Just wrapped up my cabinet build, and figured I should post a project thread while it's all still fresh.
BackgroundBack in 2015 I designed and built a 2-player Bartop cabinet with my Son. The project thread for that cabinet can be found
here. At the time I had it in the back of my mind that eventually I would like to build a full-sized arcade cabinet with additional controls, including trackball and spinner. I can be a bit spontaneous when it comes to these things, and at some point, in mid-October, I suddenly realized that I was ready to move on this, and began planning so that I could start (and hopefully complete) the build during my planned holiday break in late December. I immediately began sourcing some of the more obvious parts that I knew I would need (processor, monitors, etc.) and started working on the actual design to narrow down controls, etc. so that I could get those all sourced before the holidays…nothing worse than having time, and not having the parts you need on hand. It was a bit frenzied given my limited free time, but I managed to have all the parts that I knew I couldn’t pick-up at my local Home Depot sourced and ready to go a day or two before my break.
Goals, Inspiration, and Cabinet DesignGoing into this project, I knew that I wanted a full-size 2-player cabinet with at least 2 joysticks with 6 to 8 buttons each, a spinner, and a trackball. Beyond that I was open to inspiration, so I began digging through various build threads in this forum for ideas. My wife had a few requirements as well, the main one being that the cabinet had to fit into roughly the same floor footprint of the small bar table and Bartop arcade machine that that it would displace in our game room. This meant that I had to go with a fairly slim design.
I looked at a lot of projects, and it would be difficult for me to give credit for every system from which I took some aspect of my design. In addition, I know each of the systems that I mention below likely took some of their inspiration from other builds as well. With that in mind, here is the list of projects that I feel were most inspirational in my final design.
The starting point for my design was probably the
Lakeside Arcade. This build caught my eye due to its relatively slim profile and zen-like control panel layout. Although I ended up adding some additional controls beyond what was used in the Lakeside Arcade, I tried to keep the overall layout well-spaced and simple, with the bare minimum number of buttons on top.
Our family is tall. I’m 6’4, and my sons are all over 6’, the tallest clocking in at 6’7. Based on that I knew I wanted to raise the control panel surface a few inches above what is typical, and also allow for bar stool use. That meant knees also had to be taken into consideration, and several of the console style cabinets caught my eye in this regard. Working with the Lakeside Arcade as my baseline, I used the
RetoBox arcade machine as a template to modify the design into a console-style base. I was also a big fan of the diamond plate at the bottom, as well as the dynamic marquee, so both were incorporated into my design as well.
Finally, I customized the width of the cabinet to be as narrow as possible while still fitting both my main display and my marquee display. Here’s are a few images of my final design exported from Sketchup.
Control Panel DesignThere’s a post here with some additional details on my final control panel layout
here.
As indicated earlier, I tried to strike a balance between having the necessary controls to play a wide array of games, while also keeping the layout from becoming cluttered. The P1/P2 start buttons and select, back/exit buttons are on top, but the credit buttons are tucked below the control panel along with some USB ports. For the joysticks, I wanted to retain the “click-y” feel of an original arcade stick, so I went with Servo Sticks for my main P1/P2 controls, but also added a single analog U360 for its versatility with games like Q-Bert (diagonal 4-way) and Sinistar (49-way), and paired it with a U360FS flight stick for use in flight games, tank games, and, of course, to be paired with my spinner for Tron and Discs of Tron. For the P1/P2 buttons, I went with 7 buttons in a slightly modified Neo Geo layout.
With all these controls, I also felt that it was import to have some way to indicate which controls and buttons are relevant for any given game, so I planned for RGB LED lighting on each of the controls.
Flynn’s arcade was my primary inspiration here, as I have always been a big fan of the ring-style lighting of the controls. The RGB lighting for the buttons and trackball were fairly straight forward, but given that Nephrings are no longer available, I had to get creative when it came to lighting the joysticks, as well as the spinner and eventually the light gun mounts. I'll try and add more detail later in the build thread, but lighting each of those latter controls involved the use of ¼” acrylic rods and a heat gun. I did manage to get each of the controls and buttons to be independently light-able. Here are a few close-up shots of my control panel design:
I'll follow-up shortly with photos and details of the actual build.