Oldest MAME-ish cabinet around?

[Jack Burton]

Hey, I was reading thread a while back about a guy who bought a Food Fight cabinet and installed an Atari 5200 into it.  It reminded me that back when I was a little kid I always wanted to build a cabinet for my NES and play old arcade games in it.  I guess I had the itch for MAME before it even existed.


So who was awesome enough to actually do this back in the day.  Anybody here take their brand spanking new Magnavox Oddyssey and stick it in a wooden box + television to make their own DIY Pong cab?

Or how about the Fairchild channel F?  It would have resulted in a multi game cab.

I don't know much about early computer gaming, so how soon could one have conceivably put a PC in a cab, hacked up a keyboard, and started playing?

[coltchillin]

i don't know, but i do recall i modded one of these when i was 12, i rotated the controls 90 degrees and used double sided tape to stick it to my desk in front of my tv, this way i had a cp with a stick and one button to the right....

[Thenasty]

Back in 1991, I gutted my C64 and re-wired the controls into the CP of a Donkey Kong Cabinet. I had to modify some of the games using a HEX EDITOR to change some of the WORDINGS from "Push F1 Key to Start" to "Press 1 Player Start" to Start a game. Also customized a Menu that when you select one of the Game from the list, the only way to LOAD it is to INSERT COIN 

Sold it back in 2000.....Thats when I had my MAME Cab ready for playing...

[ArtMAME]

Back in the day, we lived in Panama and I had an Atari 800 home computer system.  It had tons of arcade classic games. 

Circa 1983 to 1984 we hired a carpenter to do some work on the house, so I got him to build me an arcade cabinet modeled after a Phoenix cabinet (I think).  I stuck a 13" Sony TV in the cabinet and hooked up my Atari 800. 

I held the original Atari joystick on the CP with one hand, and moved the joystick with the other.  I did not have the engineering skills at the time to properly attach the joystick onto the CP, it was very pitiful... but it was a MAME cabinet, and I was re-creating the arcade experience at home, and it was back in the day!!!

We moved from Panama to the US in 1985.  The cabinet stayed behind... ... don't have pics either... but I still have the TV and the Atari 800 system... .

Now that I am quite proficient at building MAME cabinets, I may resurrect the Atari 800 and put it in a MAME cabinet again some day...
 

[NoOne=NBA=]

All my early projects were just custom CP's.
To me, the housing was secondary to having realistic controls.
I had a "real" control panel on the desk, with the TV in front of that, so it was almost a cabinet.

My first project was in 1980.
I tore apart an Atari joystick, and wired up a 5-button panel to play Asteroids properly on my 2600.
I later modified that one so that it would hook to a Colecovision for Space Fury as well.

My next one was a CP for playing Video Pinball.
That one had flipper buttons on each side, and nudge buttons on the top where your thumbs would rest.

I followed that with a custom 2-stick, top-fire layout to play Activision's Robot Tank, so that it would play like Battlezone, instead of using only one joystick like it was programmed for.

I created button panels for Decathlon, a 2-stick setup for 7800 Robotron, and adapter boxes to hook my Atari-compatible CP's to my TRS-80's analog joystick ports.

My masterpiece was a fully cannibalized 2600 that I bought specifically so that I could remote all the controls to create a control panel for Activision's Space Shuttle.

[patrickmaher]

It's not the oldest but the topic reminded me of the NES cabinet.

[BASS!]

When I was 12 I modded my 2600 for tv out to my spankin new composite tv. I then spraypainted it silver. Does that count? 

[Fozzy The Bear]

Ask Saint...... His first cabinet was one of the pioneers.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[danny_galaga]

When I was 12 I modded my 2600 for tv out to my spankin new composite tv. I then spraypainted it silver. Does that count? 

no   

[Jack Burton]

Yeah, I was obsessed with control panels a long time before I became obsessed with monitors.  Back in high school I saved up for 3 months to buy a MAS systems super pro stick.

I duct taped an NES advantage to the top of a dresser that a tv was sitting on and pretended it was a cab many times.


@artmame- Wow!  I think you are the leader so far.  What sort of TV did you have in your cab?  And what did your friends think of it?

@thenasty- I think your cab might be one of the oldest Multi-game conversion setups out there.  Is the owner of the cab a member of this site?

[Bluedeath]

I was 8 (1983) and i taped a "professional arcade joystik" that was connected to my C64 to a small  table ans i built a carboard mockup (with handmade "artwork" also) of a cab to hide the table and the television frame.

[ringram]

Made a control panel to play Castle Wolfenstien on an Apple ][+. Had plans for a cabinet, but they never came together. This was early eighties.

[RayB]

I made a very ghetto looking wood control panel that had 3 leaf switch buttons on it and a joystick cable compatible with Commodore/Atari. I used it to play Track n Field on my C64 (1987).

Then I put together a SNES in an arcade cabinet in '92.

No, i don't still have these things.

[Nannuu]

It's not the oldest but the topic reminded me of the NES cabinet.

I doubt mine is the oldest but it seems to be the only one I know of hanging around on internet with pics.  I think I finished it in 86/87, not sure which year.  Still sitting in the house and still the first place every kid runs to.

[gonzo90017]

That's a great cab Nannuu. 

[jeffsgames]

Nice shorts! 

[protokatie]

It's not the oldest but the topic reminded me of the NES cabinet.

patrick, I cant believe you found the guy's site who made that. That small picture in Nintendo Power back in the day was when I first realised that 1. it was possible to make your own "arcade type machine" and 2. That I HAD to make one!
When I was a kid, I even drew up a simple design plan based on the NES cab, but my stepfather wasnt interested in helping me build it so it never happened :<

So basically that guy is responsible for me being here all these years later; now you know who to blame 


EDIT: Looked over the guy's site more, apparently he is a member here!? Cool! Edit2: Didnt realise that a poster a few posts above me IS the guy who made that O.0

[Nannuu]

It's not the oldest but the topic reminded me of the NES cabinet.

patrick, I cant believe you found the guy's site who made that. That small picture in Nintendo Power back in the day was when I first realised that 1. it was possible to make your own "arcade type machine" and 2. That I HAD to make one!
When I was a kid, I even drew up a simple design plan based on the NES cab, but my stepfather wasnt interested in helping me build it so it never happened :<

So basically that guy is responsible for me being here all these years later; now you know who to blame 


EDIT: Looked over the guy's site more, apparently he is a member here!? Cool! Edit2: Didnt realise that a poster a few posts above me IS the guy who made that O.0

That's funny, I am actually the reason I am here too!  Strangely I get emails occasionally about that cabinet.  I'm glad I still have it and made a page for it, seems like a lot of people read Nintendo Power.

Thanks for the comments guys.  Yes, those shorts were awesome, they kept the girls away for sure 

[ark_ader]

Back in 1984/1985 my dad had a photography store in Whittier CA. All my summer and holidays was spent in that store driving the old guy nuts.  So he knew I liked going to Sega Centers and built me a console for my Atari 2600.

My brother glued the joysticks to a board and I had an old BW TV set on a pedestal.  Yep it kept me quiet to hours.  When I went home I disconnected the 2600 played it there.

I cannot count that as one of the first arcade cabinets as the thread suggests, but it was some of the coolest things my dad did for me to keep me off his back.  Thinking about it now he must have saved a small fortune in quarters.  Only 3 games kept me busy: Yars Revenge, Demon Attack and when my pop had his lunch - Tank.

My Dad been dead for nearly 15 years now, and that 2600 is still around  and we get it out at Christmas, yet my brother can still beat me at Tank.    It shows how those old games still have the magic.

[JKJudgeX]

ark:  lovely story... goes to show how deeply entrenched our culture is becoming in video games...  a very good thing!

Yar's Revenge...  let me just tell ya... I spent so many hours trying to get through that game as a kid...  gah, loved it...  I'm glad you mentioned it, because now I'm gonna have to go over to my cabinet, load up stella, and give it a bashin .

Breakout, River Raid, Hero, and Empire Strikes Back were also my jams on the ol' 2600

[Odin]

I had a Colecovision in a video game cabinet in the early 80's. 

My uncle was an operator back then and had hundreds of games, including junked cabs.  He actually took a Colecovision and wired it up in a cab with a coin mech and tried it out in the field, figuring it would be a cheap way to rotate games without having to move the games.  It worked until the kids figured out that if you unplugged it and plugged it back in the first game was free.  It never made money after that.