Cabinets and HTPC Setups Running GameEx

[Adultery]

Ohhhh my! Now that would look nice...

The Ghost In The Machine example cab was a real sexy looking machine!

[deadboy]

Yeah, that's where I got mine. Found another place that sells offset (non-centered) T-Molding for restoring old Ninendo based cabs. http://www.chompingquarters.com/store.php/categories/t-molding They also have some beautiful repro art. I'm really thinking of getting this for the side of my MAME cab.

[djour]

I love all of the cabinet designs and builds on here. Unfortunately, space is at a premium in our house, so I had to go a different route.

I made a pedestal cab out of a cabinet from Target. I then built a controls platform that attaches to the top. I then attached faux brushed aluminum on the top and front (e-bay - comes in self adhesive sheets). It's hard to see in the pictures, but I put black T-molding that has a silver stripe in the middle of it around the top of the control panel. I did get lazy and didn't sink the trackball and cover the plate, but I plan on re-doing it this Summer.

The six buttons across the top (1p, 2p, start, back, esc, pause), and the transluscent trackball all have LED's controlled by an I-Pac. There are 6 buttons per player, as well as one on each side for pinball. The coin slot on the front is pure decoration, but the blue push button is also lit and registers as coin inputs for MAME.

On the side, there is a four port USB hub for the N64 and X-Box controllers. I find these two are all I need in addition to the main control panel. There is also a brush cable wall plate (also layered with the brushed Aluminum sheet) for the power (15ft) and HDMI(20 ft metal braided) cords. Both of these are on retractable spools inside the cabinet. I put the door side of the cabinet on the back so it doesn't ruin the look, yet I can open it up to access the controllers as well as mouse and keyboard if needed.

Finally, I put large, hidden casters on the bottom so I can wheel it out of the way when not in use and in front of the screen during play. It's also nice to be able to move it to the side and sit on the couch when playing console or computer games. Who could stand for a full game of Ultima, Resident Evil or Final Fantasy?

[Draco1962]

Sweet rig, Djour! The T-molding looks sweet and the aluminum sheet really sets it off well. Have you considered doing the whole ped in the sheet?

Here are a few pics of the pre-fab Xtension Arcade cabs I have been considering:

First is the gaming pedestal:

Second are two views of their newest addition that they consider a cocktail cab:

I am leaning more towards the Cocktail cab design as I would like to have two monitors at play - an HDTV wall-mounted for game play and a monitor for ancillary displays (game controls & info, etc.). Either design will require some mods to house my HTPC, XBox and 360, game pads, etc. I also like that the monitor housing angle of display is adjustable and will lie flat when not in use.

[celly]

That's some fine inginuity there djour! I'll never look at the furniture section at Target the same.

Draco where are you finding these pre-fab at? I really like the pedistal one but worry about the monitor during gameplay. Fighting games are my thing and the kids and I get pretty into it when we play. I could see that thing taking a dive right off during a game of MKII.

[Draco1962]

Rec Room Masters is the manufacturer. The first one I would not use with a monitor on the top deck. If I use a dual monitor setup with that pedestal, I would have to wall mount the monitor below the HDTV.

[djour]

Those are great if you have a dedicated game/rec room. Our last house had one and I was building a full size cabinet. When we moved, we lost the extra room. I also like the ability to hook the pedestal up to any TV in any available room, or roll it into the garage when I want it out of sight.

I did consider the aluminum look all around. But we have a foosball table and bar set that comes very close to matching the wood color on the pedestal. It's stored in the garage for now, but when our future house is ready, I'd like everything to match just a bit.

I hesitated using a pre-fab (cheapo) cabinet. But it turned out rather well, I didn't have to mess with hinges, laminate, or paint. It is also much lighter than anything I tried to fabricate myself. I also toyed with the idea of making them to sell. The numbers just never add up when compared to the time involved.

[Pojosama]

Ohhhh my! Now that would look nice...

The Ghost In The Machine example cab was a real sexy looking machine!

I really liked the lighting done in that cab

[Nightlife]

Presenting... THE ARCADE

- North Coast Custom Ultimate Arcade II Quad (http://www.mameroom.com)

- Functional 4-slot coin door upgrade

- Mac mini 2.3GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 running Windows 7 via Boot Camp

- 2GB RAM, 750GB HD

- Marque my own design printed by Game On Grafix (http://www.gameongrafix.com)

- Arcade Guns PC light guns in white (http://www.arcadeguns.com)

- GameEx with re-skinned Monochrome theme to match cab

- Adjustable leather stools from the furniture district in Koreatown, Los Angeles

- ...and totally badass!

[Adultery]

Ohh I like that! But why does everything have to be so black and white? Lol!

Good choice of products and nice work on the marquee!

[Draco1962]

*drools*

[Raitsa]

Mine looked like this at an early stage:

More info in the caibinet kit at http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Turun_Puujaloste

[Chaos.Tiki]

Since I just got GameEx on my homebuilt arcade, I should be proper and post pics of it here.

Some of the pics are a couple years old, and the machine is getting upgrades so Ill just post the new stats here.

Dell PC

Win XP

80 gig HD

2 GB ram (not the most impressive PC I know)

CRT Monitor

Plexiglass Changable Light Bar Signs (with graphics printed on transparencies)

Light sockets wired around the top for blacklights

Blacklight Paint that is invisible in normal light (thats why its yellow in the day shots and green in the night)

Car Filters

Vent Fan for a bathroom

X-Arcade Tankstick w trackball

Aimtrak light gun

MAME

NES

Genisis

SNES

N64

MUGEN

The best Fan Games and Hacked Games I could find

And at the hear of my design,

Separates into 2 separate boxes with carts for transport.

And is powered by 3 deep cycle marine batteries for use in any environment.

I designed it to handle the heat and dust of Burning Man. Performs like a champ!

Some of my design choices might be a bit primative compared to a lot of ones I've seen here but I knew nothing about building arcade machines, and knew nothing about this online community of people building their own as well.

[Koop]

I call it the Koopacade! I built it from scratch using designs from John St.Clair's book Project Arcade. I've got 2 sets of player controls, including 2 spinners, but only 1 trackball. I plan on using the USB ports at the front of the control panel to add player 3-4 gamepads. The joysticks are 4/8-way switchable without opening the control panel. I got all of my controls from Ultimarc.

If you want to comment on the cab I've made a topic here:

http://www.gameex.info/forums/topic/11136-koopacade-project-announcement/

and here (with more pics):

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=119875.0

Thanks.

[Nightlife]

Ohh I like that! But why does everything have to be so black and white? Lol!

Good choice of products and nice work on the marquee!

Haha thanks! It's all black and white because it matches the style of my loft, which is very modern and monochrome.

I have so many incredibly nice things to say about the cabinet quality, customer service, and general awesomeness of North Coast Custom arcades. Well-worth the premium price tag. If anyone is on the fence, hop on off and just make it happen. Totally amazing.

[Aburamushi]

Hello guys,

Here's a video of my japanese cabs :

One of them is running with GameEx

Oh, and yes I'm french, sorry if you don't understand what I'm saying

Cheers!

[ClassicGMR]

Fair warning - link and picture heavy.

It's finally almost finished. There are a few changes I still want to make and I didn't exactly build it myself but I love it anyway. I really like the strand of rope light around the LCD. Great for flair and in the dark it just looks cool(to me anyway).

The Envision LCD will be swapped for a widescreen LCD HDTV probably in the next month or two after my vacation. That way I can add my Playstation 3, Nintendo64 with Z64 and 3DO systems to the cabinet in the shelving below.

My main cabinet:

Xtension Arcade Cabinet For The X-Arcade Tankstick

My display for the setup:

Emerson G22LWK 22" LCD Widescreen Monitor

My emulation system:

Model : Dell Inspiron 410 [ZINO HD]

Processor : AMD Athlon II Dual-Core P340 @ 2.2GHz

Memory (RAM) : 4096MB DDR3 (8GB Max)

Primary Hard Drive : 1TB

Video Card : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 Series 256 MB

Sound Card : Dell Computer SB600 High Definition Audio Controller

Optical Drive : DVD/RW (CD/DVD Burner)

Wired Network Card : Atheros AR8151 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Wireless Card : DW1501 Wireless-N WLAN Half-Mini Card

External Hardware:

Logitech K400 Wireless Keyboard

Cyber Authority CA-3090 2.1 Speakers

USB Highspeed 7 Port Hub w/ AC Adapter (Silver)

Belkin Power Authority II Model F5C140

Here's the software:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

GameEX frontend (registered)

MAME - Arcade

Stella - Atari 2600

Nostalgia - Mattel Intellivision

Mednafen - Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket Color, Nintendo Entertainment System, NEC TurboGrafx-16, Nintendo Virtual Boy

ZSNES - Super Nintendo

Kega Fusion - Sega Genesis, Master System, Game Gear

VisualBoyAdvance - Nintendo Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance

Here's the gaming adapters and controllers:

* 2600-dapter

- Flashback 2 joystick

* Vision-dapter

- Sears Intellivision controller

* Retrolink USB adapter for NES

- Original NES control pad

* Super SmartJoy USB adapter for SNES

- Original SNES control pad

* X-Arcade Tankstick + Trackball

Last but not least - running in my living room

.

[Draco1962]

Awesome job and thanks for sharing your list of components! I am considering the cocktail kit from Xtension Arcade in the not-too-distant future for use with my Xbox/360 consoles and HTPC setup. The primary monitor will be an HDTV wall mounted with a smaller secondary (19" - 22") monitor within in the adjustable cocktail monitor mount. My question for you is how would you rate the construction of your cab for a pre-fab kit?

[Adultery]

Looks pimpin'!

Only thing I can think to suggest is LED strips instead of rope lighting. They make rad under-cabinet lighting that would really add for a nice finished look.

[ClassicGMR]

My question for you is how would you rate the construction of your cab for a pre-fab kit?

I put it together myself in about an hour and a half. Of course that was for a whole cabinet which came in three boxes total. A cocktail table may take less time.

It is very sturdy and fairly heavy once the Tankstick and monitor are installed in it. It is assembled with a combination of wooden dowels and hex screws. It has a nice glossy finish to it that looks very nice in the living room. There isn't anything on it that feels cheap.

I have one alignment problem with the whole thing. The door is just slightly off. It sticks out on the hinge side maybe 1/8" if that but it is not flush. Hard to see but of course I see it every time. It's the way the door was predrilled.

The magnets they use to hold the door and keyboard drawer closed are pretty strong. Not an issue with the door since it has a handle but the keyboard drawer is flush. I went to the store and bought a 12" black strap like you'd find on a backpack, doubled it up, added 2 plastic washers of different sizes and screwed that to the inside of the panel so I can open it without wrestling with it for 30 seconds and pinching my hand in the process. If you look at the last picture of the unit you can see the strap I added right in front of the power supply/keyboard.

There's no actual back panel to the cabinet. This isn't so bad for most people but I have to have it up against the window AND directly under an overhead light. This causes light to always come in the back over the monitor. My solution was to take one of my old black, heavy curtains(matches very well actually) and hang it on a black bracelet-quality cord I mounted across the back using the top rear bolts to hold it in. From the front and sides you wouldn't even know it was there but blocks the light perfectly.

I wasn't "dancing in the halls happy" with the shipping though. They put the cabinet parts in the box with bubble wrap around the edges but only those - not sure how to describe it - paper-thin cotton sheets(?) between the wood. I have at least 5 places showing nicks that I had to touch up with furniture marker. There's a few more but they are inside the cabinet and you cannot see them. They came UPS ground so there was plenty of time and bouncing opportunities during shipment.

Now I have no basis of comparison as I wanted to use a real arcade machine but never got my hands on one. Arbitrarily rated I'd have to say 7.5/10 (including the nicks/shipping annoyances). It's a good cabinet but has enough minor flaws to be annoying to the builder. None of my friends even see the flaws though.

Looks pimpin'!

Only thing I can think to suggest is LED strips instead of rope lighting. They make rad under-cabinet lighting that would really add for a nice finished look.

I'll have to add it to my list. I used the rope light because I had it lying around the house from an old yard sale run a few years ago. I like it but I would LOVE it if they ran all the way around the monitor. I would also want them to move. These just are on. I'd like a set that I can change so it looks like it is rotating around the monitor.

[Draco1962]

You may also consider attaching a piece of black heavy card stock or poster board to the back. Similar is down with assembled shelves and entertainment centers to block the appearance of reflected light.

[Kustom Kid]

I avoid this thread like the plague because every time I see all of these amazing cabinets I want to build one. Keep up the good work everyone!

[Chaos.Tiki]

Build one. It is very rewarding.

[Adultery]

Indeed it is. I wanna build another one! Bar top with touch screen? Yes please!

[Kustom Kid]

When I'm done fixing the house up I will. We've lived here 3 years and figured it was time to "make it ours." I have a few things in the kitchen left to do, the master bedroom, and the spare bedroom. My son's room, living room, utility room, and yard were pretty easy to do, so I should be done with everything by the end of summer. I've actually already built the computer for the cabinet, so it's just a matter of designing and building a cab to put it in. I'm already planning on a Tank Stick, rigging up 2 SNES controllers, and 2 wireless Xbox 360 controllers. There are a lot of amazing cabinets here which gets the creative mind going.