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Mini Namco Classics II Cabinet
I decided over Thanksgiving break to make a mini cabinet for my niece and nephew. I checked first with my sister to see if she wanted a new fairly large piece of furniture in her house, and she gave me the go ahead. Here's how it went:
This mini cab uses the innards of a $12 Jakks-Pacific Namco Classics II (Ms. Pacman/Galaga/Pole Position/Mappy/Xevious) joystick game, and a $60 13" mono TV, both purchased at Target. The TV has rear RCA jacks for A/V, which makes it a little easier to wire inside the Cabinet.
The cabinet itself is based (mostly) on the 1981 original Galaga/Ms. Pacman/Bosconian cabinet measurements. All the particle board came from one $19 4'x8' sheet of 5/8" particle board that I had the guy at Home Depot cut into 4'x2' mini-sheets for me. I used Jakobud's Site to get measurements for a real Galaga cab and used a spreadsheet to scale the whole thing down to 48". My original intent was to do a perfect scale Galaga cabinet, but I accidentally changed the dimension for the width of the top half of the side. This means the marquee is about 3" too far back, and the curve down to the control panel too wide, but I liked and kept it because it allows taller people to see the screen better. I think it keeps the spirit and adds functionality, without losing the charm of the '81 Midway/Namco cabinet. I'll post the final 48" plans I used here sooner or (more likely) later
(never actually).
The thing that will make this version of the TV game hack different than any I've seen is that I separated the steering function of the stock 8-way joystick out to a steering wheel, and used an Ultimarc T-stick Plus to toggle between 4 and 8-way joystick (because Ms. Pacman with an 8-way is bad even on a TV game). Because it was already configured as a nice self centering extension shaft for the steering potentiometer, I used the stock joystick as the base for the steering wheel. I took the four joystick microswitches' wires, cut them, extended them, and transferred them to the T-stick. I don't like to solder, so all of this was accomplished with wire nuts and/or crimp quick disconnects.
The controller board for the TV game is powered by 4 AA batteries. 4 x 1.5V = 6V, so I went to Harbor Freight and got a $3 multi-voltage wall wart transformer. I set the voltage for 6V and wired the hot wire to the + and the ground to the - wires on the controller board. It worked just fine. If I remember right, a multi-voltage power supply like that would've cost me $12+ at Radio Shack
The sides of the cabinet were cut with a jigsaw and the edges that would have T-moulding on a real cabinet were round-over'd with a router. The internal structure is pine 1"x1"s glued and screwed into the particle board at the corners.
The control panel is 4.5"x16" of 5/8" particle board with a round-over'd wrist edge. The joystick handle is the short one designed for metal panels. I did this on purpose to get the ball closer to the control panel, since it is a mini cab, and the joysticks on the original games were shorties anyway. The buttons are from Ultimarc, and are just standard arcade microswitch buttons. I decided to just extend the reset/menu/pause button to the front of the CP.
The on/off switch is permanently set to on, and is not accessable from outside the cab. The TV comes on to the right channel (line in) when plugged in, and the game and flourescent light are both toggled on, so they power up immediately too. It all turns on with one flip of the powerstrip switch.
For side art I have decided to combine actual in-game art from the 5 games. I will draw a graph on the black cab, and fill it in with painted squares in the patterns of sprites from the games. On one side I intend to have a Galaga ship at the bottom and a green bug trying to tractor beam it from above. I may throw in a bee or two. On the other side I'd like to have Ms. Pacman chasing/being chased by ghosts in the maze. The kickplate will have Mappy and a cat or two, maybe the Xevious ship and maybe a Pole Position car. I haven't decided what to do entirely, but I want to use paint rather than print something.
How Adults will play. (pay no attention to the messy kitchen in the background!)
How Kids will see it.
How Adults will see it.
Maybe a shorter stool will work better.
Update, 1/5/05
And then reality and stress set in...
I meant to have it done in the middle of December so that I could get the art work done properly by Christmas. It didn't really work out that way. I am a teacher and the semester ended December 19th. Grading promptly is not my strong suit so I had a ton to do that week at school, which kept me from having spare time for silly things like the minicab present for the niece and nephew.
In any event. I got a not entirely to my satisfaction coat of black paint on it. I tried to have Kinkos print an authentic Galaga marquee for me, but they wanted me to own the copyright! How dare they protect the rights of Namco when I'm trying to rip them off! So I had to rip them off by hand. I traced the logo onto a piece of vellum by hand. It came out pretty good I think. It also allowed me to make it say "Love, Uncle Allen," which the Kinko Nazis wouldn't let me do either.
I am particularly proud of the way the control panel (even without an overlay) and electronic bits came together. After a very frustrating ruination of the original TV-Game board and another false start, I finally got the functions of the original handheld game (steering, joystick, buttons 1 and 2, and a pause/menu button) interfaced to real arcade parts. I mentioned above that i don't like soldering and I successfully failed to solder a thing on this game. All snipping and splicing wires from inside the original game. You will not see pictures of this, because it's ugly as sin. I used way too much wire in most cases, and the motherboard is held into the machine by a bread-bag-twist-tie to the steering mechanism. I'm hoping nobody ever sees it in fact.
Although I didn't get side art on it, I don't feel obliged to. It stands on its own without side art. I'm giving it to 5 and 7 year olds, so any extra time spent on making it anything but bulletproof is pretty much wasted anyway.
Other odds and ends:
I originally intended to have the CP hinged to the monitor platform, and latched inside so that no hardware for holding it to the cab would be visible, but time and frustration kept me from making that work in time. The steering mechanism inside was too big to have it and the hinge where I'd wanted it. I really just gave up. This was the prototype, so I'll get it right next time.
The steering wheel came together nicely. I cannibalized the steering wheel off of a truck toy. I mounted the original steering/joystick mechanism under the CP with the potentiometer still attached, but without any of the joystick switches still installed. The wheel came with a nice cuff that slipped into a slightly conical 7/8" hole drilled into the CP. The wheel itself didn't fit snugly to the steering shaft, so I used two part epoxy to fill the gap between the wheel hub and the shaft. The nephew yanked pretty hard on it while I watched and didn't rip it loose, so I think it'll be a good solution. It steered perfectly in Pole Position, and the addition of the cheater-knob made for easy one handed steering. The only thing I will do next time differently is try to come up with a less massive extension shaft for the pot. The bulk of the joystick base kept me from hinging the CP as I'd planned.
The bezel is just a piece of plexi that I cut to size with a straight edge and a router. I put it in place and roughly traced the position of the monitor and the IR-remote receiver with a dry erase marker. I taped it off and applied about 5 coats of black plastic-bonding spray paint. I mounted it to the cab with only two screws just above the CP. I put some fairly thick black rubber gasket/washers on the screws so it is held in but can take a shock or two before splitting.
The hand-crafted marquee was a fun excersize in tracing. I bought the vellum at Office-Max/Depot (I forget which). I used a nice set of Sharpie markers with three shades of green. I think it came out pretty good, considering. I taped it to the plexiglass, which I'd cut with a straight edge and a router. I cut 1/8" wide 1/4" deep channels in both the top and bottom boards of the marquee area on the cab, and cut the plexiglass about 3/8" wider than the opening so it could slide in and out of the grooves. It didn't work perfectly at first, but a little unscrewing and rescrewing made it fit very nicely, I think. The marquee-art did get scrunched a bit in the insertion, so it isn't perfectly flush on the sides. I will make the channels a bit wider next time.
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Topic: Galaga mini-cab (update 1/5/05) (Read 6449 times)
