Last year at Replay exhibition in Blackpool I won a "King Of Kong" competition that Craig of Turnarcades was holding on each day of the event. I played poo on each day but still managed to snag the prize on the Sunday.
It's been sitting here for quite a while because I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it. Eventually I decided upon Defender because it's an all time classic that many people love and also because it needs to have the controls laid out properly which a generic 6 button layout cannot accommodate. I did seriously consider a Multi-Willams bartop but finally decided that there is far too much compromise with the controls to allow all games to be covered. I cannot see how you could play Defender with a low placed joystick (so that you can comforably reach Reverse) while at the same time use the same stick to play Robotron. Something has to give surely.
So Defender it is but the panel will have the extra Inviso button on there for Stargate. It will also be hot-swappable so that a separate panel can be plugged in with 2x genuine Wico leaf switch joysticks to enable Robotron and Smash TV to be played. Each panel will have it's own IPac or Minipac on the underside so that swapping is just a case of unplugging and replugging in the USB cable. It's an expensive way to swap panels I guess, but if you are only making 2 or 3 panels then it's the path of least resistance.
Anyway... this thread is useless without pics so here is where I am now after I started 2 weeks ago.....
Now if I was gonna make a Defender bartop from scratch then I would have made the profile of the cabinet as close to the original as possible. But to be honest if you look in the above pic you can see that it's quite close to a Defender in shape anyway. In hindsight I probably could have reshaped those side panels to make it as close as possible but when I started it I just put it together in about 2 hours or so.
The kit is just the pieces of 18mm mdf ready cut with a big bag of screws and fixings. You get the hinges for the back door (which is removed here ready for painting) and also a genuine arcade style barrel lock with two keys. The t-molding slot is ready cut so you don't need any special tools like a router. The bartop works out at a 75% size of the original Defender. In fact the marquee and CP area worked out at almost perfect aspect ratios to the original panels! Only the bezel area needed me to add a little extra black above the art to fill in the small extra space.
Of course I have added my own extras such as a marquee lamp which I got from B&Q and a cheap pair of mains powered speakers from Maplins which cost only a tenner. I took the speakers apart from their casings and transplanted everything to the cabinet. I cut down the face plates of one of the speakers which housed the volume control etc. and worked that into the back panel. (It's covered in masking tape in the above pics). Taking the speakers apart was a little tricky solely because of the amount of hot glue they used in there. I had to carefully cut and gouge this out to avoid dmaging the little PCB and transformer in there. The speakers just fit in between the marquee and the bezel, facing down just like the mono speaker does on the original Defender.
One of the things I learned from builing my DK bartop is that having control over your speakers is a godsend. This panel also has a 3.5mm jack input for headphones if needed. I also put in a 4 port USB expansion panel in the bottom so that I don't have to open the back door to plug in any USB devices I may need. Something else I didn't build into my DK.
The motherboard is a Mini ITX using a Atom 330 processor with onboard graphics and sound. I've tested all the games I want to use in this bartop and they all run perfectly at 100% with no frames being skipped.
On this project I decided to print my own art. Well it was printed at Staples to be honest but it was far cheaper than getting a specialist to print it for me. Specialists like Gameongraffix are absolutely awesome in their results, but I wanted to keep costs down on this as I had the PC lying around and the bartop kit was a prize anyway. I'm really happy how the CPO and bezel printed out but I might pay to get the marquee done properly as this is the one pice I'm a bit disappointed with. It's not printed on a decent enough paper to really allow the light to shine through.
At the moment we are enjoying a spell of glorious weather here in the UK which is set to last a few more days at least. So I fully intend to have the cabinet itself painted and finished by the end of this Easter holiday weekend. I still have the control panels to build though as I'm awaiting parts to finish those off. More updates later.....
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Topic: Defender using Turnarcades bartop kit (Finished!) (Read 27920 times)
