Present for John

Here is the construction and results of this project...

I built the same frame as before -- bartop styled cabinet. Both sides I painted white; front, top, and back are painted blue.

Here are the guts of the system. In the upper-right corner you can see my still-unfinished but working prototype cabinet from the other blog.

Here is the underside of the control panel I wired up. Instead of an I-PAC, this time I used a KeyWiz device from GroovyGameGear. (http://www.groovygamegear.com/Page5.html) In fact, all of my control panel parts came from Groovy Game Gear this time, and I'm very happy with them -- especially the easy 4-way to 8-way lever-changing joystick. It is FAR easier to use.

The top side of the control panel. 1st and 2nd player start buttons; green button = coin; big black button = exit; top small black button = save game state; bottom small black button = load game state (a wonderful feature to have); blue,red,white,blue buttons = action buttons 1 2 3 and 4. I love the Groovy Game Gear 4-to-8 lever-switching joystick! And the flat metal panel is nice! Other joysticks have for screws on the top of each corner, and they tend to scrape your fingers and knuckles depending on how you rest your hands.

Sideways undershot of control panel. Note the speakers mounted, and the grey wires leading to a volume-control circuit board. It was a pain to devise a way to mount the volume control and have it work nicely.

Here we are: guts in place, monitor mounted, control panel mounted, and everything is working nicely.

Game test with camera flash on.

Game test with camera flash off. Looks sweet in the dark.

And here's the finished product: FRONT SIDE

RIGHT ANGLE

RIGHT SIDE -- Note the little black volume control knob under the control panel, and the red power switch on the upper right next to the side-art.

BACK SIDE -- Note the fans with metal shields on top. I put two brass latches on the bottom to secure the panel. Plus, you can see the blue molding on both sides.

LEFT SIDE

LEFT ANGLE

Once you boot up the system, you get this little montage I created

70's Menu: Here you have all the UBER-CLASSICS from the 1970's. Talk about OLD SCHOOL.

Then you have the All Time Favorites menu -- all the games that gained arcade gaming noteriety (and bring back the most nostalgia for us old school gamers).

Next menu is of various hits of the early and mid 1980's.

Then there's a menu for other hits of the 1980's. These games boot up using the Raine emulator.

The Capcom classics menu -- these games boot up on the Callus emulator and play wonderfully!

This menu gives you many Vector-technology games -- vector games like Battle Zone, Asteroids, Tempest... These games boot up on an earlier version of MAME -- one that does not require a ton of system resources and still maintains a nice framerate.

The relatively unknowns menu... There's so many great (and not so great) games out there, so I decided to put all of them into an obscure/japanese menu. Some of them are just fun to go through and play, and ask "What the hell were they thinking when they made this game?"

Finally, the exit screen. This is a montage of game screenshots I put together, and then added shadowed text.