Scratch Built Ms. Pac-Man Cabinet

[jpars1971]

I've just submitted my project to Saint, but wanted to post here as well, to say thank you to everyone on these boards.  I've been a lurker for some time, and have been reading many posts and viewing many projects to put together my cabinet.  

Until now I had absolutely no woodworking experience whatsoever, but have learned enough through the great examples and tips that people have posted to put together my own machine.  It still amazes me what I was able to accomplish just by following examples from others, and a little help from a couple of friends.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all their great advice and direction in these forums, and share with everyone what I managed to put together from that.  Take a look and please feel free to let me know what you think!

http://home.maine.rr.com/mspac

[Gunstar Hero]

That's cool, and I'm jealous.  

I think I'm gonna end up treading your path and building myself an Asteroids.  

[DougHillman]

Hey, a chance to post in a thread before it gets moved to the proper forum.

I'm actually about to start construction of something similar.  Building a cab for a couple I know.  All she cares about is Ms. Pac, but he wants to play alot of other stuff.  I'm gonna use the Ms. Pac profile and widen it up a bit to fit a 2-player 6-button combo with a 2 1/4" trackball.  I may end up upsizing the whole thing actually, cuz I don't think I want to lay the monitor back at an angle.  

Any reason why you decided to do an exact (is it exact?) replica?  I'm all for the thrill of accomplishment of doing it yourself, and am a big proponent of scratchbuilding instead of converting, but empty Ms. Pac cabs aren't that hard to get ahold of for a decent price.   Just didn't wanna MAME an original that could be restored?  

Very nice work.  Shows that even a novice woodworker can produce quality results if they really apply themselves and have the patience to make it right.

[jpars1971]

Well it's not a truly 100% exact replica, but its close.  Only the trained eye would notice differences right away.  It's taller then the original by about 3 or 4 inches, and its a hair deeper.  The corners are are also at sharper angles then the original.  I tried to get it as close to the original as possible, but cut the wood using Tom B.'s Galagaa's plans which are a slight variation.

I decided to go with a scratch built mostly for the reason you mentioned...not wanting to mame an original.  I did look into finding an empty cabinet, but pickings were few and far between in my area.

[walls83]

Nice

[spystyle]

Looks great to me

SpyStyle

[atari2600chick]

Your cab looks so awesome. Well done. Atari2600Chick looks on jealously   and dreams of playing on a MS Pacman cab . I would have to say that Ms Pacman would be my fave arcade game....

[Tilzs]

Why did you go with the monitor in the horizonal orientation?

[jpars1971]

Why did you go with the monitor in the horizonal orientation?

I wanted to play both horizontally and vertically oriented games.  The screen size on the vertical games does turn out a bit smaller, but not so much that it is a hinderance.

[Tilzs]

It just seems odd to me making a vertical monitor cab and then mounting a monitor horizonal. One could aways play horizonal games on a vertical monitor, but it is your cab.

[Wizard of DelRay]

It's probably because when playing a game like Ms. Pac-Man on a horizontal monitor the black area on the sides aren't too big, but when playing a game like Puzzle Bobble on a vertical monitor the top and bottom black areas are pretty big (and if you stretch it to fit then it looks just weird)

[jpars1971]

I hear ya.  I chose my cabinet based on the cabinet style I wanted, not the type of games I would be playing, so horizontal mounting just made more sense since there are more horizontally oriented games out there then vertical.  Plus with it mounted horizontally I have the option to play other windows based games if I choose.  Ideally I would love to have a rotating montior, but that was beyond my skill.