Non Conformity BArcade

[HardRom]

Since I first started down the road of custom arcade, I've tried to push the limitations a bit.  I've wanted to do things my way and not follow a specific community-driven design.  I've wanted to have EVERY controller available.  I've wanted VR and Steam.  I've wanted... too much. 

Here's the start and end (yet not done- still have to figure out how to get the steering wheel and pedals inside this pre-built lottery table).  I also am working on the decals. See sig for 3d render.

... I’ve been tinkering in SketchUp again, and mainly working on the graphics for now.  I believe this is where I am headed with more to come:

I drunkenly bought two wiimote guns for the cabinet after playing WAY TOO MUCH Time Crisis on the weekend.  Then, while they were enroute I went out and bought myself an AimTrak Recoil- this is identical to the gun you played with in the arcades back in the day:
     vs      

The differences:
WiiMote Guns are too sensitive (fixed with settings), cheap feeling but wireless.
AimTrak Guns are accurate to a fault when calibrated, all players must use the gun at the same height for the eyesight calibration to be true, wired. Also requires a 36V/10A power connection for the recoil feature.

I also have a racing wheel and pedals for the cabinet that still have to be attached.

Building a custom arcade cabinet is NOT an easy task. I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of help from AdamG and “GigaPig” from the forums as well as ‘SimplyAustin’s videos.  They are an excellent source of information- most issues I came across were already discussed, at length- which I commented to him about- calling him “wordy”.  

Building a cabinet is also not cheap, nor legal if you don’t own the games. No, I will not help you find them- it’s taken me YEARS to acquire the meager collection (in comparison to some out there) that I have.

At this point, I believe I need to focus on the specific systems that I want and work on those- the extras (Colecovision and Commodore systems) will be a nice bonus later, but at this point I want a working cabinet that the wife can easily navigate and play with.

-- Feb 11, 2017

This whole project has taken a lot of my time.  The primary issue has been the individual emulators and their controls.  Acquiring the several hundred gigabytes of games has not been fantastic either. The plan changed as I was able to acquire a table from work that was wrecked- a few minutes of paint and a bucketload of screws later, and I have this:

Err… this:

I was able with Staple1161’s help to break down the pc and mount it to a board inside the cabinet- instead of trying to secure an entire PC inside.  It’s running an i5 with a GTX780 video card and 16GB of 1666 DDR3 ram.  I mounted the monitor on a custom mount I bought that allows me to turn the monitor 270 degrees- so for pinball, I will have a script that runs and rotates the primary display.

Will eventually invest in a watercooler for the cpu and most likely attach the 110v fans I got just for better airflow. Some speakers will be a nice addition although I have to admit the TV speakers aren’t doing too badly.

Still have to reset-up my script I made to launch a browser in kiosk mode that plays 100xr/Google Play Music/something.

 

-- July - October 2017

I've made some solid progress on the cab (see attached video) over the last little bit.  All that remains is the decals (when really done), and the steering wheel/pedals, HyperMarquee.
On that- I'd love it if HyperMarquee or something equivalent was smart enough to split screen and show the 'moves' for fighters in fighter games, shot angles for golf, etc.  Anyone have any suggestions?  Heck- I can even find a clean image of the Golden Tee shot marker.

Enough blather.  Please feel free to comment and let me know what you like, what you hate.  I AM going back to a static mount as the articulation mount it just too much of a PITA.  Who plays pinball anyway?!?! (In my home). 

Edit: I'm not shy; check out my ongoing progress at HardRom's Personal Site

 

progress.mp4