Baseball themed Cocktail style arcade

[danfman]

I've built a somewhat standard cocktail game with a few exceptions from a Detroit Tigers fan point of view. Above the control panel I used some indirect lighting.  It's an LED wand powered from the USB port acquired from eBay.  Just drilled some holes and attached it with some wire.  

Player one gets a back drop of Tiger Stadium.  Player two gets Comerica Park.  

It's all fun and games and there are no losers except for the Lions.

[wp34]

Nice work.

Are those seats against the wall from old Tiger Stadium by any chance?

[danfman]

Good eye.  Those seats were in Tiger Stadium from the late 70s, when it was remodeled, until it was closed.  I have an original box seat that player 2 can sit in (off camera) that was used in the stadium when it opened in 1912 until it was remodeled in the 70s.

[opt2not]

Hey danfman, I really like what you did for the CP's. I'm thinking about ripping off your idea for my Canucks cocktail cabinet, having shots of GM Place on there. Did you print out your stadium overlay's onto regular paper, placed under the plexi?  Is your plexi just being held there by the buttons? It doesn't look like you have any screws keeping it down...

[danfman]

I searched the internet for a panoramic picture of the stadiums.  Finally found two that I liked of a decent resolution.  I scaled it in autoCAD, put white circles where the buttons, and joystick were so I could cut it out later.  I saved them both to the same jpg that fit onto an 8.5x11 then went to Staples and they printed out a photo quality print for about $2. 

There are no screws holding down the plexiglass.  I thought it would look ugly with the screws there so before I screwed it down I thought I'd see how well the buttons alone would hold it down.  It did a good job and there isn't really a lot of force on the plexiglass so I never put the screws in.

I'd also recommend the usb LED wand.  Here is a link to a similar one

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-10-LED-light-lamp-flexible-for-PC-notebook-laptop_W0QQitemZ180412264301QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2a0168af6d

Good luck.

[opt2not]

Thanks for the info danfman! I'm trying to figure out if I want to go with plexi, or just print out the CP art onto tough CP laminate material. The downside to that is the bolts showing on top of the CP. Did you end up using flat-top bolts? I would assume so, otherwise your plexi would have been raised up from underneath.

...and I'm definitely going to do the LED route, they last longer and are cheap.
I didn't see your coin door in those pictures either, did you rig LED's to light up your coin inserts as well?

[danfman]

I didn't use any bolts.  The buttons securely fashion the plexi-glass in place. 

Chose not to mess around with a coin door since that isn't what I'm going for.  The black buttons on P1 are multipurpose and one controls credits.  Text indicating so is displayed next to the button.  Not a fan of CPMaker, CPwizard or any of the control panel software, so if you know or can teach yourself AutoCAD you are better off.