Wife Approved Golden Age MAME Barcade

As a child in the late 70's and early 80's I spent my share of time in arcades playing games like Defender, Asteroids, Centipede, Tempest, and Space Invaders during the golden age of arcade games. The early games were different from today's games. There was a lot of variability in controls, the screen was often vertical, and most games were single player. There are a number of great MAME guides and arcade plans available so this guide will focus on what is unique for this cabinet. The main thing of course is the button layout for games of this period and the vertical screen. In addition, I wanted a cabinet that blended in with our furniture (so not an arcade look) and one that could be moved out of the way when not used. This is why I went with a barcade instead of a stand up unit.

This is not a easy project, but I'm not a woodworker and I handled it okay over the course of a few weekends. Some of my construction choices may not be standard, but it worked well enough and didn't require fancy tools. If you have access to a table saw, band saw, joiner, or a drill press it will make things easier and more precise. This design was heavily inspired by the excellent Instructibles from rolfebox and fishpotpete. I highly recommend you read through their builds even if you are going to do this build. They have lots of great tips.

The supply list is as follows. You should be able to reuse old computer hardware since games of this era don't require much computing power to emulate.

Tools

• Router
• Jig Saw
• Drill & Regular Drill Bits
• 73 mm Hole Saw ($10 Amazon)
• 20mm, 24mm, and 28mm Forstner Drill Bits (Full set for $28 on Amazon)
• Screwdriver
• Chisel
• Fine (220 Grit) Sandpaper
• Clamps
• Tape Measures, Builder's Square, etc.

Construction Materials

• Monitor Wall Mount ($6 Amazon)
• 10' Rubber U Channel Edge Trim, Fits Edge up to 0.08 Inch ($10 Amazon)
• 4 Cabinet Feet ($9 Amazon)
• 21.75x 22.5 0.08" Thick Acrylic Sheet ($25 Lowes)
• Six Simpson Strong-Tie 1.548-in x 2.75-in x 2.048-in 18-Gauge brackets ($9 Lowes)
• 40 #8 x 3/8" Phillips screws ($5 Lowes)
• Box of #6 x 1" Philips screws ($7 Lowes)
• Two 1/2" 2'x4' Sanded Birch Plywood ($50 Lowes)
• 6' of 3/4" Square Lumber to Secure Panels ($10 Lowes)
• 0.75"x 25' Iron-on Birch Edging ($9 Lowes)
• Stain & Polyurethane or Paint ($30 Lowes)
• Black Spray Paint ($6 Lowes)
• 1/2-in Overlay 1/2-in Inset Semi-wrap Surface Cabinet Hinge ($4 Lowes)
• Magnetic cabinet catch ($2 Lowes)
• 1 1/2" Cable Gromet ($7 for five Amazon)
• Brushes or Old Rags for Stain/Paint/PU Application

Electronics

• X-Arcade Trackball Assembly 3" ($50 X-Arcade)
• GRS USB Button Hole Spinner ($50 Amazon)
• Arcade Control Kit 2-Player ($47 The Geek Pub)
• Two USB-A to USB-B Cables ($10 Amazon)
• 22" Monitor
• Laptop/Small PC/Raspberry Pi
• Power Strip

Safety

• Nitrile Gloves (for stain and wipe on polyurethane)
• Safety Glasses
• Hearing Protection
• Dust Mask

Ignoring the tools, monitor, and computer, the total cost was approximately $350.

There are a few choices to made before you get too far into the project.

What kind of wood will you use (this will relate to if you want to paint or stain it)? If you go with painted, you may want to use T-molding instead of the iron-on edging. T-mounding can be bought in lots of different colors from arcade parts stores. You'll need to be comfortable routing in the slot on the edge of the panels. You also may need to upscale to 3/4" plywood if that is what the T-molding requires.

What controls do you want? My controls and their setup were designed to play the games I played as a kid and avoid interference between controls while maintaining reasonable layouts. The following games were the basis of my design, but many other joystick, button, trackball games can work.

• Asteroids
• Centipede
• Defender
• Donkey Kong
• Galaga/Galaxian
• Joust
• Missile Command
• Pac-man
• Robotron
• Space Invaders
• Tempest
• Zaxxon

You could also do Battlezone and Tron if you used a joystick with a trigger on it. If you need different controls you may need to adjust the control panel layout. If you look online you can find images of control panels for historic games and compare it to what is available with this layout. The current cabinet 22" width is set by the size of the control panel. You could make the whole system narrower if you removed a joystick and/or the trackball. Simply physically cut and tape the control panel template to what you need and scale the other panels accordingly. If you significantly modify the control panel you probably should protype it out to make sure the layout works the way you want. rolfebox has excellent instructions on how to do this in his Instructible.

What monitor do you want? I did a vertical screen because most my favorite games are vertical games. I eliminated the marquee seen on most cabinets to keep the overall height low with my vertical monitor. If you are going to use a horizontal monitor you may want to add a marquee to help balance the look of the cabinet. My monitor is an old 22" with a wide bezel. If you go with a smaller monitor the unit could be shorted by simply cutting back the top. Everything higher than 10" on the side panel template is linear so shortening it should be relatively easy. You would also need to make a shorter back panel and a deeper top panel. The overall depth might also be able to be decreased if you shorten it, but be careful or you may run out of interior space.

You can print the templates using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Choose poster mode when you print them and they will come out as a set you can tape together to make the final large scale templates. Be sure measure the printed grid to make sure the squares are one inch otherwise something caused a scale problem during the print. The template also shows the positions of the spanning panels. There are no templates for the spanning panels since those are all simple rectangles. The spanning panel measurements are given on the side panel template.

For the side panels, cut out the template and trace it onto the plywood. On the side panel template you'll see a diagram on how you can lay out the parts on a 2x4 board to maximize coverage and let you cut boards easily in parallel paths from the remaining piece. You will need two side pieces that are mirror images of each other if you are using a 2x4 board with one side better than the other so you'll have to flip the template over for the second one. If both sides of your plywood are good, you don't need to mirror the pieces. Note, if you mirrored pieces you will probably end up with the grain going different ways on each side panel.

Once you have transferred the templates to the wood, you can cut them out with your jigsaw. When cutting out your pieces, be as exact as possible. This is when a table saw and band saw would be a helpful, but you should be able to do well enough with a jig saw and a jig saw guide to get parallel cuts on the rectangular panel pieces.

First cut out the side panels. With the remaining part of the first 2'x4' board, you can cut out all the other panels except for the bottom and back panels. Those can be cut from the other 2'x4' board. Note the front panel ideally has a 13 degree bevel on the edge with the sloped control panel to allow them to fit together nicely. Everything should assemble reasonably well even if things are a millimeter or two off, but it will look better the closer everything is to parallel and square.

Print the template for the control panel and tape it down to the 22"x7.75" board you already cut for the control panel. Use a drill to drill pilot holes through the template for the controls using the template center points. Once you've done that, drill out the holes using the appropriate diameter bits. I used a 24mm bit for the small buttons, a 28mm bit for the large buttons and spinner, and a 20mm bit for the joysticks. Drilling carefully from the top side will help keep the top surface nice with all the damage happening on the back side. You'll need to use a router to thin the track ball area down to 1/4". jones424 has a great instructible covering the track ball installation. I used a Dremel and plunge router attachment that I already had and it worked fine instead of a router. I also used a hole saw instead of the hole jig Jones424 used. Once all the holes are made, attach some pre drilled 3/4" mounting blocks on each side so you can secure it to the frame in the next step.

There are many ways to join panels, but I found using some steel framing brackets was easy and made it nice and stiff. I wanted to avoid glue or nails so I could reconfigure things and access everything easily. To create the initial box, use four of the six brackets to attach the top and front panels to the side panels using the 3/8" screws as shown in the picture. Be sure to predrill the holes and use a drill stop so you don't go all the way through the board. This will keep the outside looking clean. You also want to be sure to leave a half inch space where the back and bottom boards fit into the structure.

With the box started, finish it out by mounting the control panel and some blocks 1/2 inch off the bottom to eventually secure the bottom of the box. Note the bottom of the box won't go on until it is wired since things get cramped under the control panel once the bottom is on.

As a last step, apply the iron on edging to the plywood to make it look nicer unless you are going to use t-molding in which case you'll need to route out the groove.

This is a good time to finish the wood panels including the yet to be added back and front. If you are a completist, you can also finish the monitor mount panel although it shouldn't show in the end. Note only some of the interior side panel will show in the final cabinet.

Since the bottom is still off, now is a good time to wire the control panel. If you are putting on button graphics it should be done before you mount the buttons. You can find graphics to print yourself or buy preprinted ones on the web. I only labeled the one player, two player, coin, and exit buttons. I kept most of the buttons unlabeled since their function will vary significantly by game. Instead as discussed later, I use a overlay on the screen for each game showing the controls. The black button in the upper right is the the left click from the trackball control. Having this button allows you to use the trackball like a mouse outside of games. This significantly reduces the amount of time a keyboard is needed.

Once everything is hooked up, test the controls with your games to make sure everything is wired correctly. You can actually setup a full test system by putting the monitor on its stand in the opening and configure and play a few games before everything gets buttoned up. Once the bottom goes on it will be harder to fix things on the control panel. If you don't have a MAME system working yet, you can plug the USB cables into a PC and check that the controllers work as expected.

The bottom is relatively straightforward since we did most of the hard work already. Attach the legs by drilling holes for the t-nuts about 2" from the edges. Screw the bottom on using the five attachment points added earlier. Note the bottom is screwed on from the outside to allow for future access to the underside of the control panel. Most other access needs can be handled through the back panel which will get a hinge instead of screws.

There are many ways to mount monitors in arcade cases. I'm not sure this is the best, but it worked for me and my monitor. Using the monitor mount piece (22"x4") put the wall mount bracket on one side and use steel brackets on the back to attach it to your cabinet. I used clamps to hold it in place while I found the perfect position for my monitor leaving a little space in front the monitor for the acrylic bezel. The monitor mount I used had a far amount of wobble so I found I needed to support the bottom of the monitor on the floor of the cabinet with a wood block built up to the correct height. Note although my wide screen monitor extends below the control panel, the games are still fully visible since they display on the upper part of the monitor.

I kept the back panel simple and large to make working on the internals as easy as possible. Attaching the panel is straightforward. Be sure to place the hinges far enough in that they don't overlap the top brackets, but not past the monitor edges to make drilling and screwing easy. I mounted a magnetic catch at the bottom left, although I'm not sure it is needed since the hinges I used have a spring closure built in. I opted not to put on a handle on the back panel since the door overhangs the bottom slightly due to the thickness of the hinge. Using this overhang it is easy to grab the lip and lift it up. I like the cleaner look of no handle.

If you need any holes in the back area of cabinet now is a good time to add them. I put in a hole to run the power strip plug through and covered it with a gromet glued in with E6000. It's your choice where you put the power cord hole. If you put it on the door though it will need to move when you open the door.

This part gets a little tricky. It is saved for last since the acrylic sheet is fragile and it is easy to get dust behind it or scratch it. To start with you'll need to measure your exact opening to size for your acrylic sheet. My acrylic sheet was 21.75"x 22.5:". I went down the whole depth of my monitor so I could have the acrylic sheet sit almost directly against my monitor (essentially extending the existing edges). If the bezel is significantly in front of the monitor you can get a parallax effect which allows the inside of the cabinet to peak through the edges of the bezel. As fishpotpete mentions in his Instructible, it's easiest to get the acrylic sheet cut at your hardware store when you buy it. Note, do NOT take off any of the plastic films before you need to. Also take home your scape pieces, they make good practice pieces.

Once you have your acrylic sheet do a rough test fit (adjust if necessary) and then cut the appropriate lengths of U channel and test fit again. Beveled corners look nice for the rubber, but aren't necessary. Note the rubber U channel edge trim is not required, but it will cover up any minor edge damage you may do and help fill any gaps or irregularities in you cabinet if things are not perfectly even.

Secure two pieces of the 3/4" mounting blocks to the frame to hold the bezel edges with screws. It can be useful to use a piece of 22" scrap wood and some clamps to place the wood blocks evenly up and down on both sides of the monitor. Ideally you want the acrylic sheet about a quarter inch from the face of monitor and even. I realized later it would have been good idea to paint them black before installing them. A bit of your bracket on the top panel may extend past your acrylic sheet if your monitor depending on how inset your monitor is. If that bothers you, paint the bracket black. It will be hardly noticeable.

With the wood support in place, hold the acrylic sheet in place and mark where you want to have it painted. Carefully cut the plastic away from this portion with a Stanley knife. It is good to practice this cut on a scrap piece of acrylic before you do the real cut. It doesn't take much pressure to cut the film. Spray paint the acrylic sheet with black paint using the remaining plastic as a mask. Once the paint is dry (I waited overnight), drill holes in the acrylic on the edges about 1 cm in from the edge and wide enough to easily pass the attachment screws. It is easy to crack the acrylic sheet close to the edge so drill gently. Once again, some practice holes on scrap can be useful. Remove the remaining film and thoroughly clean the case, monitor, and acrylic sheet. This is your last chance to easily clean the screen without removing the bezel screws. I attached the bezel to the mounting blocks using extra black screws that came with the back panel hinges which were too long for the panels.

There are already a lot of excellent guides on how to setup MAME and the associated software so I won't repeat those here. A few things I found helpful for this particular setup are as follows:

Calibration

The spinner and track ball need sensitivity adjustments by game to replicate the old cabinet feel. This is done using the analog sensitivity setting in MAME. Be sure to turn off any mouse acceleration in windows. There is a useful page on the arcade control site which shows the original spinner and trackball settings you can reference for your system.

Control Layout Diagrams

The control panel for this cabinet was designed to replicate the original game control layouts as best as possible. The PDF below has images of the mapping I used by game. When one side has only a fire button, I generally map all the buttons on that side to fire. This way the player can use which ever button is most comfortable for their hand and body size.

MAME Screen Details

With a 9x16 portrait monitor the game only takes up a fraction of the screen. Using the MAME artwork folder allows you to put things like a marquee across the top, a control panel guide across the bottom, and place the game anywhere you want. There is lots of good documentation online on how to write the .lay files. I use the marquee for landscape games since there is a fair amount of blank screen above and below the game on a portrait monitor.

This is example .lay code to put a marquee image (marquee.png) at the top of the screen and a control panel image (cp.png) at the bottom of the screen for landscape games.

<mamelayout version="2">
   <element name="marquee">
      <image file="marquee.png" />
   </element>
   <element name="cp">
      <image file="cp.png" />
   </element>


   <view name="Marquee">
      <bounds x="0" y="0" width="1080" height="1920" />


      <element ref="marquee">
         <bounds x="0" y="0" width="1080" height="310" />
      </element>


      <screen index="0">
        <bounds x="0" y="320" width="1080" height="810" />
      </screen>


      <element ref="cp">
         <bounds x="0" y="1450" width="1080" height="255" />
      </element>
    
   </view>
</mamelayout>

This is example .lay code to put the game at the top of the screen and a control panel image (cp.png) at the bottom of the screen for portrait games.

<mamelayout version="2">
  <element name="cp">
   <image file="cp.png" />
  </element>

  <view name="Marquee">
   <bounds x="0" y="0" width="1080" height="1920" />

   <screen index="0">
    <bounds x="0" y="0" width="1080" height="1440" />
   </screen>

   <element ref="cp">
     <bounds x="0" y="1450" width="1080" height="255" />
   </element>
   
  </view>
</mamelayout>

Speakers

I used the speakers on my monitor since the sound on the older games doesn't have that high of fidelity and I didn't need to get very loud. If better sound is important to you it wouldn't be difficult to add in dedicated speakers. You'll probably need to put some holes in the cabinet to allow the sound out, either on the side panels or on the front panel. All the 80's games are mono so a stereo system isn't critical. From what I could see online, the first stereo arcade game didn't come out until 2001.

Venting

So far I haven't added any extra venting to the cabinet beyond the natural gaps around the back door and between the control panel and the screen. For 80's games MAME doesn't tax even a weak computer so heat generation isn't that high. I'm also not running the system 24 hours a day. If heat becomes an issue there are options to add vents to the back panel or side panel with or without a fan.

• I would have sanded better. The birch veneer looked nice when I bought it, but there were some marks I didn't see until I stained it. Luckily the marks are mostly hidden by the dark stain.
• I learned to be gentle when starting the hole with the Forstner bit to not damage the veneer as much. You can see my first holes didn't look very good. Luckily the dark stain and button overhangs hid the damage pretty well. You may want to practice on scrap before drilling the control panel if you are going to stain it. If having both sides looking good is important, drill from both sides and meet in the middle.
• I'm still not thrilled with my monitor mounting solution. With a large old heavy monitor significantly narrower than the cabinet there were limited options.
• I used pine plywood for the bottom to save money. In the end it only saved $5 and wasn't worth the slightly different thickness or the inconsistent appearance. I should have used veneered plywood on all the sides.

What we have now is a computer and monitor in a mostly portable case with easy controls. By adjusting the software and adding a peripheral or two we can turn the cabinet into things beyond an arcade cabinet. For example:

• Jukebox - Connect it via Bluetooth to some nice speakers. The trackball can be used like a mouse to select music. Plexamp works well with the vertical screen.
• Photobooth - Mount a webcam on the top and wirelessly connect to a photo printer.
• Karaoke Machine - Add a wireless microphone and connect it via Bluetooth to some nice speakers. A wireless keyboard may be needed to allow searching by song title.

Software Links

MAME https://www.mamedev.org/

Hardware Links

Joysticks & Buttons https://www.thegeekpub.com/

Trackball https://shop.xgaming.com/products/x-arcade-trackball-assembly-usb

Spinner https://thunderstickstudio.com/products/usb-spinner