Building a coin-op video game from a kit

Post Reply New Topic

Has anyone ever built a coin-op video game from a kit? What did you think of the experience and how difficult is it to do?

I haven't, but some day I would like to build a MAME cabinet.

Although I'm not sure how I'm going to work the screen, since I want to use an actual arcade monitor, but be able to play vertical or horizontal games without distorting the picture. The easiest option I could think of would be to make it a cocktail, with controls set up so you could sit at either side of it, depending on the game.

The MAME sounds like an awesome idea. I just read up on that. I've found some plans on how to build one so I'm going to give it a shot in the near future. The only thing that intimidates me is building the cabinet (I was thinking about a cocktail design as well). Carpentry is not my forte.

I've read a number of articles on building MAME cabinets, and what people will sometimes do is take an old, non-working arcade cabinet, gut it, then hook up a PC inside of it. There are converters available that allow you to hook up most arcade joysticks and buttons through a keyboard port. If you want to use an authentic monitor, there are special video cards that allow for it, but they are rare, expensive, and usually based on fairly low-end GPUs. I'd sooner just get a decent-sized flatscreen and mount that instead. It would be cheaper, lighter, and much safer to work on.

If you want to collect arcade game PCBs, another route you could go with is by building or acquiring a "supergun", which essentially allows you to connect a standard JAMMA game PCB to a TV and a set of controllers. It would certainly be more authentic, but also much more expensive. Of course, for games that MAME has trouble emulating, like Raiden II, this may be your only option, other than emulating the Playstation version.

No problem. I've never actually attempted a MAME cabinet or supergun build myself, but it is something I've been wanting to do for years.