Bulding an old school arcade machine

[EvilDDS]

That’s pretty awesome!! Keep us updated

I’m hitting up a Fan Expo in Toronto at the end of August and they have an area where it’s all retro cabinet video games. I got excited seeing that and will definitely drop some quarters in there, playing some old school games that I haven’t seen in years

 

[PG29 red0 Jr]

I know how to load the games and stuff on it. I have a shit ton of emulators and roms saved on a hard drive. I actually spent a few hours loading games the first one he made. Plus he has two assembled and ready to go right now.

I have an xbox with a ton of emulators on it and a few thousand games. IMO, none of the games run quite the way they did on the OE. How do they run on the R.P.?

 

[JBSchroeds]

I made something similar recently. Well...kinda similar. I just went small with mine. I tried making my own retropie handheld system but it hasn't quite worked out yet (integrating the controller is a bastard, still trying to get the d-pad geometry working smoothly). I have a mechanical engineering degree and a 3D printer so the following is a total custom job, ground up my own design (lots of the components sourced from adafruit).

So here she is, the grey ghost. It's got a 7" screen and is 11"x6.5".

Spoiler

 

[Steve-French]

I have an xbox with a ton of emulators on it and a few thousand games. IMO, none of the games run quite the way they did on the OE. How do they run on the R.P.?

Perfect, however some are hit and miss as to if they will work or not. What is weird is that he had to dump a Neo Geo file into the emulator folder in order to get the mame roms to work. About 90% of the mame files I had would play, but he found a website were he can download roms for the version of mame he is running and hasn't had any problems.

 

[Steve-French]

I made something similar recently. Well...kinda similar. I just went small with mine. I tried making my own retropie handheld system but it hasn't quite worked out yet (integrating the controller is a bastard, still trying to get the d-pad geometry working smoothly). I have a mechanical engineering degree and a 3D printer so the following is a total custom job, ground up my own design (lots of the components sourced from adafruit).

So here she is, the grey ghost. It's got a 7" screen and is 11"x6.5".
View attachment 410805

Spoiler

View attachment 410807 View attachment 410809 View attachment 410811 View attachment 410813 View attachment 410815 View attachment 410817

That's really awesome!

 

[cabear]

Great job on the cabinet! i love me some arcade games from the 80s-90s!

my cabinet is an nvidia shield with a ps4 controller using mame4droid, works great!

 

[Steve-French]

Great job on the cabinet! i love me some arcade games from the 80s-90s!

my cabinet is an nvidia shield with a ps4 controller using mame4droid, works great!

Those are my friends builds. The OP was basically about me building one for myself or spending a couple hundred more dollars and buying one from him.

 

[Steve-French]

Great job on the cabinet! i love me some arcade games from the 80s-90s!

my cabinet is an nvidia shield with a ps4 controller using mame4droid, works great!

I have an arcade stick and use it on my laptop. It's actually a great controller for the price and works with my XB1 as well. It was only $50 and it works great.

 

[JBSchroeds]

That's really awesome!

Thanks. It works fine, I just wish it was a proper handheld. Unfortunately packaging considerations made it a good bit thicker than I had initially planned and it obviously needs a separate controller. But it's still pretty portable and it's nice to have something I can play in bed.

As to your conundrum of do-it-myself-or-not: do it yourself! That's a large part of the fun of these kinds of things. Or at least, it is to me. I get satisfaction every time I turn it on and know "I built that".

 

[moreorless87]

I am actually somewhat surprised that with the general 80's revivalism we haven't had somebody re releasing classic arcade cabinets either for home use or to stick in some other business.

 

[GSP_37]

I'm thinking needs keyboard, save state/load save state buttons, heatsink, fan. I read shorter power cable means less interference so the unit gets the power it needs and has less slowdown. Needs comfy chair too.

 

[shinobimusashi]

I have a soft modded original XBOX loaded with arcade games and a dual stick X-Arcade stick, been planning on buying a few sheets of MDF board and building my own cabinet but really don't have anywhere in my house I could put it without looking like a weirdo.

 

[shinobimusashi]

Remember those cool ass cabinets for racing/driving games back in the day where you had to climb inside it and it was partially enclosed?

Something like that would be gnarly as fuck to have

 

[jefferz]

I remember I took back like $20 worth of returnables and sponsored myself and 3 other friends to play and beat Ninja turtles.

Some of these DYI arcade machines can get pretty nuts though. Something like this would be sweet if you had the room for it.

Apparently there's a new Turtles arcade game

 

[Ken Fresno]

I got 5 bills for whoever wants to make this motherfucker

And I got a G on the goat

 

[moreorless87]

Remember those cool ass cabinets for racing/driving games back in the day where you had to climb inside it and it was partially enclosed?

Something like that would be gnarly as fuck to have

I remember the moving Space Harrier one as well...

 

[Jesus X]

Really cool hobby.

On a similar note, here's the GOAT arcade machine:

If you had five partners playing this monster, you guys were an untouchable gang of toughs.

I play that thing at "barcades" it takes me back. the arcades used to be fun.

 

[Jesus X]

I have a soft modded original XBOX loaded with arcade games and a dual stick X-Arcade stick, been planning on buying a few sheets of MDF board and building my own cabinet but really don't have anywhere in my house I could put it without looking like a weirdo.

nintendo switch has samurai showdown and is compatible with arcade sticks.

 

[Striderx5]

I was born in 1980, so I got to experience the arcades growing up and spent my fair share of time in them as a kid. A friend of mine has been building these kind of as a hobby and selling them for around $500 bucks.

They run off a $35 raspberry pie computer and run emulates. I have an arcade stick that I play emulators with on my computer, but one of these would go good in my man cave. He said they cost him around $250 to build.

I'm a carpenter by trade and am pretty nerdy so I could build and program one of these by myself, but he would sell me one for $450 and I think it would be worth spending the $200 extra dollars to just have him do it.

Just plug into a big screen and your good to go with 2000 games

 

[Ranzou**]

I want a Asteroids cabinet. That game was fun as shit. Expensive though, like 3 grand? I saw someone post the Superman arcade. I used to play the shit out of that at 7-11 with Slurpee in hand.