A dedicated emulation system

**Harrison** · 4th January 2007, 12:39

Having the space to situate an arcade cabinet is definitely the biggest problem. That is why I dismantled my self built cabinet a couple of years ago. It was huge and used up a lot of space. It ended up being the garage unused and eventually I dismantled it completely.

I am hoping to find the time to build a new smaller one at some point this year. The biggest difference will be to use an LCD instead of a CRT monitor. This has the disadvantage that my lightgun won't work any longer, but it's a small price to pay for the amount of room saved and there are not that many lightgun games for the PC or in MAME. I can always hook the gun up to a different system with a CRT when I wish to play those.

When I eventually get round to begin making the new system I will document the build and post it's progress on the forum as I go. This time I want to really take time to make it as nice as I can and even include a working coin slot with it's coin return buttons linked to the MAME add coin function. I also want to design full cabinet art transfers and get them professionally printed out to stick to the sides of the cabinet. I didn't try that with my original cabinet, that was just spray painted black and made from particle board. I also want to make it out of decent materials this time and will utilise my parents large garage to build it (if they will let me, or when they are on holiday

).

As for using the system, I would definitely get a lot of use out of it. Having a dedicated MAME cabinet definitely makes you play the games a lot more than just having the emulators on a normal PC.