My arcade cabinet is finally finished! Probably the most time consuming and hardest part of building a Mame cabinet is the control panel. I build my first arcade cab over 4 years ago and I decided this time I wanted the control panel to be done by a professional who has the proper tools.
I needed a control panel that would fit the UA II design and I also wanted it to have custom artwork. After doing a lot of research Jack over at Arcades R Fun offered the most options than anyone at a fair price.
I had taken this directly from one of Jacks ebay ads, Listed below is the standard features and in bold are the additional upgrades I also selected:
Fully wired and ready to play 2 player control panel using Ultimarc.com's I-pac2 interface board.
Control panel is 35" wide and 18" deep,
2 Happ Competition 8 way joysticks for player 1/2 with a separate red ball top Ultimarc J-Stick for classic 4 way games like Ms. Pacman. Each player can have 6-7 play buttons. The 4 way red ball top is allowed up to 4 buttons.
Dedicated Exit button, 2 Pause Buttons per players 1/2, Player 1/2 both have Credit and Start buttons as well.
A total of 9 pinball buttons, 4 on each side and a front shooter/plunger button. Visual Pinball/Pinmame require at least 8 button for complete gameplay.
Flush mounted blue or red translucent trackball with invisible mount.
LED Illuminated trackball light
Your choice of polycarbonate overlay from Mamemarquees.com
No charge for custom panel top control locations.
Optional Upgrades;
Groovygamegear.com TurboTwist2 Spinner for games like Tempest, breakout etc.
Matching Plexi Tops to protect your investment.
Groovy Game Gear Electric Ice2 trackball allowing up to 7 different colrs with special lighting kit or 1,000's of colors if used in conjunction with Groovy Game Gear's LED-Wiz lighting controller board.
Groovy Game Gear Nova-Gem Transluscent LED illuminated buttons coupled with their LED-Wiz controller board you can change light intensity and create light shows.
I also must say that it was a very enjoyable experience to work with Jack not only because he is such a nice guy but because he is great at what he does. Everything about my panel was custom and we spent a lot of time going back and forth tweaking button layouts, positioning, and design.
Here are some hi-res pictures of what the final product looks like. I have also enclosed two videos the first one is my cab running LuminAudio Engine and the other running Mala FE with LedBlinky 3.6beta. Hats off to Arzoo for working out a couple of bugs in LED BLINKY so quickly to make those wonderful buttons light with perfection.
HERE ARE THE VIDEOS:
In closing if you in the market for a control panel or a whole cabinet for that matter I whole heartedly recommend Jack over at
http://www.arcadesrfun.com/ to help design and build whatever you need.