Arcade 1UP cabinets

[Harrison]

I used to have an arcade cabinet that I had converted from a real one into a MAME cabinet. But after moving house a couple of times it started to fall apart and when I had a good look it wasn't worth trying to save as it was mainly chipboard and very heavy with the CRT. So I stripped out the controls, wiring and boards with the intention of building a new one, but haven't ever got around to doing it. These cabinets interest me interested if I can customise them to add more games. Far cheaper than buying the custom emulation cabinets you can get. Those, even flatpack, can cost over £1000.

[Demon Cleaner]

That ship has sailed for me, no space and also not real interest anymore, just playing my retro stuff lying on the couch is much more comfortable. And I know about the retro feeling of a cabinet but nah.

[Harrison]

I know what you mean, but there is something special about playing arcade games on a real cabinet. More so games from the 80s where a real joystick and buttons make the difference.

[J T]

There are some things in life that I want, and have looked at before, and could possibly acquire, but know that they'd likely get used so rarely that it'd be almost a waste of time, space and most certainly money.

An arcade cab (with joysticks and buttons) with a whole selection of games
A proper sized pool table
A big surround sound system
A fancy gaming PC set up
An outdoors swimming pool
A nice mountain bike
Proper 5-a-side style football goal posts with nets
Full height basketball ring

(in no particular order)

[Demon Cleaner]

You have to consider something else too, setting the whole thing up.

What do you want to run on it, solely MAME? Or other retro systems too?

Do you wanna make a RetroArch installation only, running EmuELEC or Batocera?

RetroArch is fine, runs a lot of systems but is a complete pain in the ass to set up. Not only game wise, but mostly controller setups and configurations. That's where in my opinion it lacks the most. Setting everything up takes hours only to notice that 1 week later it's not working anymore already and you restart the whole procedure. Not talking even about setting hotkeys which you definitely need.

Do you plan to add games or to make a ready setup and never touch it again? That is the best option of course, as like I mentioned, fiddle around too much with RetroArch and it ****s you over.

Best would be to install a RPi4 inside, which is powerful enough to run retro games, I have mine completely set up with 1TB SD card with around 30.000 games and it runs almost everything fine, even Daphne, which is obviously nice on an arcade cabinet. You don't even need the computer stuff, just concentrate on consoles, skip also DS and 3DS due to the dual screens.

Getting arcade stick controls working properly is probably the biggest issue, also not easier on Linux.

Just get a ready MAME cabinet, pay the triple, but it works out of the box

[Harrison]

If you didn't want to setup an emulation front-end then there are preconfigured setups available. Some romburners now sell preconfigured HDs, and I know of at least 2 people in the emulation scene that create preconfigured RPi4 setups ready to go. So options exist for those without time, or can't be bothered to do it all themselves.

Obviously if then putting a preconfigured setup in an arcade cabinet you might end up having to redo the control configuration.

I would probably opt for a full PC build though with a full cabinet setup just to have the best emulators and options.

[Demon Cleaner]

Stay away from those preconfigured HDDs, they're a mess. Had one once, was very expensive and everything was just thrown in, several emulators existed multiple times, really annoying if you wanna change something, ROMs were a disaster, choice of games horrible, plus super unorganized, like the complete chaos, CPC464 f.ex. only had spanish versions of the games.

It's perhaps fine to buy and never touch if you don't have any clue, but it made my work double or triple. From that point on I stayed away from that crap.

Download one from Arcade Punks, they have many, and just unpack it on a disk and you're fine to go, not even spending money. They have builds fo 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and more. They're even a Launchbox one called [3tb]-Loaded.Launchbox.BigBox-Wolfanoz which includes already some good stuff, although no images, videos and stuff are included, if you don't need that than you're fine.

You can find that download here: https://www.arcadepunks.com/launchbo...-end-download/

Only thing you need to do is to sign up at Arcade Punks, but you don't need paid membership. The site is a bit a mess to navigate but other than that it has some very cool stuff.