Author Topic: Cost of building a arcade cabinet/cabinet ideas?  (Read 823 times)

I've always wanted to make a arcade cabinet as like a project, and I wanted to know how much it'd cost in wood and plastic and other stuff.

I want to make one that looks like this:



Things I think I'd need:
wood: lots of it
plastic: also lots of it
speakers: 2 long ones I think
monitor: something similar to a CRT, like the one in the picture
joysticks: 2 6 buttons w/ joysticks
buttons: 2 1P and 2P buttons, and 2 coin insert buttons (who's gonna need coins?)

I'm being specific because I plan to make it a Tetris: The Grandmaster 3 Terror Instinct machine. Have a copy my father had a while ago on PC, and I'd throw my PC into the cabinet. Yes, this is a game that runs on Windows, not MAME.

Any good ideas and tutorials around to help? Unsure if this would be better in Creativity or not.

Thanks guys.

badspot made a thing like that on his YT channel


his was a MAME tho
The build process and hardware is still the same, it's just the software that's different; putting a native windows game on it instead of an emulator

If you decide to do this make sure you know what you're doing. the monitor part of old arcade cabinets store enough electricity to kill you if you touch them in the wrong spot even if the thing's unplugged.

My dad loves Arcade cabinets. lol
One of them is X-Arcade and only accepts the resolution 800x600, if it is too over, the pixels go all weird and text appears as "OVERLOAD"
It's stupid like that...

And the second one was an arcade that actually was a working old arcade! And of course, it got changed into a Windows XP PC (this was long ago).

Both arcades had/have MAME on them, best Arcade emulator


Probably best to ask your local hardware store for all the costs

forgetin expensive

there's a local dallas group who recently built their own faux arcade cabinet and for wood n hardware n equipment n everything it was like 800$, not including labor costs and the cost to ship the damn thing around

Put in a Raspberry Pi and slap it in the cabinet.

Put in a Raspberry Pi and slap it in the cabinet.

use an arduino, make terrible 8x8 resolution games

Put in a Raspberry Pi and slap it in the cabinet.
Maybe I am too modern but wouldnt it just make more sense to go mini ITX and use a flat IPS panel to make it "Seem" more like a CRT?

Also to the op, You might be able to get away with using mostly palette wood making that part significantly cheaper. As a practicality if you arent willing to do 90% of the work for things like this yourself the cost would get very expensive very fast, I.E. buying plastic sheet and bending it yourself.

Just for the hell of it I threw something together, PC Part list and monitor this system is probably way overkill for what you are trying to do on it. The practicality of something like this is highly interesting to me because likely you'd need some custom joysticks made for usb and some buttons also rigged to usb.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2015, 01:04:07 AM by Mule »

Why not get one of those old component cable tvs with the rounded screen and then use a component to vga adapter for the screen?


Or maybe Badspot will show up and give us his great knowledge on arcade cabinets.