Donkey Kong Themed Bartop

[Sledgehammer]

Hi All,

I am a first time poster but not new to these forums. I built my first arcade cab about two years ago based off some things I had seen on the web. At the time I had no woodworking skills whatsoever. I rushed the project because I was excited to get it done. I did a Street Fighter II themed cab with an X-Arcade dual stick. People have loved playing on it and think it looks great, but to me I always notice where I did things wrong and could have done a better job.

The second time around, I spent a lot of time on these forums and decided to build a bartop size cab with a Donkey Kong theme and my own custom control panel.

I wanted to share some of the photos of the build as I have just completed the project as of yesterday.

Side panels, bottom, back and front mounted:



Sizing up the buttons and Utrak trackball. 1/2" MDF with 1/8" plexi:



Bottom of the CP before dressing the cables. I used the Ultimarc MiniPac to control the trackball and all other controls:




Donkey Kong Blue Paint, CP installed, along with NovaGem 25 cent pushbutton from GGG. Also working on fitting the back panel:



Dell 19" LCD installed along with DK marquee from Mamemarquees.com:



Rear shot with the guts (AMD Phenom 2 Triple core, 80gb SATA drive, 2GB memory, on board ATI Graphics):



Rear shot with the back panel on.  I had it installed flush but decided to install it with velcro o it kinda sticks out a little. Whatever. Power button is a HAPP pushbutton. The fan in the middle glows blue, just for the hell of it:






Here is the final shot with the first MAME cab I built. I feel much better about the latest one...:




I really appreciate all the valuable info that you guys post on here. Alot of this project has ideas stolen from you folks!

My next project will be a scratch built full size Donkey Kong cab running MAME. I hope to start in the next week or so.

Jason

[jholman76]

thats pretty good looking.

you definately have improved the design. do you have any plans by chance? I am trying to decide what plans I want to do for my next cab. It will be a bartop, and I really like your design. I have a couple 19" Ultrasharp monitors too I would love to use up.

Good looker. Love the color scheme. very retro.

what frontend are you using, if any?

joe

[Sledgehammer]

Thanks for the kind words.

I don't have any plans for this cab...I started by reading a bit about the Weecade (http://www.koenigs.dk/mame/eng/stepweecade.htm) and sort of went from there.

I am using GameEx as my front end. I have it on my other cab and find it does everything I need.

I also like the Ultrasharp monitor. I went to Fry's to buy a monitor and was dissapointed to find that they no longer sell square LCD monitors...everything was widescreen and that was not an option for me. I found this 19" Dell on ebay for $87 shipped and am happy with it.

Jason

[severdhed]

looks very nice.  i was very close to starting my own DK bartop project, but then i found a full size DK cabinet locally, so i went with that instead.  it is good to see all of the DK love on this board.

good job with the cabinet..it looks great.

[emphatic]

Nice work.  It would have been really weird if you'd have Street Fighter II running in you Donkey Kong cab in that picture instead of Joust. 

[Franco B]

Pictures are not loading for me 

[Classic Arcade]

Nice and simple, love it, nice paint job as well. And custom controls are way cooler 

[bishmasterb]

Very nice work. Love the coin button on the front.

[Yvan256]

Pictures are not loading for me 

The pictures are hosted at mediafire instead of arcadecontrols, perhaps that is the source of the problem.