I built a "portable" 4-player arcade for my niece and nephew's Christmas present

[PDAisAok]

This was my first arcade build and first woodworking project.  The youngest nephew asked for a "puter" to play games so I decided to go all out.  I purchased some of these controls back when I was in college because I was going to build myself a MAME arcade and just never got around to it.  Thankfully they loved their Christmas gift this year.  The wood is 3/4" birch plywood, coated with General Finishes High Performance Semi-gloss polyurethane.  I designed the logo in photoshop and then had it laser-etched onto the playfield by a local shop. I also just realized I've been a member on this forum for almost a decade and this is my first post.  I guess better late than never.

[Slippyblade]

I have to say that I'm a little confused about that MASSIVE block of buttons above the trackball...

Love the logo etching though, that looks great.

[PDAisAok]

It was built for some younger kids so I felt shifted keys would get too complicated for them.  The leftmost blue button is the same as the first player button 1, the other two are mouse buttons.  The white buttons are: Escape for exiting emulators back to Hyperspin, save and load state buttons, and a pause button

[Slippyblade]

Makes sense.  Got a pic of the back side?  That hole looks pretty large for just a mother board panel, but the final pic looks like acrylic.  Did you laser cut a custom panel back there?

[PDAisAok]

I had an acrylic computer case that the pc was originally in, disassembled it and just used the backplane and sideplane of the original case and secured that into the Arcade cabinet.  It was the easiest way to have all the exhaust fans be in that one block.  I don't think I took a pic of the backside but I can do that later this evening and post it on here

[Slippyblade]

Good re-purpose.  Have the kids fired it up yet?  What were reactions?  I love seeing little kids discover arcade games.  I took my kids to an arcade/pinball convention a couple years ago and they flipped out.  Had a great time.

[PDAisAok]

I wish I had the reaction on video! They were all jumping up and down and screaming.  All three of them loved it and have been playing it daily.  They are 13, 8, and 4 so the youngest one doesn't really get it but he loves "Rampage" (Rampage: World Tour).  I plan on building a table-top virtual pinball machine add-on that will plug into the arcade for their gift next year.  I'm a pinball collector so it's something I want them to be able to enjoy as well.  I bet that convention was pretty great! Did they have any favorites?

[Slippyblade]

It's called ZapCon, here in Phoenix, AZ.  Yotsuya, a member on the board here, has won awards past couple years for his projects.  First year was for Space Fortress Macross and then last year he won for a unique build, Polybius.  The Macross build has a thread here, look it up if interested.

Depending on what part of the world you're in, why not come to Phoenix in April?  We have a decent group of folks from the board that come down.  Last year Yots made T-shirts and custom name badges.

Oh yeah, welcome to the board!

[yotsuya]

Somebody call???

Look for the ZapCon '16 thread to heat up very, very soon...

[PDAisAok]

Thank you Slippy! I actually registered on this forum back in 2006 then completely forgot about it.  I wish I would have spent some time on here checking out everyone's projects, lots of inspirational stuff.  And nice work, Yotsuya!  I particularly like the Polybius cab.  I think the work on this forum has inspired me to finally (possibly) start working on a custom project that has been on my mind for about 10 years now.  I need to do some research first to see if it will be feasible before making any announcements.

[PDAisAok]

Makes sense.  Got a pic of the back side?  That hole looks pretty large for just a mother board panel, but the final pic looks like acrylic.  Did you laser cut a custom panel back there?

Here is a shot of the backside.  We decided to hook it up to my projector and 220" screen to play some games for New Years.  Black button is power, yellow is ctrl+alt+del and white is [tab] for bringing up MAME menu.