After planning for what seemed like forever (I have a habit of doing this) I finally started physically building my Skeeball machine. My motivation here was simple, I always wanted a Skeeball machine, my kids & I loved playing it whether on the Boardwalk or at ‘that place’ with the bad pizza and animatronic rat; so I figured it that this was something I could build. I built a MAME arcade machine about 5 years ago (which was a great ‘starter project’) and am in equal parts handy & adventurous, so what could go wrong! I’ll use this post to document my build process (and mistakes!) and if someone else can avoid a pothole that I run into along the way, then it’s worth it.
I read and then re-read extremely helpful posts from UncleT, RandyT, Ixliam, thatpurplestuff / That’s How I roll and Nickels – just to name a few and I definitely felt empowered. 5 pages of yellow legal pad notes later I figured it was time to start.
After soliciting input from one of my daughters on how big we felt it should be, we both agreed that a 100% scale machine was best for us. We’ve got a big basement and while I’m not the biggest buy I figured any ‘alley’ less than 8 foot long would be a cop out. Plus, with 8 foot I could use full sheets of plywood and eliminate a few cuts here & there. All plywood here, no MDF because between the added weight and health concerns it wasn't worth it.
Here’s a rough outline of what I’m going to build, along with the measurements. I’m looking to follow the basic Skeeball shape, but definitely want to make it my own and eliminate the net, modernize the back cabinet lines and have sleep sidewall pieces. For software, I’ve seen a few people have Flash software out there and I’ll likely use optical sensors and an iPac keyboard encoder – mostly because I’m familiar with them from the MAME machine build.