Arcade Paradise 3 is done!!

[Sasquatch!]

Over a year of research, planning, and construction went into this, but I couldn't be happier with it.  It's everything that I wanted it to be.

Design/Construction:

It's a custom-made design drawn up from scratch.  While is looks suspiciously like a "LuSiD"-style cabinet, it's basically the logical result of designing around the monitor that I'm using and how and where I wanted the control panel to be.


The cabinet is built from 3/4" MDF and painted with a satin black paint.  All pieces of the cabinet are connected with 1x1s from the inside, so that I didn't have to make any screw holes in the cabinet anywhere.  At the last minute I decided to go with dark blue t-molding instead of black, and I'm so glad that I did - it really spruces the cabinet up nicely.




Controls:

• One 8-way Wico leafswitch ball-top joystick and six buttons for each player.
• Dedicated 4-way joystick: Ultimarc E-Stik.
• Trigger joystick: I hacked the handle of a Interact Raider Pro PC joystick onto a Happ Ultimate joystick.
• Happ 3" trackball kit with translucent blue trackball.  Boltless trackball mounting plate used so that I could cover the trackball hole with artwork and plexiglass.
• OSCAR Controls' Vortex spinner.

Monitor:

JVC AV-27320 27" television connected through s-video connection on a NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 AGP.  I have the monitor covered with smoked (tinted) plexiglass, which makes the picture look AWESOME.  The smoked plexi works as a "filter" of sorts, keeping the darks dark while allowing the colors to shine through nice and vividly.



Artwork:

Custom-made Control Panel Overlay ("CPO") printed on self-adhesive vinyl by ClassicArcadeGrafix.com, covered by a 1/8" sheet of plexiglass.


Custom-made marquee printed by EMDKAY.net.  Oustanding quality on the marquee.  I couldn't be happier with it.



Lighting:
Superbright LEDs used for the coin door return lights and for the trackball lighting.



Superbright LEDs were also mounted into holes drilled into the bottoms of the Player 1 Start and Player 2 Start buttons.  Used in conjunction with a Superbright LED driver circuit board and the Hagstrom KE72-T keyboard encoder, this allows the Player 1 Start and Player 2 Start to flash when coins are inserted (on games that support it, obviously).


Click here to see a movie clip of the LED circuit board in action (443 KB .avi file taken with a Canon Powershot A70 digital camera).  People always get a kick out of seeing it in action.  What can I say...it's real crowd-pleaser.


12v Glowire was wound into the trigger stick hack so that the joystick can glow.

 

Electrical work:
A bank of switches is mounted to the back of cabinet for controlling most of the devices in the cabinet individually.  The fan, all LEDs, the glowire in the trigger stick, and the marquee light can be switched on or off independently of each other.



Software:

I'm using http://www.dribin.org/dave/game_launcher/Game Launcher[/url] as the front end for the emulators.  There are more "tweakable" frontends out there, but Game Launcher has a very simple and attractive look to it that really appeals to me; plus, it's relatively easy to configure.

I have MAME and Daphne working now, and I hope to have Visual Pinball working on there someday...once I can figure it out.


So that's about it.  Like I said, this thing represents over a year of my life, but I'm really happy with the way it turned out.  The full writeup is up at http://www.arcadeparadise.org/arcade/ap3/, so please feel free to check it out and let me know what you think of that too.  And if anyone has any questions or comments, please fire away!

[AmericanDemon]

Nice work!!!  I love the color scheme.

[dema]

Great looking cabinet. I especially love the marquee. Simple and yet very sharp!

[Apollo]

WOW! That is something special, congrats on an outstanding cab.

[SNAAAKE]

Nicely done,I really like that marquee too
Whats with black molding on the CP though  
Should have went with purple(so it matches the theme)

[hulkster]

man that switch idea is very impressive.  i have a one power button scheme, but that individual thing would be cool for stuff like the marquee light, etc.  great work though.

[DaveMMR]

Your cabs get better and better each time.   Excellent cab.

[Sasquatch!]

Thanks for the kind words, all!  Seriously.

Whats with black molding on the CP though  
Should have went with purple(so it matches the theme)

I put the dark blue t-molding on the edge of the CP, and I didn't like it - it was just "too much" if that makes sense.  Like the blue went from being an "accent" to being a primary color in the cabinet, and I just didn't like the way it looked, hence the black.