You may know I got myself a fully working Atari Crystal Castles upright (1983). I got really sick of the one game. It's more fun to play lots of games instead of just one stupid one, so I have converted this machine into a MAME station.
It's called "Crystal Cade". I started by ripping out the main guts and throwing them in teh trash. MAME can play Crystal Castles, so that stuff was no good. I wanted my own marquee name, so that went into the trash too (it was all damaged anyways). As you can see I made my own marquee. I junked the speaker grill too. It got in the way of my marquee.
(http://www.retrofx.com/arcade/images/th_crystal-cade_angle.jpg)(http://www.retrofx.com/arcade/images/th_crystal-cade_front.jpg)
The next step was the control panel. I painted it black to match the monitor bezel. At first I wanted to put an X-Arcade panel on there, but they are too expensive. So instead I got a cool chinese made joystick. It makes really loud clicky sounds and I can really feel the corners. I think it will be great in fighting games (my favorite).
(http://www.retrofx.com/arcade/images/th_crystal-cade_cp.jpg)
Teh old trackball that was in there was faded and I don't know how to hook it up to my PC, so I threw that out. I was left with a big hole in the middle, so I came up with the coolest thing: BEER HOLDER! *Woot!* (click the photo up there to see it larger).
I installed a PC in there, but I can't figure out how to make the picture show on the monitor. The monitor has the old game graphics burned in it anyway, I think I'll just replace it with a 21" PC monitor. That will rock.
To be done:
-Paint over that cheesy cartoon art (it's too kiddy)
-Cut out holes on each side to put some speakers.
-Add some casters so I can move it around better
You can see larger photos by visiting my project update page:
http://www.retrofx.com/rayb_arcade.html
~Ray B.