3/4 Ms. Pacman 4-Way Vertical Build w/ Dynamic Marquee

[JdotFite]

This is my take on the "perfect" 3/4 size cab. I "borrowed" the side profile shape from arcade1up's Ms. Pacman and added the height of the riser into the design.

I wanted to take a slightly different approach to the theme. Everyone has the massive list of games front and center. I wanted to feature the game and make the list secondary. It will probably be hard to see in the video below, but the game list is in an "instructions" card on the right side. Still a work in progress, but I think it works well for a smaller refined list of games. 

I spent the last couple weeks designing matching bezels for the 1600x1200 on the FP2007, recording preview videos and cleaning up marquee artwork for the 1280x390 on the LTA149B780F. I think I have gotten through about 40 games so far. I have some of this work up on GitHub and will update once I finish this cab.

Video of the dynamic marquee in action:



Hardware:

Cab is built from 1/2" MDF

Main monitor: Dell FP2007 20.1"

Dynamic Marquee: LTA149B780F
https://www.amazon.com/VSDISPLAY-LTA149B780F-Controller-M-NT68676-Raspberry/dp/B07QGBL568

Vinyl: I sent my designs to GulfCoastDecals on Etsy. Great guy to work with
https://www.etsy.com/shop/GulfCoastDecals

Coin door: X-Arcade
https://shop.xgaming.com/products/double-entry-arcade-coin-door-with-coin-mech

Joystick: Pac-Pro Leaf Switches (ggg)
https://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=402

Buttons: CLASSX w/ True-Leaf Pro (ggg)
https://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=361

USB Encoder: Zero Delay

Speakers: BRS40
https://www.amazon.com/BOSS-Audio-BRS40-Replacement-individually/dp/B001RNNX8K

Amplifier: DY-AP3015
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255799962145900.html

Pi 4


Software:

RetroPie

PieMarquee2 (losernator's fork)
https://github.com/rinalim/PieMarquee2

[leapinlew]

Good work! You doing all the with a Pi? That's pretty awesome.

 

[javeryh]

Hey - I saw this over on Reddit.  Amazing job.  Looks like you know your way around the shop and your attention to detail is top notch.  Some questions:

What happens when you boot up your cabinet?  Does it go straight to a game or game list? 

Is the video just attract mode or is that how you scroll through games?

When you "Exit" a game back to the list is there a "Retropie" menu or is it games only?  That's the one thing I cannot get past because inevitably one of my wiener kids will screw up the settings.

What do the 3 buttons under the control panel do?

I'd love to see another video of the cabinet in action from boot up to selecting a game to exiting back out to the list etc.

 

[JdotFite]

Hey - I saw this over on Reddit.  Amazing job.  Looks like you know your way around the shop and your attention to detail is top notch.  Some questions:

What happens when you boot up your cabinet?  Does it go straight to a game or game list? 

Is the video just attract mode or is that how you scroll through games?

When you "Exit" a game back to the list is there a "Retropie" menu or is it games only?  That's the one thing I cannot get past because inevitably one of my wiener kids will screw up the settings.

What do the 3 buttons under the control panel do?

I'd love to see another video of the cabinet in action from boot up to selecting a game to exiting back out to the list etc.

 

Thanks guys!!  Let me try and answer those questions.

Yeah, so the video is the cabinet booting up.  It goes straight to the arcade gamelist.  Yep, I am scrolling through the games off screen with a controller.  I wasn't going to have an actual gamelist, but when I got to 40 games, I decided it would be helpful.  The game list is in the instructions card on the right overtop of the bezel that you can see stays when I am scrolling through the games list in the video, if that makes sense.

When you exit, you get thrown back to the arcade gamelist, right where you were.   You can set retropie to boot into a specific systems gamelist in the settings.  I know what you mean, my kids were into the retropie settings like 2 seconds after I booted it up the first time. Locking everything down is actually the next item on my list of to dos.  I did turn off the press any button to change emulator settings as they would mash buttons while a rom was loading and that menu would pop up.

The three buttons are just the admin buttons.  Something like, from left to right, 1p coin, pause, 2p coin.  Maybe for adding favorites or removing them in ES.  I was hoping to use the middle button as a hot key.  Hold down middle press left button to exit game.  Something along those lines. 

Here is the video you asked for:

[javeryh]

Thanks for the response!  This is such a great project. 

Does the game list on the right (the overlay) actually let you scroll through games to select one or is it just there to let the user know what games are available?
 Either way it probably doesn't mater since you have to scroll through no matter what to get to what you want but this is a really interesting solution.

Let us know if you find a good way to lock everything down in Retropie (and then share your image minus ROMs ).  I'm sure this got a lot of use over the holidays. 

That dynamic marquee is giving me some ideas for my next cabinet... hmmm...

[Zeosstud]

That is a seriously nice looking cab. Very well done sir.

Zeosstud

[markc74]

That's some really nice work... Would love to do something similar with a pi so if you'd ever share your setup that would be awesome.

Im about to start a cabinet for a friend which is a bit lower key but might steal your scrolling marquee idea for selecting games if you don't mind!