i Think I'm Going To Build Something

It was a rather slow day at work and I was hitting a few web sites that I check when those kind of days come along. An interesting blog entry talking about building a MAME cabinet caught my eye. Clicking through I found this video and was immediately blown away!! I knew you could emulate just about any game/system/console if you put enough time in searching and tracking down ROM's, but I had no IDEA you could make your own freaking cabinet to play them all!! I've allways dreamed of having my own (or a couple) arcade games but allways thought that it would be so hard to just pick a couple games and be stuck with those forever. But now I can have every single one of them!!

It instantly became an obsession. I starting reading and reading and reading websites (all of which will be listed somewhere on this blog, pry on the side over there). All that reading led me to saint's book Project Arcade and his website (System also mentioned the book in the above video).

After reading Project Arcade cover to cover twice and reading countless message board threads, posts and how-to's, I'm convinced I can do this without killing / maiming myself or anyone else.

I figure its going to take me a year to get it all the way I want it. Mostly due to overall costs of doing everything I want. Plus the amount of planning and testing I think I will do is going to take some serious time.

Overall I Want To Build This (Dozens and dozens of details for each, but you get the gist):

• 4 Player capable (7 buttons for P1 & P2, 4 Buttons for P3 & P4)


• Trackball (for Golden Tee, Missile Command, etc.)


• Spinner (for Disks of Tron, etc.)


• Real 27" Arcade Monitor to replicate exact display of games


• Working Coin Door


• Custom Artwork for the Control Panel Overlay and Marquee


• MAME, Atari, Nes, SNes, Genesis, PSX, Pinball emulation


• Keep costs under $1,500

This is the first of many, many posts that I hope will document my project fairly well, as others have before me. The blogs and posts I have read have been soooooo informative, I hope mine serves a similar purpose. I'll also have a list of "example" projects that I have "borrowed" ideas from or found inspiring over yonder somewhere too -->