My First MAME Cabinet

[mkarabinus]

So I decided that I had to have an arcade cabinet, and MAME made the most sense.

I have been working on converting a cabinet to suit my needs, and wanted to start a post to show my progress.

The cabinet itself hasn't gotten verry far, but now that i have my theme decided, artwork nearly finished, and buttons and joysticks waiting for set-up, I can start moving a little more!

Anyhow, I went with a slightly modernized version of the classic VS. Super Mario Bros. cabinet from 1986. 

Here is the marquee and control panel design.  (CP has colored indicators were buttons and joysticks will be)

I can't wait to start putting stuff together!

[mkarabinus]

For comparison, here is how the original arcade's marquee and CP looked.

Also a picture of the cabinet i am using for my conversion. (not your typical source to be starting with huh!)

[mkarabinus]

Here she is all gutted out. 

Time for cleanup and reconstruction.

[yotsuya]

What are your plans for the bezel area? As it stands, that amount of real estate is HUGE.

[mkarabinus]

Sound equipment...subwoofer and 2 speakers. 

You thinking something else?

[DeLuSioNal29]

Throw a 32" incher in there vertically.  Will look great for horizontal games too.

[mkarabinus]

Wow...that WOULD look great.  For my first buid, I am keeping it pretty basic.  When I build a dedicated one player cabinet, maybe I will put the 19 inched in it and upgrade this cabinet to a 32.  (I'm addicted...already thinking about building 2 more cabinets...LOL!)

[Malenko]

make sure you like that button layout, make a test panel out of cardboard.

[mkarabinus]

I am planning to.  Do you see a potential concern?  I printed them out on paper and did a quick feel test and liked that one the best.  Please share any red flags you see!!!!  I am a total newbie that has done just enough research to be dangerous!

[Malenko]

Button layout comes down to your preference, dont let anyone tell you anything different.

I personally cant use offset button layouts like that, I use the standard "straight 6" aka Street Fighter layout, sometimes I used the SF+1 where the fourth neogeo button is added to the bottom left of the bottom row (kind of like the run button on MK3)

[rtkiii]

looking forward to the finished result.

[mkarabinus]

Opinions...which version of the side art? 

[johnrt]

Can you show us the right one without the game logos?

[mkarabinus]

As requested...

[johnrt]

Much cleaner look! I'm not a fan of artwork that are loaded with different logos. I think it looks way better without the logos.

[AzureKnight]

I think I would agree with johnrt, the clean look works well.  I guess it would also depend on your plans for the cp/marquee.

If the choice was only from the first two, i think I would choose the one with the logos

The other option with the motion blur name, I think if you were to go with that you might want to make the blur effect words a lot more muted.  To me they "pop" more than the name itself.

[yotsuya]

Honestly, neither. Instead of "MAMEtendo", why not do "Karabinus"? At least that's consistent with the marquee. Since you cabinet isn't a standard Nintendo shape, I don't think "-tendo" fits.

[rtkiii]

Honestly, neither. Instead of "MAMEtendo", why not do "Karabinus"? At least that's consistent with the marquee. Since you cabinet isn't a standard Nintendo shape, I don't think "-tendo" fits.

I like the plain sideart as well but this guy has a point.  I try to keep consistency with projects like this.  When that is not there it is not bad thing but noticeable but the likes of us. 

Having two different names just seems off.  I know this cabinet will have many games so I think you need a name that summarizes it..."Mametendo" is good, but then like the above poster said the marquee says something else.  I think you need to figure out the name of your cabinet 

FYI - i took me like 3 weeks to figure out I wanted to call mine "The Time Machine."

One other thing...this is your project...do what you feel brings out your best intentions.  Everyone has a "way" of doing thins or styles they like...too much input could ruin the original idea in your head.

[AzureKnight]

FYI - i took me like 3 weeks to figure out I wanted to call mine "The Time Machine."

I'm finally starting my build, it took me 2 years and to land on my fifth completely different theme before I made a choice 

But to be honest a lot of that was because it took me that long (and more) to get the time/resources/wife buy-in for a build so I had the time to keep dreaming up different themes.

[Malenko]

the trailing effect is fine, just need half as many trails and for them to get progressively darker or lighter as they sink to the bottom, makes it less "blobby" looking

[mkarabinus]

OK, so i put the theme on hold and started working on getting the system up and running completely IN the cabinet.

Going well so far. 

The screen needs to be mounted in the correct level still...but it is really making me want to put a bigger screen in already.

[yotsuya]

Yeah, I wondered how that was going to turn out. Your bezel/monitor is larger than a normal arcade cabinet because of the nature of the machine. This might be a great candidate for one of those "Take a big widescreen TV and turn it sideways" projects.

[mkarabinus]

I was having issues with my control panel.  I bought the X-Arcade interface, and am using buttons, and joysticks that I purchased separately. 

Using the default setup, whenever I would hot player 2 buttons 3 2 then 1(that is letters Q S and A), it would minimize MAME and go to my desktop.

Also, player 1 start button was mapped to 2 just like player 2?

I reprogrammed the buttons using the custom settings for the x-a cade, and everything works smoothly now.

Any ideas why it messd up with the default settings?