Home Built Arcade Plans & Designs from the Internet
Examples of Other Great Arcade Machine Designs
Hey all! Since I haven’t had time to start building the Arcade System yet based on the plans I recently posted, I wanted to share some more great pictures and designs I have come across on other people’s sites.
It’s really cool to see how different a lot of the designs are, and also to see how many people are doing a “Build Your Own Arcade Machine” project.
Some of the sites I am linking to are older sites and they do not look like they are maintained anymore, but they have some good examples of Arcade Machine plans, including images of the systems being built.
If you know of any other good sites please make some recommendations down in the comments! I would like this post to act as a good reference that helps people find other examples of designs, to help get ideas for their home built arcade machines.
DIY Arcade Machine Construction & Design Images
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Jeff's Arcade - Supercade Classic Arcade System
Frostillicus Arcade - Home Built Arcade System
Doc's MAME Cabinet - How to Build a Arcade System
Robotron Seven Sided Dual Rotating MAME Arcade Cabinet
System 7 Home Built Arcade Machine
Neon MAME Arcade Machine by Knievel Kustoms
Tardis MAME Arcade Machine - Home Built System
Age of Steam - Steam Punk DIY Arcade System
Build a Home Arcade - System Guide
RetroBlast! - Metroid Mother Brain Super Console
DIY Furniture Grade Cocktail Arcade Machine
Lachlan's Arcade Cabinet - Home Built Arcade System
Stuarts's Home Brew Arcade System
Home Built Arcade Machine Resources & Feedback
There are so many talented & creative people out there that it is hard to check out every DIY Arcade site on the web. If you know of a good one I have missed please let me know and I will add it to the post.
A lot of the best resources I have found have been from the recommendations of other people, and I love seeing all the sites they stumble across on the web.
Thanks for checking out my site, if you have any questions or comments please share them with me below.
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!