[gojetsgo]

After a long hiatus, I now have more time on my hands to build some more, so I thought I'd get going on a new build.  On a vacation last year to NYC, I went to the Museum of the Moving Image (I highly recommend it), and they had a great selection of important arcade machines in the history of video games. This included an original Pong machine.  Most of my arcade experience was in the early to mid 90s, and I had never seen a Pong in real life before.  I was really taken by the style and simplicity of the cab.  It just screamed "play me!"  Unfortunately, the one at the Museum was out of order!  Nevertheless, I had a great time playing a ton of other great games from the past.  And I was now inspired to build my own Pong. 

Pong and Computer Space at the museum of the moving image.

In my basement arcade, space is at a serious premium, so I plan on making this machine roughly half-scale (4 feet tall) and making the most of the space at the bottom of the cab to hide a bar fridge. 

Some notes about the plan for the cab:

cab: On close inspection, I noticed the original Pong was made of some sort of plywood with a fake woodgrain veneer.  I decided to just use some smooth-on-one-side plywood and stain it to get the nice brown wood colour.  Another big difference is that my cab will not have the indented foot space at the bottom - this change is necessary to accommodate the fridge.

Display:
For a display I will use a 13" CRT TV - Gotta have low res and that authentic warm glow!  I think the original Pong used the same size screen in a larger cab (5 feet tall).  As a result, my final product will have a narrower bezel and larger screen relative to the cab size.

Brain:
I'd like the cab to be able to play a few other non=pong paddle games, including breakout and Kaboom! Originally I planned on running the cab off of an Atari paddle plug and play unit as it would be really easy to set up with the paddle controls already set up - I would just have to decase them and hook them up to the control panel.  Unfortunately, the image quality was just terrible, even on a CRT. The menu was practically unreadable, and the interface for selecting game options was clunky. 



So, my plan is now to use a Raspberry pi, a pair of original 2600 paddle controllers and a 2600dapter:  http://www.2600-daptor.com/

[gojetsgo]

Work on the bezel:

I cut the rounded inside of the bezel using hole saws at each corner and then a jig saw to connect the holes.


Cut and painted yellow, with a first (poor) attempt at masking to make the Pong logo:


Unfortunately, I had a really hard time cutting the masking tape to make smooth curves, which are all over the Pong logo.  I'm now looking into getting a die-cut vinyl decal made up.  If anyone has any suggestions for where to get this done, I'd love to hear.

[barrymossel]

Wow, someone that is still using Photobucket (on forums). Been living under a rock?

[gojetsgo]

Crud!  I have been living under a rock.  What's a better site to use?

[PL1]

What's a better site to use?

This one.   


Scott

[gojetsgo]

Thanks!  I will update the links.

[JDFan]

Crud!  I have been living under a rock.  What's a better site to use?

IN case you missed the background for the reasoning - Photobucket recently stopped the free acounts from being able to link to 3rd party forums and decided to get all those free users to pay $30 a month to update their accounts - or break all of the forum links ( instead all the links rerouted to a Photobucket add asking the user to upgrade their account ! ) - so several years worth of tutorials etc. on all of the websites suddenly no longer had pictures and instead became adds for Photobucket - and the only way they could be fixed is if the original posters of those images went back and updated all of their links or started paying photobucket $30 a month going forward !

So yeah better to post them to this site so the only time the pics will dissapear is if the whole forum disappears at which point the pics wouldn't really be needed since the rest of the thread would be gone also !

[barrymossel]

Unfortunately, I had a really hard time cutting the masking tape to make smooth curves, which are all over the Pong logo.  I'm now looking into getting a die-cut vinyl decal made up.  If anyone has any suggestions for where to get this done, I'd love to hear.

Maybe some laser cut sticker/cardboard?