Here is my finished Bartop Arcade

[bluelight]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to post some photos of my finished bartop arcade build here. I finished it a few days ago after about 3 months of working on it in my spare time. I probably could have finished it faster if I actually knew what I was doing or had any experience in woodworking lol.

It is made from 1/2 inch MDF, aluminum brackets that I made for the marquee mounts, and plexi for the marquee, in front of the monitor, and on top of the control panel. The bezel for the monitor is black spray paint on the inner side of the monitor plexi and turned out to look great. It is running Hyperspin 1.4 and currently has NES, SNES, Genesis, Fix it Felix Jr., a few PS1 games, MAME, and Pinball FX2 on it. I plan to put more later probably. The buttons and sticks are IL and it is using a minipac. Marquee lights are LEDs from Groovygamegear along with the coin buttons from there also. The artwork was printed by Souldraw. I will probably post a review of my experience with them here later.. it was not a smooth experience but it worked out ok in the end.. quality was pretty good but could have been better.

I won't post all the details and specs here but instead, if anyone has any specifics they want to know about just ask here and I will be glad to answer. Because I couldn't find plans and a design that I was entirely happy with, I created my own design in 3D on my computer and did all measurements to scale there.. creating a template for cutting the side pieces and using it for reference for the other pieces. I will post a render of my 3D design here too as reference to compare to the finished build.


It is not perfect of course... there are a lot of issues I ran into that I had to solve along the way, some I had to just settle for, and some I want to fix later. The painting part was by far the worst of it for me along with installing the vinyl side art at the end (mistakes were made even though I followed the tutorial videos posted here.) I want to thank everyone here who helped me along the way especially with the painting stuff like Ond and Jennifer. I will probably have some more questions I will ask here later pertaining to tweaks I want to do and little fixes but for now, I am happy to call it done.

Bluelight

[Typefighter01]

Good work Bluelight Its always rewarding seeing a project to the end.

[Jamesbeat]

 Cute bartop 

I especially like the attention to detail on the coin buttons. This is a difficult aspect of bartop building because there is no room for a coin door, but you managed to keep the arcade machine feel.

[bluelight]

Cute bartop 

I especially like the attention to detail on the coin buttons. This is a difficult aspect of bartop building because there is no room for a coin door, but you managed to keep the arcade machine feel.

Thanks very much, that authenticity was what i was going for.. Trying to get the feel of a early 90s style machine.