A Labor of Love: The Arcade Cabinet

*This is a Pastebin conversion that I wanted to throw on here. Because it'll be a lot easier to navigate with the formatting and pretty pictures, I feel it's only appropriate that I touch it up to be blog-friendly.

Alright, so for no reason in particular I'd like to chronicle some thoughts on this large and unnecessary arcade cabinet I have sitting in my basement through a hodgepodge of images and private YouTube videos I've created over the past year.

The Cabinet

The struggle to get it to this point was a long, but mostly enjoyable one.

So! I bought myself a nice arcade cabinet through a company called RecRoomMasters. They're basically the IKEA of Arcade Cabinets. They send you the kit, then you put it together yourself. When it arrives, you add whatever internals you want on your own (monitor, PC, speakers, and controls if you don't want to buy their frankly overpriced joysticks). These guys were great to deal with and I would highly recommend them. And please understand that this is not a promotional writeup. I'll be discussing some of their services throughout this post, but that's because they were integral to my cabinet existing in the first place. I'm also aware that there are some die-hard arcade DIYers that absolutely despise them because I guess they don't understand that not everybody has professional wood-cutting tools and spare time. To them, I say p-shaw!

Anyway, through RecRoomMasters, I bought their barebones 27-inch upright cabinet. 27 inch meaning the size of the widescreen LCD monitor it supports. I was debating between the 27 inch and their slightly larger 32 inch model but ultimately settled on the 27 incher because it was more affordable, and the control board I slotted inside was flush with the edges.

The cool thing is, they'll also put custom artwork on the cabinet. You can get artwork made-to-order and they'll print it at the time of manufacturing, or you can order it after the fact and they'll send you some giant decals. I commissioned them to whip up some side art for the cabinet, then submitted my own marquee that I put together myself. Basically, I asked that they use part of an existing sideart that I'd seen on their website, and also gave them a couple suggestions and reference images to make it more distinct. Within a few days, they sent me a mockup and I thought it looked great! Fortunately, that was also the case in-person.

There was a lot more to the whole kit, but this gives you an idea of what it looked like when it shipped.

It took me just a few hours to put together. What can I say? It looks like an arcade the instant you see it.

 Granted, it doesn't look like a great one yet. Note the ugly ass controls. That's the XArcade Tankstick. My cabinet was made specifically for that controller before RecRoomMasters began designing their own control boards. So again, rather than buying their offering, I purchased a Tankstick on sale for .. I don't recall, but let's say 75 bucks give or take.

Also note the t-molding (those rubber bumpers on the edges of the cabinet). It comes in a stock black. I later purchased a 'Galaga Green' roll of t-molding and replaced it myself to make the cabinet look even more retro and obnoxious (see first image).

That brings us to the next complication.

The Practicality of Arcade Controls

Love it or hate it, I bought myself a Tankstick. I know pretty much everybody on the internet has seen one of these hulking beasts. Between that and the DIY arcade kit, I can practically see the eyes rolling.

This is the Tankstick sitting on my computer desk.

Dang.

Okay, so the reasons I purchased the TankStick are simple. It has lots of buttons (8 per player to be exact), supports 2 players, and it has a trackball. This means that my arcade can accomplish a variety of important things:

1) Multiplayer. This is essential for reasons I shouldn't have to explain. Also, if I want to play a dual-stick game like Robotron or Smash TV, I'm set.

2) Multiple control schemes. I've got plenty of buttons for games that require it, and a trackball for games like Marble Madness, Cameltry, Centipete, Millipede, etc.

An interesting bonus is that the trackball is a perfect replacement for spinners that you'd find in games like Tempest and Arkanoid. Since those games only have an X axis for movement, the trackball can be rolled left/right to achieve the same effect. I'm all about a pure experience, but this was an exception that I consciously decided not to spend more money on, and am very happy with my decision.

3) It's common. Seriously, this is a huge reason. There's so much documentation on the Tankstick that it's unbelievable. In this particular case, it was so I could order custom, pre-cut artwork for the control board without having to measure and carve it out myself. Also so I could swap out all the internals I didn't like without having to build my own control board from scratch.

This was the design I eventually slapped together and ordered: 

This was also done through RecRoomMasters, and it took them all of a week to mail it to me after I submitted it. It has a few minor mistakes that I overlooked when designing it, but I may or may not order a slightly revised one in the future because it was only 35 bucks or so.

Software and A E S T H E T I C

Alright, so if it's not completely obvious by now, my setup is being driven primarily by MAME. I've also got some Steam games and some other old-school emulated games hanging out, but MAME is the primary focus. For anybody living under a rock, MAME is the "Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator". In short, it plays a metric crapload of arcade games with a reasonable amount of accuracy. Well, that's also debatable, but it's not a conversation for right now.

Anyway, I've got thousands of games on MAME, but only a comparative handful that I go out of my way to play. That's where two very vital programs come in: "Attract Mode" and "LEDBlinky"

Attract Mode is a frontend that lets me select all my games. It can be customized to be simplistic, or fancy. I prefer fancy. Here's a demo of mine in action from a few months ago:

First 4 or so minutes show the interface, while the rest is loading games. Don't mind the framerate and video quality; It has since been addressed. I've also added a lot of games since then, as well as made my MAME games look more "authentic," but I'll get into that in a little bit.

Okay, onto LEDBlinky. It's a very rudimentary (yet versatile) application that works alongside Attract Mode and many other frontends. I use it for a few reasons, but the one I'm going to focus on right now is shiny buttons! If you read above, you probably noticed that all of the buttons on my tankstick were black. Well, the Tankstick uses imitation joysticks and buttons very similar to oldschool "Happ" controls that were popular in US arcades throughout the 80s and 90s.

Unfortunately for the Tankstick, its default joysticks and buttons suck. So I gutted them right out and replaced them.

The first thing I had to purchase was an LED Control Board called a "Pac-Drive," which allows compatible PC software (such as LEDBlinky) to control up to 16 LEDs wired to it.

The Pac-Drive LED Control Board

The aforementioned LEDs I purchased next just so happened to ship alongside 16 arcade buttons with transparent bezels. These are "Spectra Eclipse" buttons, and I'm incredibly pleased with their unique aesthetic.

Spectra Eclipse Buttons

It's mostly eye candy. Mostly. P1 is neon green, P2 is neon blue. The buttons themselves are pretty nice. They're very clicky and responsive. My biggest gripe is that they require a little bit more force than I'd prefer. My standalone Street Fighter IV Fightstick has Sanwa buttons. Looking at Sanwa buttons the wrong way makes them actuate. The Eclipse buttons, however, you can reasonably rest your fingers on top of without much worry of them pressing down. The switches themselves only require 20g of force to actuate, but the button springs are a little stiff, making that 20g moot. I'd like to get lighter springs for them eventually, but it's a non-pressing (zing!) issue at the moment.

I believe I've established that the buttons are quite pretty. The problem with having all the buttons lit up at the same time is that some games only require 1 button to play, while some require a lot more. Sometimes the buttons even need to be bound to specific locations. How are players going to know which buttons to press with certain games? I'll know, sure. But sometimes I might forget. New players won't know what the hell to do.

That's where LEDBlinky's customization comes in.

Button Utility

Here's the meat and potatoes of these buttons. Control schemes! Okay, so let's take a look at the game Asteroids. Here's the default control scheme for an Asteroids Arcade Cabinet:

 

Now how the hell am I going to replicate that with my current button layout? I suppose I could bind Left/Right on the P1 side, and Thrust/Fire on the P2 side.. but then if I had a 2nd player, we'd have to switch after every death and make somebody watch from the back. I'd rather have it to where P1 and P2 controls are mirrored, thus allowing us to stay in the same seat for extended sessions.

Well fortunately, you can bind games in MAME any old way you want. And with LEDBlinky, you can configure it so that only the buttons that are active in-game are illuminated. What to do..

Behold!

I'm gonna pat myself on the back a little here, because I think this control scheme is very clever. My hands don't overlap at all, and everything feels very natural. So basically, I mirrored the controls for P1 and P2 (which is what I did for all games that only have one control board). I'm also aware that technically P2 could hijack the controls, but we're working off the buddy system here. A bonus is that this control scheme allows for 2-players simultaneously in Space Duel, the fantastic third game in the Asteroids trilogy.

I should also note that the joysticks will let you rotate Left/Right as well, for those who aren't into the whole button-exclusive theme in Asteroids. MAME allowing for keybind redundancy is a very welcome feature.

Some other keybind examples:

Street Fighter

Defender

Original Multi-Williams / Defender board for reference

While not all of the control schemes are perfectly accurate, they do more than their part to get the job done.

It goes deeper! Joystick Utility

Okay, let's talk Joysticks. The Tankstick's default joysticks are kind of balls. They're okay for casual play, but if you want to do anything hardcore or precise with them, you're going to want to replace them or look elsewhere for another control board. In my case, I replaced them. Form factor was key in my decision to purchase a Tankstick, so I chose this dark path.

Alright, so in many classic arcade games, you have 2 popular types of joysticks. 4-way and 8-way. What that means, is that there's a "restrictor gate" in joysticks that allow them to have a "full" range of 8-way motion (think of an NES d-pad with diagonals), and a "limited" 4-way range (think of games like Pac Man where you'd never go diagonal).

Restrictor Gates come in many different shapes and sizes, but in this case, we'll be focusing on ones shaped like rounded squares

Traditional Square Gates. Top is "8-Way" position, bottom is "4-Way." Note the Red Switches, which never change position.

As you may be able to see in the above image, a square restrictor gate has rounded edges, and also serves the purpose of preventing the joystick shaft from having too much free range, or "throw". These joysticks have 4 "switches" inside. Each Switch is generally located on a cardinal direction. When the joystick's shaft actuates a switch, a signal is sent to the arcade machine.

That's why restrictor gates are so important. The rounded-square shape is significant because it can work in both 8-way and 4-way mode. When it's positioned as a standard "square," it allows the joystick to actuate up to two switches at the same time for 8 degrees of motion. Up, Down, Left, Right and 4 corners (all corners will actuate 2 switches for diagonals).

However, if it's turned 45 degrees to a "diamond" shape, it will only allow the joystick to trigger 1 switch at a time. Up, Down, Left and Right. This is ideal for games like Pac Man, Donkey Kong, and any other game designed for only 4 directions.

My Joystick Workaround

So now that I've primed you on specific joystick controls, I can go into detail about my next conundrum. Joystick versatility. Of course I'd like to make sure that my games are controlled properly and accurately with joysticks. But how exactly can I play 8-way games and 4-way games the way they were intended on a single arcade cabinet?

I replace the shitty Tankstick Joysticks with special joysticks that allow on-the-fly switching, of course!

Enter the ServoStik

This joystick is key to my setup, and I've got two of them installed on P1 and P2. The beautiful thing about these joysticks is that they have a specialized servo motor that will automatically rotate my restrictor gates based on what game I'm playing. Remember LEDBlinky? It also controls the ServoStiks! So after some elbow grease by way of software configuration, all I have to do is choose whatever game I'm playing through Attract Mode and both gates rotate to the proper joystick layout. Whenever I play 4-way games, I don't have to worry about sloppy inputs ruining my good time- and when I want to play 8 way games like fighters, I have the reliability of a modified Sanwa joystick running the show. It really is a win-win.

Getting them installed in my tankstick was a royal pain in the ass, though. I had to dremel the inside and use custom mounting plates just so they'd fit. I would only recommend this if you have a ton of patience. Once they're installed and configured, however, it's pretty much set it and forget it.

Visual "authenticity" in MAME

Though it was originally powered by a laptop, my arcade is currently being driven by a very capable desktop-grade PC, with the visuals being displayed on a low-latency 27 inch LCD Monitor. I can stream from the cabinet at 720p 60fps and use it for just about anything non-arcade if I really want to. But because of those factors, as well as the games being emulated via MAME, it's not an authentic arcade experience. Sure, it looks nice.. but every modification I mentioned above is so it feels nostalgic, yet somewhat accurate. Believe me, it's my dream arcade. I'm happy that the hard work I put into it paid off! But I want to be absorbed into the experience. I want it to not only feel authentic, but also to look it, even if it truly isn't.

That's where MAME filters come in! I'm not going to go into every detail, but here are some example screenshots so you can get a general idea of how I emulate the look and feel of a CRT, and even a Vector Monitor.

Truxton II (Vertical CRT)

Joust (4:3 CRT)

Space Fury (Vector Monitor)

The Final Touches

The last thing I did to my cabinet was adding a strip of LED lights behind it for effect. It's obnoxious, and I usually have them on one static color.. but this video shows how spiffy the whole thing could look at a glance.

The last addition I made to my cabinet was a Coin Door. You can't have an arcade cabinet that doesn't accept quarters, can you? Well, I guess. But it's just not the same! After I installed it, all I had to do was splice the Coin-Mech wire into my default Credit Button and memories of me begging my parents for more quarters came flooding back to me.

And this next video is just for reference, should you be inclined. As I was putting my arcade together and tinkering with everything, I made some private videos that I showed to a couple friends. I'm still keeping them unlisted, but I'll share them here in case you're curious. This showcases the coin door, and explains some other dumb crap that I've already talked about above.

I've since fixed the issue where it defaults to 4-way instead of 8-way in Attract Mode. I'm sure you were very concerned.

I suppose that's everything! All in all, I'm glad I transitioned this writeup from Pastebin, as I doubt many people wanted to manually copy/paste all of the links. But even moreso, I'm glad I could share this unique reminder of a childhood that I can only ever recall.