December 9th, 2007. A day that will live in infamy. I have finally begun the process of building my own arcade cabinet. The transaction that started it all was with Happ controls for two Competition 8-Way Joysticks, and a whole slew of Competition Convex pushbuttons! I have been working on a control panel design for a while now, and have settled on a panel which will have two 8-ways with seven buttons each. (Set up in the classic SF2 set up with the seventh button to the bottom left of the low-kick button. This will be used for Neo-Geo games, and as the run button in the MK games). I will have a player one and player two start button, a trackball with two buttons, a spinner, and a four-way stick with two buttons. I haven't ordered the trackball, spinner, or fourway stick yet as I'll wait until my next paycheck.
Sadly, this project will take a lot of time to finish. I hope to have it done by August of next year. I have ZERO space to construct a cabinet and need to either find a friend who will let me take his garage for a few weeks, or have one custom built. I have found someone who will custom build me one, but right before I placed the order a friend of mine saw my Project Arcade book and said "I want to do this!!!" So we've been figuring out the plans and I said I'll buy the MDF for my cabinet and his if he'll be able to store them during the construction/painting phase. Once we figure out the logistics, we'll start building. I'll photograph everything so that the process will be documented.
One thing I do have in mind is to have a cabinet with the basic LuSiD design. I like the fairly simple design of it, and it will work well with the 27" arcade monitor I plan on putting in. Not quite sure what brand I'll get, but it will be a 27" Multisync so it will work easiest with the games I plan on running. I also plan on getting a coin door for the cabinet and hooking up the coin-inputs to register as coins in MAME. I'll leave it unlocked so you can just pull your coins right out and keep using them, or I'll even get a ton of the BYOAC Tokens and just use them. I just want that experience and feeling of dropping a coin in, hearing the sound and having it register.

For the name of the arcade and the artwork, I'm still not sure yet. One thing running through my mind is "Heavenly Hell". The artwork at the bottom will be mostly black with flames and the arm of the devil reaching up to the middle of the cabinet. The top will be bluish with clouds and the arm of God reaching down towards the middle. Where the two arms meet will be a lightening ball and electric cloud with arcade icons flying out of it in a blur. (Characters like Pac-Man, Ryu, Donkey Kong, Bubble Bobble, etc.). I really need to work on the art, but that overall idea sounded kind of cool to me. Artistically, however, i'm not sure if I can do it.

The Marquee would just be "Heavenly Hell" with the blue-cloud top and the black flaming bottom met in the middle with the lightning burst and the words "Heavenly Hell" on the foreground.
So what do you guys think? It only hurts me that it will take so long and it might be a while before i have anything to post. At the minimum, I'll at least have the control panel built within a month or two.
