40" wide Pedestal for best friend

[Zeosstud]

Finally got the go ahead from my best buddy to build him an arcade cabinet. He has a bonus room above his garage with a nice TV mounted on the wall and got the green light from the wife to add some gaming ability up there, long as it also played, Asteroids and Space Invaders.. John is a Robotron guy, back in the day he was able to break a million on one quarter which was pretty cool to many of us. He was impressed with the JROK Robotron Pedestal I built and wanted something similar that could also play other games. John is also a golfer, like multiple time champion on his home course in Rolla, he also asked that the cabinet could play Golden Tee and he wanted to be able to play 2 person Track & Field..  So with that info, I was tasked with designing a control panel and then turning it into a pedestal..

Here is what I came up with..

[Zeosstud]

The wife did not like the idea of a space duel button setup on each side so we went with plan B.. 

I built a test control panel and spend some time with it sitting on my computer desk, mounted on some Jeagerbomb shot glasses and I worked out the software and started adding games, for this project I decided to use Launchbox / BigBox and was excited to learn the software, as a longtime Hyperspin guy and Mala before that, thought it would be fun.  It was!!

The pedestal currently supports 10 platforms.
Arcade
Daphne
Atari 2600
NES
SNES
N64
Gamecube
Wii
Dreamcast
Virtual Pinball

At last count, we had 5800+ games that claim to work.. Naturally I have not tested them all, but I routinely did test a few from each platform to work out control issues and try to make things as similar as possible between each platform. Getting this stuff working "perfectly" has been a labor of love, I have certainly put more hours into this setup than I ever did into my own, as I know this computer will be 90 miles away and its user, while not a dummy, also not super computer savvy either, need stuff to work right the first time.

I had a IBM Think Center with an i5 and 8gigs of ram setup in one of my cabinets, I decided to use it for this, I purchased a Wifi adapter, 512GB SSD and a GTX 710 passively cooled half height video card. Once everything was installed, the play testing began.. I must say, this pc handled everything I tossed at it very well. Rush 2049 for Redream, runs great, Mario Kart Wii, also, no issues, the 8 Desktop Virtual Pinball tables, no issue..

Golden Tee Fore! Complete was forced to be run in Low resolution mode, but if you keep the ball in the fairway, it runs pretty well also with minimal speech skipping. I wish I could have afforded a more powerful setup, something that may have allowed GT to run at Med resolution really well, but that was not in the cards, so, it is what it is..

Here is a pic of what this Pedestal looked like when I got the sides cut and the back ready.

[Zeosstud]

I wanted to make this Pedestal as clean looking as I could but have some nice extras also.

Added cup holders and 4 usb connections to the front and a nice power and hdmi passthrough on the back, should make for a very clean install in his bonus room, and allow for gamepads, light guns and phone charges to be used as needed.  Here is a pic of the "completed" setup in my garage as we speak.

[Zeosstud]

I had considered lowering the admin buttons from 3 per side down to 2 per side as you see in the latest picture because during my play testing some things seemed like a far reach and got a bit tedious, however, once the whole thing was built and I could actually sit and play, reaching buttons that were a pain when the control panel was parallel and my computer chair was to low now, not an issue, in fact, getting to everything was really quite comfortable, so when I take the control panel down to clean up the wiring and paint the rounded off front and trackball area I will also go ahead and drill the 3rd buttons on the left and the right.

using an IPAC2 I have the buttons set for
Left: Player 1 start, Player 1 Coin and Pause
Right: Player 2 start, Player 2 Coin and Return
I have F2 and Tab available on the left hand side when shifted (player 1 start)
Volume up and down and esc are the shifted buttons on the right hand side

I will also provide a keyboard and mouse with this setup, but for now, this button layout is working well..

Joystick wise we have GGG Dominux8's everywhere, the Taller sticks are 8 ways and the shorter one has the 4 way restriction installed and it plays a treat.

I have a little bit more work to do, the T-molding is ordered, I will have Red on the left and Blue on the right, thinking that John may one day want to theme this cabinet after his
2 favorite sports teams, the Cardinals and the Blues, plus I think it will just look cool.  I will also be adding a black piece under the control panel and a second one back towards the controls themselves and that will be it..

Here is a quick shot of the back..  and thanks for taking the time to have a look.. :-)

[Zeosstud]

T-molding installed, I have since cleaned up the MDF dust.. Touchup painting and installation of leg levelers and this is done!!

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[J_K_M_A_N]

Looks very clean. I can't help but notice the t-molding and kick plate splits don't line up. Maybe it is just a picture angle thing. Sorry. I am weird about things like that. It would drive me crazy. 

J_K_M_A_N

[Zeosstud]

I will look at that a little closer, they should be both at 20".. :-)

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[J_K_M_A_N]

Probably just picture angle tricks in that case.

J_K_M_A_N

[Zeosstud]

It was not just the angle, it was just plain off, thanks for the heads up.. I have corrected that now..

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[J_K_M_A_N]

Nice. 

I love the cup holders underneath like that. Great idea.

J_K_M_A_N

[Zeosstud]

Got the painting and most touchup work completed, then I got Bezels installed for the Arcade games.. As this will be being played on a 47" TV, seemed like a good idea to fill up all that black space on the sides.

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[rablack97]

 

Why didn't you t-mould the CP instead of the round off?

[Zeosstud]

That is how the wiring turned out, pretty happy with it actually, everything connected to one ipac2, even the trackball, I cable into the pc..

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[Zeosstud]

I simply dont like the feel on my wrists and forearms of the flatter edge, just a personal issue I guess. Rounded off the edges of my cabinet 10 years ago, rounded off the edges of my Robotron pedestal, guess it is sort of a habit now.  I believe my buddy will actually have a CPO made, then the sanded and painted round over will be super clean as we will have it go all the way under a good couple inches. What do you prefer?

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[rablack97]

Im just not a fan of exposed edges, the rest is so clean, I wouldn't have left the front especially that visible exposed.  Tmoulding would have  finished off the look.

I kinda see your point but i've never lifted up my forearms and found indentions from a tmoulded edge, there is a bit of a curve on the tmoulding.  No worries though as long as he's happy with it.