Completion.

[dankpelt]

Hey all, long time creepy lurker here. Just finished my first ever arcade cab with the help of my fantastic father, without whom I would still be buying tools and trying to figure out how not to be terrible at woodworking. I learned quite a bit through the process and probably feel confident enough to try this on my own when I start the (from what I understand inevitable) second project. What I'm saying is I went into this project a daughter and came out a son. Haha, not really - I was totally always a son.

Used 3/4" cabinet grade birch plywood for the body, went with a stained wood/black outline on most parts, all varnished for a very shiny, wet-looking finish. I'm happy with the overall look of the you-know-it's-quality-retro-electronics stained wood with black and red accents. As you can probably tell, I used the bomb-ass plans for the "arcade cabinet 2" on arcadecab.com - big thanks to the guy who runs that site!

Have a 1080p 26" LCD monitor in it with painstaking hours of trial and error tweaking put into each emulator to form some reasonable facsimile of a CRT - I sure do love me some scanlines. The 1 and 2 player joys are IL eurosticks, the top joy is (you probably know) a happ ultimate in 4-way mode, just hooked up to player 1's junk. Trackball is a happ 3", whole thing is predictably ran through an ipac2. Coin door is new, happ with 25 cent mechs. Have Klipsch promedia 2.1 THX speakers (no buyer's remorse at allllllll, love them) up top.

Obviously, I haven't decided on side/CP/marquee art yet, I put some red gift wrap in my marquee area because the bare fluorescent was too distracting from the overall awesome, haha.

Anyway, it was a great bonding project for the dad and I, we started about mid-March and took it back to my place Memorial Day weekend. Due to my work schedule I was only able to go work on it on weekends, and Michigan had an unusually late cold and snow season. All that considered, I think we did it at exactly the right pace. No corners were cut and the result is a joy to me. next on my agenda - making a youtube video of the workings of it and my HS setup - and that's happening mostly to show friends, family, and coworkers what the hell I can do with it and play on it. That's the most common question I get - "what can you play on it?" Sometimes trying to explain to someone what an emulator and a rom are is harder than you would initially think it would be. I get a lot of lost looks.

Also, on the topic of youtube. Knowing what this cost me, how much time we spent building it, and how much time I have put into setting up and customising my HS install the thought of uploading a version of the video where I say I paid 150.00 for the parts and made it in a weekend amuses the troll deep down in me. Bwaha!

Now I'll shut up and attach some photos. (photos are a little jumbled in order but I think you can figure out what's early vs. late. Wooo!

[SORHP]

Wow! I really like the stained retro look, very unique. I bet that sucker weighs 300 pounds! Lol.

Congratulations on a great build, I bet you will get years of enjoyment and satisfaction out of it!

[jeepguy81]

Love the black accent trimming out the wood, great job!

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

[MontyQ]

looks great and with the woody look you can pick a nice classic side art to go with it like pac-man ect to keep the early 80s wood feel alive. Great job

[gigapig]

Looks fantastic, you've both done a great job. Love the finish.

Does your Dad play on it?