OMFG... I really didn't need to see this, and now I can't un-see it!
Seriously, I of all people can relate to the flak this guy got for "maiming" the Stargate... kind of. My first potential MAME cabinet (and indeed my first-ever arcade cabinet purchased) was an Asteroids that was so complete it seemed like it was just pulled off a location and nobody ever bothered to fix it. I spent weeks literally peeling off the sideart (75%-90% good, by the way) tiny bit by tiny bit with my fingers (um, heat gun? hair dryer? helllooo...) and the handful of collectors who know I did that probably don't think that much of me. The idea behind Asteroids was that it had a HUGE control panel (well, bite-sized compared to this monstrosity) and very few holes already in it. My plan was to do only ONE cabinet, and I wanted to include joysticks, buttons, a trackball, spinner, AND a steering wheel. The front "nose" would have been a perfect place to mount the wheel, or so I thought... probably would have had to stand too far away to play any non-racing games, though. I went so far as to install a standard wall outlet inside the thing, and when my budget collapsed (both in terms of money and space), I had to trade it away to someone who was probably none to happy with my efforts. Even so, what this guy did went so far beyond what should reasonably done to a cabinet of that vintage it's disgusting. I get that once you buy a cabinet, you start making plans for THAT cabinet, so it's difficult to see that maybe you need a different cabinet. Yes, there are many people who would have traded him a less-than-classic cabinet, and I'm sure he didn't even bother to look, but I have to concede that he shouldn't necessarily be obligated to settle for some other donor cab if that's what he had at hand. I will say that his JAMMA excuse holds no water at all, though.
What I don't understand at all is the enormous control panel. Weight aside, it just shouldn't be necessary. Sure, you want people to be comfortable, and I do remember Gauntlet as being a bit too cozy for my tastes, but honestly, what you've got there is a TABLE. Find a few arcade sticks and an XBox and fire it up if you want to invite three homophobic friends over for a no-touchy gaming session... what this guy has done is like taking a Porsche and cutting off all except the seats because you want to turn it into a couch. I know someone can do that if they want, but it doesn't mean we can't complain about it (the horror... the horror...). Knowing that we all try to be as positive as possible around here, I searched desperately for some innocuous comment to make, and I was actually relieved to see that very few punches were pulled by the other posters. No way around it, this was a HORRIBLE cabinet... the least snarky comment I could come up with was, "why do two of the joysticks have chrome shafts, and the other two black?"
Now that I've posted my projects, I see that others may point out similar flaws in my designs ("Dude... why did you not bother to even touch up the paint on your cocktail's control panels???"), but I have been VERY conservative in terms of modifying the cabs themselves, and am definitely working within the limitations of the original machine as much as possible. Of course that means I've had to do two just to cover different types of games, but my goal has been authenticity rather than universality. For example, SGM is vertical/raster/4-way whereas FLYNN'S is horizontal/vector/8-way/analog. As hard as many people try to cram everything into one cabinet, there's only one thing that even comes close to being all things to all people, and that's called a console.
Anyway, I guess we need to be reminded of history lest we inadvertently repeat it.