Building a Bar Top Arcade

When my wife and I were looking for our house, I told her that a requirement of mine was space to put my pinball machine.  It has been in storage for the past decade, and of course it wasn't working when I finally moved it into my house (I got it repaired and it was working great, until it stopped working again.).

Having a pinball machine in my basement got me thinking about quite a few different projects that I could do for my basement - the first was making a house for my kegerator in the form of a bar, and the second was a MAME cabinet.

A MAME cabinet is basically a computer that uses real arcade controls to play real arcade games in a cabinet that you do your best job to make look like an actual arcade game.  Now, I had the space for the pinball machine, and I had the space for the bar, but I did not have space for a full blown arcade game.  So when I was talking to my wife about it, we decided on a cocktail cabinet.  That's the one where you sat down and played Ms. Pac-Man in the local pizza joint.

Of course, before I could build that, I had to build the bar.  And before I could build the bar, I had to build some bookshelves.  I did both of those things - and just in the nick of time, since my deadline was our rehearsal dinner which we were hosting at our new home, which was fall of 2010.

After doing those two large projects (yes, building bookshelves was a lot harder than I thought it would be and I definitely consider it a "big project.") I sort of forgot about the arcade cabinet.  I'm not really sure what re-sparked my interest in it, but I started planning it out.  And in doing so, I decided that a cocktail cabinet would take up too much space in my basement (although I still content it would make an awesome, albeit, awkward coffee table down there).

However, all was not lost, and I decided that a bar top arcade would be sufficient.  I did, after all, have a bar on which I could place the bar top arcade that I was building.

And so I've started the process.  I am using Google SketchUp to make a 3-D model of the cabinet.  I ordered the authentic arcade parts, I have a computer to load all of the software on, and I bought a new monitor.

I still have a ton of work to do, like actually creating it from the design, painting, assembling, adding the t-molding, making all of the graphics for the marquee, side art, and control panel.  It's a long road ahead, but I have an awesome idea for the art, the controller parts came in, and I found an awesome front-end to give a really cool arcade experience.

Once I have anything to actually show for the project, I'll be sure to post them.