My First Arcade Cabinet Build Needing Advice

[DjRage2k15]

Hello everyone,

 I am new here. I wanted to share my cabinet that i built but not sure how everyone will take it. I will start by saying this. I had a close death in my family and I was seriously depressed and was very ill. I was on you tube on day and started looking up things from my childhood and I remember a happy thought about arcades and so i proceeded to look into how far they became since I was young. I am almost 50 now and i started to build one but ran into a snag. I am so confused on how to make it work or get it finished cause their are so many front ends and setups i am so confused. I seen Hyper Spin and said this was amazing but I am so out of touch with technology and I feel it will never get complete. i themed my cabinet after Green Lantern cause it has a special meaning to me and i used to play it on the Wii gaming system. I wanted to integrate it into my cabinet but am lost. I hope someone on here can help me or advice me to go into the right direction. I'm not worried about roms or games as yet just setting up the front end and making it look presentable and worth a talk peace around the house per say. Is their anyone that can help me or get me started. Thanks for the listen people seeing how I am new here and love to find my way to someone who understands my situation. I am posting a couple pics of my work still in progress hope some one can lend a hand on good intel and information on how i can finish this cabinet. I turn a negative into a positive to hopefully see it through to the end.

[madhatter3339]

What exactly are you trying to put on there game wise?? Strictly old school arcade games or are you looking for Nintendo, playstation, PC games and all the others? If its old school Mame only I can help you out. As far as the other systems I don't care to play them on an arcade machine because to me it seems really odd and setting up controls can be a pain!!

[richie_jones]

Wow nice cab..I'd avoid hyperspin as it's a pain if your not really good with configuring stuff in windows...how about mala?

[Goodboyparker]

Good job on the cabinet. How many help videos have you watched? Simply Austin on YouTube has some good starters. If you have a pc you can try to setup a couple of games. If you get stuck there are people who can help with specific questions...

[Kortoga]

Hyperspin is way easy to set up!  As Goodboyparker said, try watching SimplyAustin's youtube videos on how to set up each of your favorite systems in Hyperspin.  I didn't know anything about Hyperspin before i started, watched his videos, and now have about 10 different consoles and MAME setup running.

Is there tweaking, YES, there is no way for one person's setup to match someone elses...we are all different!  But it is not hard to learn.  And the learning part and doing it is the BEST part and most fun!

[richie_jones]

Have you got a bed In there..haha!!

[DjRage2k15]

wow I didn't think I would get any replies at all. Thanks guys ! Well i want to put a lot of the systems in it and make it the main focal part of my home. I love all the systems and it has been a while playing them. I do watch Simply Austin a lot and trying to learn but still have a lot to do. I am currently working on a computer to go in to the cabinet and setup a 8TB system to run most or all the games and stuff but for now looking for the {roms}, and getting them all in a row is hard. i don't mind setting up controls or programming cause i come from a programming background but this is still pretty new to even me. I like to have someone or someones to help me along on the finishing of this build. I like all the replies to. I am sure glad their a lot of you on here to help people like me being a newbie out in the learning process. I want this to have not only a game system but a jukebox and a skype command station to communicate straight from the arcade.

 

I have been working for 7 months on this after my uncle passed and I want to complete it. I found building the thing was easy to do but getting the stuff inside it to go along with it has been a nightmare with no one to look towards for answers. I could use all the best advice I can to make this a success. I got all the buttons in working and control deck seems to be operational still need a trackball and a spinner along with two light guns and then she will be setup as cosmetics go but need help real bad on setting up hyper spin and making it look good.I hope you guys can help in anyway possible.

 

 I do want to try and meet some of you on here and talk about the arcade world and share this experience with my listening audience on my radio show and internet show. I do host a wide variety of people from all over the planet even celebrities who are into gaming. I work in the entertainment field for film and music and like to put this out there with some awesome builders and informative programmers on the gaming world of home arcade systems that is if any of you are interested cause it can help us all out in the journey of new avid builders and designers. if you want that is. look me up and check for BadDoggieRadio and you will find me and lets talk gaming. I find all of this fascinating and wonderful.

 

Thanks a million for the replies to.

[Stormyblade]

Let me just add my 2 cents and support: don't give up on this little hobby as it's great therapy -- I can certainly empathize with you. I had been wanting to build an arcade cabinet for over 10 years but kept putting it off, thinking I didn't have the time, or the resources, or the skills, or mostly the $$$. Then, right at 4 years ago, I had a significant event in my life and when I recovered I decided I wasn't going to put off building that arcade cabinet any longer. It took over 3 months to build it and I kept running into problems and issues, but I finally got it done. I've got an electronics background with some computer programming from my college days, but those skills meant nothing when it came to making my cabinet run the way I wanted it.

 

I'll second the earlier recommendation about following the YouTube videos put together by SimplyAustin - I went with Mala at first and got super frustrated that things wouldn't work, but after sitting in front of that cabinet for an afternoon with those videos running I had everything up and running. I will say that to do everything he wants in the videos will cost you some money to purchase memberships/access, but to me it's worth the money to get all those emulators working (my cabinet has only MAME and Daphne).