Build Your Own Arcade Machine – Plans, Designs & Guide
Designs & Measurements for a Home Built Arcade System - (First Draft)
I got together with a friend of mine Friday night who is a commercial carpenter. He’s a great guy and I love to get his feedback on any of the weird projects I am planning because he always has a lot of good ideas and suggestions.
I tend to over think things a lot of the time, and he is able to show me a more practical way to do the same thing. Now in all fairness I don’t know much about working with wood, so it is good to get the extra input on my projects.
After sitting down and having a couple beers we were able to go over some of the plans I have already made. We discussed a couple changes to the designs based on common building techniques and practices.
Some of the things we covered are as follows…
Arcade Machine Design Considerations
- The Arcade Machine will be built out of MDF using (staple name?) and (joint name?) to hold the cabinet together.
- The pieces for the system will be pre-cut ahead of time to make it easier for us to assemble the arcade machine. (We will be adding a video on the construction of the arcade cabinet to YouTube and this will not include the wood pieces being cut since it is what it is.)
- I will be providing the first draft of my plans, with detailed measurements for the pieces. (NOTE: These plans may vary from the final design as changes might be made during the construction process for practicality.)
- If the design changes alot from the original plans I will provide updated plans with the final measurements and design of the Arcade Machine.
Download Arcade Plans Below for Your Own Home Built Arcade Machine
Since I have been structuring my site as a guide for anyone that wants to build their own DIY Arcade Machine I wanted to make my initial plans available for download so anyone can work off of them.
(NOTE: The zipped versions of the Arcade Machine plans below have been saved to a large image size in order to retain detail. I recommend using "Windows Picture and Fax Viewer" to view and print the images correctly on your PC.)
(NOTE: The design meansurements below are based on measurements of the LCD I am using which measures 12.5" inches high and 14.5" inches wide.)
Arcade System Plans - Rough Sketches & Ideas
Click Here to Download (Detailed Print Version)
Arcade Machine - Photoshop Designs - First Draft
Click Here to Download (Detailed Print Version)
Arcade Machine Plans - Design Measurements
Click Here to Download (Detailed Print Version)
DIY ROM Arcade Design Plans - Conclusion
As you can see from the initial plans I have drawn up, I have a pretty clear idea of how I want the layout for my Arcade Machine.
I will be updating and adding to this post as I revise, improve, or change the plans listed here. But I feel that these designs offer a good place for me to start, and for anyone else that would like to borrow ideas from my initial designs.
If you have any questions or feedback please feel free to leave comments and I will try to answer them, or clarify anything that is unclear in the designs.
DIY Arcade Machine Design for Internal Components
Planning the Internal Design of the Arcade System
Ok guys. Today we are going to be doing some more studying and planning for the design of our Arcade Machine. In the last post we checked out the way vintage arcade systems were designed to get a feel for the look of our arcade cabinet. Today we will be studying the insides of manufactured arcade machines, and build it yourself arcade systems that people have designed to get a better idea of the internal layout.
The first thing we need is a good resource for the internal layout of some vintage manufactured arcade systems.
I found a great article on About.com entitled “A Look Inside a Classic Arcade Cabinet”.
It has some good shots of the inside of a vintage arcade cabinet, along with basic explanations of each picture and the components.
There is also a lot of great reading material in the Wikipedia article on Arcade Cabinets. I recommend browsing through it for some interesting information on how classic arcade machines were designed.
I also found a nice compilation of sites from DIY Arcade builders that have shared their designs with others to give people a good idea of where to start. They can be located here at Arcade Controls.com - Arcade Cabinet Plans.
These are mainly to give readers a good idea of how to get started with their plans. I have found that one solution is never ideal for everyone, so chances are you are going to be doing your own plans from scratch.
I wanted to cover some of the internal design considerations I will be making as I come up with my designs.
- Considerations for how to mount an LCD monitor in a home made Arcade Cabinet.
- How to design a backlit area for a marquee on the top of the system.
- Create an area for the wiring below the controls to keep this separate from the rest of the internal components.
- Come up with a way to mount a trackball mouse into the controls for “roller ball” controls used in games like Centipede.
- Design an easy to wire, highly effective controller for the system that does not have problems like blocking or ghosting associated with keyboard controls.
- Mount internal components and hardware based on standard computer case layouts in the bottom of the system.
- Have USB ports accessible for connecting controllers to the system for use as a console.
- Build accessible video out options for when the cabinet is being used as a console.
- Proper venting to exhaust warm air and keep the temperature inside the system at appropriate levels.
- Power solution for computer and monitor to power both devices while only needing to plug into one outlet.
These are some of the considerations I have in mind for my designs. Hopefully this will help you come up with considerations you will need to make when you are working on your own design.
In my next post I will be sharing some of the designs I have been working on as well and sample plans you can download for the construction of the cabinet. Thanks for checking out DIY ROM Arcade!
Top 25 Arcade Machines – Arcade System Designs
Planning Out The Arcade System Design
Ok, so the first thing we will want to do when planning out our Build It Yourself Arcade Machine is study actual vintage Arcade cabinets to get a feel for how we want to design ours.
I think that this is an important step because I want my Arcade Machine to have a very authentic look and feel to it. I check around online for some good examples of Arcade Cabinets and found some great links on a website called Killer List of Video Games (http://www.klov.com/)
The site has a ton of pictures of Arcade Machine cabinets, Marquees, Screenshots and Artwork. For the purpose of this post we are going to be looking at the shape and dimensions more than artwork.
I have compiled a list of my top 25 favorite arcade machines from when I was growing up and I will be using these as examples for the study.
Top 25 Best Arcade Machines:
01. Asteroids
02. Bubble Bobble
03. Centipede
04. Contra
05. Defender
06. Donkey Kong
07. Final Fight
08. Frogger
09. Galaga
10. Ghost n Goblins
11. Lunar Lander
12. Marble Madness
13. Metal Slug
14. Missle Command
15. Moon Patrol
16. Pac Man
17. Paper Boy
18. Q*bert
19. Raiden
20. Rampage
21. Space Invaders
22. Star Wars
24. Tempest
25. Tron
(This list is basically arcade machines off the top of my head. If you have some better ones you think deserve to be in the list, or have a better example of a good looking cabinet please leave a comment and I consider adding it to the list!)
Observations of Arcade Machine Designs
From studying the similarities in most of these systems we can gain several insights into how to design an authentic feeling Arcade Machine.
The first thing we notice in all the designs in that while the controls and marquee layouts can vary, the display is almost always in the same spot, and same position. Some arcade machines make use of the display in two ways. On some it is horizontal like your standard 4:3 TV displays but on others it is turned on its side to give it a tall, narrow feel which would be good for games like Centipede and Galaga.
For my design I will be utilizing a 4:3 standard display setup as this applies to the majority of games out there. Considering that I am planning to do a miniature arcade machine this means my system will need to be at least 15” wide to accommodate a standard 17” (LCD) monitor.
I will be going with an LCD monitor for this project and will go into more detail on it when we discuss the PC hardware selection in a later post.
The next thing I notice with most of the arcade cabinets is that if you remove the marquee, the lower half and upper half of the cabinet is roughly the same height. For the miniature system I will be making the lower half of the unit about 1/3 the height of the system with the top half being roughly 2/3's of the total size.
I will be doing this to make the unit more compact so it is more convenient to play on a table or desk. This will also help create a smaller unit that is easy to store as it will not take up as much space as a full size arcade machine.
Because I will be making the bottom of the unit smaller I am going to ad a slight slope to the front of the system to create a little wider base on the cabinet for stability.
Another common feature we notice on a lot of these units is that the marquee is usually pushed back farther than the controls. I am guessing this is so people do not bump their head if they are leaning into the system. I will be designing my system with this in mind since on a miniature system this may get in the way of someone’s view if they are sitting over the unit.
A lot of the units we see here also have some sort of shroud around the display which helps block out light from glaring on the screen. I think this is a great idea and will be incorporating it into my design also.
The last major feature we notice on a lot of these units is how the controllers come out from the system at an almost horizontal angle. I would like to copy these designs and make it so my display and controls are at roughly a 120 degree angle from one another, similar to if you have a laptop open with the display tilted back.
Overall this gives us a great idea of where to start with our design.
I now have a good idea of common traits and design features from various Arcade cabinets and can begin to work up some sketches based on what we see here.
A few other things to keep in mind while I work on the design are the following:
- I would like a marquee on the system that actually lights up so I will need to plan for a light kit in the top portion of the system.
- The controls need to be comfortable to use so I will need to utilize the entire width of the system and possibly design them a little wider depending on how the initial mock up feels.
- I want the ability to use a third party controller with the system so I can play it like a console if the mood strikes me. I also plan on designing it so I can hook the system up to my television and play it like a true couch potato, so the ability to use a USB controller with it is a "needed" feature for me.
- Because I want to be able to hook up the system to the TV I will need some sort of “convenient” video out feature on the system so I can connect it to the video in connection on my television.
- I do not plan on using CD/DVD drives with the system so I will be transferring data via a network connection and a USB memory stick. Because of this I will need an accessible network port and USB port somewhere on the system.
- I would like to have a keyboard that is hidden from “normal” use but can quickly and easily fold out if I am doing admin stuff with the system.
- The addition of a track ball mouse on the controller would give the system a more authentic feel for games like pong, breakout, and more. This will need to be worked into the design of the controller.
So overall this covers most of the considerations I need to keep in mind when drawing up sketches for possible design ideas.
In my next post I plan to follow-up with some of the potential designs I have had floating around in my head and try to plan out some concrete designs to work from. Thanks for checking out the site and look forward to my next post on creating our arcade machine design plans.