Cucurbitacee Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 Hi everyone, I've been working on my arcade cabinet for about 3 years. Why so long? Because it was supposed to be as cheap as possible! It all began when coming back from work I saw that my neighbour was trashing several huge chipboard panels. I figured it could be a good starter for a kid's dream: my own arcade cabinet. So I gathered all the wood I could - I'm living in Germany, and trashing habits here are quite insane for the French guy I am, I can't believe what I sometimes see in the streets - and also a nice 55 cm TV. I used as a basis the blueprints of Centipede cabinet found on arcadecontrols.com. It was the shape that remind me most of the cabinets I could play on during my childhood. This is when the first thing went bad. I removed the TV from its plastic housing, put it in my home made frame in my fresh cabinet, plug everything, turn it on for a test, and... the picture was now green! I try to play with every settings I could find, but I had to face the truth, I damaged the TV when I removed the housing. About one year and a half later, I found another working TV. This time, I didn't want to mess anything so I decided to put the whole TV with the housing in the cabinet. Of course it meant could only keep the sides of my precious pieces of wood as the whole TV made the cabinet wider. And it is the first time I took a picture, too. I hooked it with a Saturn, Virtua Stick and Street Fighter Alpha 3 to get as close of the arcade feeling I could. Then I built a VGA to SCART cable to try with a PC. Things were going well, but the computer (that I found in the street too) died. A few months later I found another one and could go on. At first I made wooden control panel and let the WIP cabinet in free play during a party at my place. It made me realize wood wouldn't be able to resist a bunch of drunken guys trying to button mash as hard as they could playing Marvel VS Capcom. The solution came from a friend of my father who still had an old industrial steel folding machine in his workshop. So thanks to him I now have a 2 mm thick steel control panel. And thanks to my father who cut the holes with his plasma cutter, I have a nice layout for the buttons and joysticks. At first I wanted to do a keyboard hack, it had to be cheap, remember? But after destroying five keyboard, all of them donated of came from trash, and still having ghosting issues, I decide to buy a dedicated encoder. I choose an InterfASD as it was cheap and had enough inputs (27) for my two players cabinet. You can see too that I bought 14 Sanwa buttons and two Seimitsu joysticks, as it is very unlikely I found these kind of thing being trashed. I'm now getting close to the end of this project and post my actual progression soon. Thanks for reading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rondar Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 Nice work. I'm impressed with your patience and frugality. How much has this cost you so far? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cucurbitacee Posted July 18, 2011 Author Share Posted July 18, 2011 Thanks. And I never made an exact calculation about the cost, so let's go. Buttons & joysticks 80 € Used coin door & coin mech 20 € InterfASD 30 € Some wires 5 € Paint ~25 € So, at this point, I've spent about 160 €. Which converts to about $225 at the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rondar Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 Very nice! (That's about $225 US) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cucurbitacee Posted July 18, 2011 Author Share Posted July 18, 2011 Yes, I edited my message as I realized it wouldn't be obvious to have only the price in Euro. To resume my progress, I continued woodwork as I found pieces large enough. Later I found some glass, which allowed me to make a marquee and a bezel. The following picture is around this time. After finishing the woodwork, it took me a long time to decide what to do for the paint job. Eventually I've choose to paint the front, up and back in black and make custom drawings on the sides. I picked all the images on the Arcade Flyer Archive that could match my needs. Then I made two collages, one for each side. One figuring funny characters, platform games, warm colors feeling. The other figuring tough characters, action games, cold colors feeling. This pictures show the outlines before painting. And finally this is where I am at the moment, painfully painting the whole thing! In the end, I'd like it to look like this: While this an old mockup, it still gives the idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cucurbitacee Posted August 1, 2011 Author Share Posted August 1, 2011 Hi everyone, After a few weeks of painting, I'm reaching the end of "warm" side. It is now almost complete. But I couldn't resist sharing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dazz Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 Your painting skills are quite nice. The art is just a bit too busy for my personal tastes. Oh and I'm really really sorry, but I keep reading this thread as "My Skinflute cabinet"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hypnoziz Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 Oh and I'm really really sorry, but I keep reading this thread as "My Skinflute cabinet"... Dude so do I!!! Every time it gets me. Haha! That paint job really is *phenomenal* though. Wow...just wow. /envy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Circo Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 Oh and I'm really really sorry, but I keep reading this thread as "My Skinflute cabinet"... Hahaha too funny! Nice painting skills, very cool Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cucurbitacee Posted August 1, 2011 Author Share Posted August 1, 2011 I've never read or heard the word "skinflute" before, a quick Google search confirmed it is what I imagined! I guess you can imagine other kind of games... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Circo Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 I've never read or heard the word "skinflute" before, a quick Google search confirmed it is what I imagined!I guess you can imagine other kind of games... Sounds like another japanese playstation 2 accessory. Remember this one o9dAdnC1KUQ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkywallnut Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 Too funny! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MildAnti Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 how about the rusty trombone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cucurbitacee Posted November 25, 2013 Author Share Posted November 25, 2013 I've just been reminded that I've opened this thread a while ago, then totally forgot about it. And after reading it again, I see that I never posted pictures of the finished product! So, a lot of work and a moving later, here is the beast! The "warm" side: The "cool" side: I'm not sure it still interests someone, but it shows that at least it's a completed project. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polemicist Posted November 25, 2013 Share Posted November 25, 2013 *chuckles* yeah I checked most of the artists posts and saw if they had a cab post. I knew that any cab done by someone with artist flair and good technical skills could pull off a great looking cab any day of the week. You do know how much it would cost to have someone paint the side of their cabs like you have done here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cucurbitacee Posted November 25, 2013 Author Share Posted November 25, 2013 You do know how much it would cost to have someone paint the side of their cabs like you have done here? I have absolutely no clue what someone would ask for a painting like that. But considering the serious amount of hours I've spent on it, I guess ordering a giant sticker would be cheaper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MamedInCanada Posted November 25, 2013 Share Posted November 25, 2013 Very nice paint job on the cabinet, I never thought about using paint, always vinyl. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Polemicist Posted November 25, 2013 Share Posted November 25, 2013 I had a couple of mates at Uni in the mid 90's who charged a damn lot for their airbrush artwork designs and then charged per hour to apply then to whatever surface the person required. A hand painted cab looks amazing next to the vinyl ones. Only ever seen one in person and this dude was an awesome graffiti artist so his design was damn sweet. He even did his own marquee with an airbrush. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damphon Posted November 26, 2013 Share Posted November 26, 2013 Your sideart looks fantastic! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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