Building an Arcade cabinet
One thing I remember fondly from my childhood, was finding arcade cabinets in places like hotel lobbies and restaurants, while on vacation with my parents. I loved those big boxes full of entertainment. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, Pac-Man, Bubble Bobble, Donkey Kong and all the other fun games. I always thought it would be really cool having such a machine in your home. Well, I had to wait many years, until I had my own home and enough room and a budget. When I finished my master thesis, my wife gifted me a (job site) table saw, which I was eyeing for a while. I became quite interested in woodworking, while working and studying for my master degree. So, one of my first projects, were an arcade cabinet! I thought about buying some arcade board on ebay and trying to make it like the original ones, but I decided against it. Instead, I opted for a raspberry pi 4 and using the bulky cabinet as storage for my room. I started designing it in SketchUp and after I landed on a design I liked, I went out and bought a lot of plywood. 😀
Now it was time to transfer my measurements onto the plywood and starting to cut our the pieces with a jigsaw. I designed the cabinet to be made from three pieces. The bottom part, which will have a front facing door and be able to store my stuff, like a real cabinet.
The middle part, which is the controller board section of the arcade. Here I will house all the buttons and joysticks (I designed it to be a 2-player arcade cabinet) and the cables for all of that.
The third part would be the top section, which includes the screen and marquee. And basically the two side panels (so yeah, you could say it is five parts…). If I wanted to, I could just use the middle and top part and have a bartop arcade (but who would want that, if you can have the whole package, right?)
Since it was my first really big project in my woodworking journey and I still lacked a lot of experience (still do!) and tools, I pretty much botched the cabinet together. If I were to make it again today, I would make the bottom section quite a bit different, to give it more flexibility for storage (System 32) and probably a bit sturdier (not that I have anything to complain. That thing is massive and heavy!)
The door for the bottom section was a special challenge. I wanted a design, I remembered from my parents living room cabinet many years ago, when I was in my pre-teens. It wasn‘t a flat door, but comprised of three parts joined to form two angles. Let‘s say, I didn‘t thought it trough the first time around…
After remaking the whole thing, because I did miscalculate the angles I needed to cut and the door would not fit the cabinet, the next challenge (I thought) would be to adapt some concealed hinges I had lying around from some IKEA cabinet. You can imagine, that this did not go well either…
Luckily, after some frustrating trial and error, I did some research and found, that you can indeed buy specific concealed hinges for not perpendicular doors! Oh joy! I measured the angle and did find a fitting pair. Those were installed and worked like a charm! While working on the cabinet, I also did some on-the-fly adjustments, like doing some reenforcements in the middle section, which were not planned in the original SketchUp design. But mostly it all went down without major hiccups (lucky me!).
I have to say, I was heavenly inspired by Bob Claget‘s arcade cabinet builds on YouTube (I like to make stuff). He also did a Mortal Kombat 11 cabinet which could be seperated for better transportation (he had to ship it to the MK developers, after he was finished). But I still did build a lot of things differently.
Then it was time for painting. As a base I rolled on black on all the outer parts. and then I masked up some lines on the monitor frame and the control unit and sprayed it with some neon orange. The big plan for the side pieces was to comission some artist to make a cool artwork for it, which I wanted to print on some vinyl and stick to the sides. The idea was a bunch of those arcade game characters to hang out in an arcade together. Maybe, some day I will make it a reality…
With a router I made slots for the t-moulding and attached these with a wire cutter and a mallet. That really gave the whole thing the right “arcade-y” vibe. I installed the monitor in the frame. It is basically a friction fit and works really well. I wasn’t sure how hot it might get inside the cabinet, so I installed a metal mesh window on the angled top piece to allow for some air flow. Then it was time to wire the buttons up. That was quite the busy work, but in the end the harnesses I bought were easy enough to install. Of course it had to be light-up buttons!
And finally I took a thin piece of wood and attached rows of LED strips to it (ws2812b) and an ESP32 on the back. I flashed it with WLED and used it as the LED controller. A semi-transparent piece of acrylic glass and a sticker with my name for the arcade finished up the marquee for the cabinet. I installed two speakers under the marquee and an amp inside the cabinet. If you open the bottom door you can regulate the volume there. A raspberry Pi with RetroPie/Emulation Station runs the whole system and is quite nice and easy to install.
After that the cabinet moved to it’s place in my room. And what can I say, it is a conversation starter, when guests are there or someone notices it during video calls. And my nephew, friend’s kids and my daugher love it too.
