More Pictures...

Finally got the monitor in






































My wife Mickey helping out with bolting the control panel on... isn't she a trooper?




































T-molding: check
Smoked glass: check
Administration panel: check











Close up on the admin panel




























Turned out very nice













Got some button labels from byoac.com member Pongo... Thanks again!









































Freeing up some space finally!




















Six prongs?














Five wholes??? Hmmmm...

Updated Pics

Pictures...

Well here is the cabinet in black, although the pic doesn't show it, it looks very dark and glossy in person... I thought it turned out very nice.

All it took was 3 coats of primer, and 4 coats of black. Very easy.

I thought this was going to be the toughest part of the control panel... turns out it wasn't that bad, I was able to layout the buttons rather painless.














Continuing with my theme of "no fucking space", I was able to do most of the wood work on a beautiful Saturday. In true redneck fashion I hung an extension cord out my front room window. Very classy.

















For recessing the trackball plate, I borrowed my dads router... turns out, it was complicated, and I just didn't care... so I took a chisel and a hammer and went to town... in no time I had my 1/16" of an inch. Victory.












My artwork, and Plexiglas... turns out my artwork was bigger than what Gimp was telling me... oh well. I kind of like it big. Anyway... I got the plexi from Ace hardware for $18, they cut all of the holes for free!














I took the template from BYOAC and edited it a bit in Gimp... then added "Ian's Arcade" in a font I found online called "Astro Boy". It looks pretty similar to the font in the mame logo. I lucked out again.











Here is a better view.













With the buttons added...














Another view... however as you can tell my artwork is producing a wrinkled effect, I took out all the buttons and started over, and over until this was minimized.













Bottom view...














Now I measured and remeasured where the holes were supposed to go for the plexi, but two of the Joysticks were off by mere millimeters... you would think it should be fine (like me) but it turned out the joystick was hitting the wood. So I lined it up best I could and Gorilla Glued the bastards on... Looks good now.








The wiring is a mess... half of it was mine and half was Drew's.. since I redid the controller wires were not the same size.. blah blah blah, I don't care it works.... :)












Starting to look real good, now for some finishing touches...

I wanted to glue quarters on the credit buttons, but found old arcade tokens I never used as a teenager... I polished them up the best I could, and glued them on..... Looks damn nice.

And here is my recessed track ball... doesn't look to bad if you ask me....

This arcade is now my bitch... Arcade 2 Ian 20,000

And here is what it will look like when it is all attached... notice my wife holding it up while I take a picture.... did I mention she rocks?

Artwork....

I figured if I have superior artwork, it would make up for my many (and I mean MANY) short comings when it comes to handy work/general man stuff. The wife is supportive, so I got a shot.

http://www.mamemarquees.com/
I first went here... found out there is a lot of options... expensive or really expensive..... shit.

Since I am on a budget I really didn't want to spend that much on art. Then I realized my local Kinkos would print anything I wanted... FOR $80! F-that. I settled for an internal compromise to settle my internal struggle regarding arcade artwork (it happens more times than you would think!)

I decided to go all out on the Marquee and semi out on the control panel, and zero out on the side art.

For the Marquee I went for this stunning number:




Which I liked despite all of the Nintendo Characters.. some of which have never had their own arcade game... sigh. But it looks nice. So that is a plus.

For my control panel I ripped off the artwork at http://www.jakobud.com/, well it was inspired by jakobud to tell you the truth.

I like it... simple and straight to the point.... and 100% mine... I recreated it with my own skilz (with a z).

But like everything I did more problems popped up... Where the hell am I going to print this? How am I going to figure out button layout? How the hell am I going to label the buttons? Am I going to have the arrows for the joysticks?????

Fast forward a couple days, and found out there is a huge printer at my work right below me... (I didn't know it was there because I have never needed to print huge ass documents okay?)

I asked my boss if I could use it, he gave me the thumbs up... the next person I had to talk to was my graphic artist... let's call him Bill. Bill printed it out and it looked great.. however it was printed on glossy paper which when sandwiched with Plexiglas it looks all wet. I figured hell it was free I can live with it... I then taped button wholes and arrows to it haphazardly because frankly I just didn't care about it....

More about that later.

Ready for PRIME TIME!!!!

Well, once sanded all I had to do was in theory fit it through the door and easily reassemble.... 2 problems with that bit of logic.

1) It's heavy bulky and fucking stupid. Putting the two sides together alone would have been impossible. And since the wife was out getting her nails done, I was fortunate to have a good friend of mine (Jeremy) give me a hand. Thanks again!

2) Oh, the second problem with that logic was it was a pain in the ass... no way was that an easy step.

I have to admit it looks good!

Time to Prime...

This was one step I was looking forward to for a long time... The whole painting part, a few things surprised me... one being the paint (A semi gloss black) and the primer together was $60.00. I can tell you now if you are reading this and are my wife, I'm sorry. But other than that it was fun.

I primed the inside where the light is going to go to help make it more reflective and drown out the light... I wonder how that's going to work out??? We'll see!

Primed!

I have decided to keep the front blue for a couple of reasons... it still looks very nice and it will go well with the Marquee I have picked out over at mamemarquees.com.

Overall I give the Arcade a point due to assembly, but I got the last laugh making him my bitch by painting him white... ha ha ha.

Arcade 2 Ian 3

Sand Master "B"

What a horrible title.... "Sand Master 'B'".... sorry.

Here are some exciting pictures of the world of sanding. Enjoy.

The Arcade came with a plasticy blue color thing... so pealing or sanding this off was a must!

See the difference???? See?????

I live in an apartment... it's small, but that wont stop me... go big or go home!

After sanding this side for an hour and a half, I realized the shitty dull blue under the plasticy blue is just going to have to stay. Not that I mind, I will just add more coats of primer and paint... no biggie!

Current Score:

Arcade 1 Ian 2

(I'm in the lead!)

Arcade Cabinet Comes Home.

My Arcade stuck in my living room.

I managed to get the cabinet off the truck and through my apartment door thanks to Mike and Drew. From there however we were screwed. It's a monster! It houses a 32" Arcade monitor with ease, which by my calculations this thing is close to 33-35" wide! My door ways inside are a a sad 31". My friend Mike thought the easiest solution was to rip off the molding long my door frames, I measured and remeasured and found that even if we did that there was no guarantee that it would fit. The only option was to take it apart. Sounds easy enough right??? Answer: False!

Arcade 1 Ian 0

The next day i was able to move the Arcade in my kitchen so I could move around freely in my living room. *** Side Note*** My wife is awesome, and was very supportive! *** End Side Note*** The next two days i did nothing but unscrew hundreds (seemed like thousands) of screws holding this monster together. I was able to get help removing the monitor thanks to Mike. Always get help for a number of reasons one being that this thing weighed a ton, and second, if dropped it would explode. Not to mention you may touch something you were not meant to touch. Monitors store thousands of volts for long periods of time. And since I was unaware when the last time this thing was plugged in I didn't want to take a chance. Eventually I was able to deconstruct this beast.

Arcade 1 Ian 1

Just a few sexy pics of my monitor being undressed

It starts...

Hello, if you are reading this it's because I told you to (I'll be the first to admit blogs suck and are a bit homo... but whatever). This offers me a pretty decent way to chronicle my rise of arcadiam, or arcadisim...... no, I like arcadiam better.

So where to start???

I guess it should start where this blog started... my work. I have a lot of free time online due to work (or lack there of). So I began this quest by doing what I do best... googling random shit. And eventually I found this page:

http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade.htm

This site hands down is by far the most informative website ever made.... I know what you are thinking, and no Wikipedia is not informative. It's a portal for two types of people: idiots who believe everything they read, and idiots who write on Wikipedia. And then there is Webmd.com, which is a great site if you're an inspiring hypochondriac... Anyway I am getting way off topic here.

I found the site, and got hooked. I then set off for a quest to not only create my own upright arcade, but I wanted people to marvel at my greatness (I don't know anyone who has one of these... ha ha ha).

I started off with a plan I got online... everyone who has researched building an arcade knows which plan I am talking about... the Lusid cabinet. It looks nice and is well thought out... I just didn't think I could pull off some of the cuts (My stepfather is a carpenter, but was flaking out, and wanted no part in this.... so I had to choose something I could do worse case scenario).

I then found a great resource of different types of plans brought to you by the letter J (just click my little J there to get to the site, then click on "Cabinet Plans"). Thanks to Jakobud.com

That weekend I talked with a good friend of mine, Drew. I told him about my killer plan of supremacy and was ready to rock and roll like no other mother. He then told me a little story that revolved his own arcade, and how it is sitting at his parents house collecting dust. Long story short we came to an accord, and now I am a proud owner of an older X-men VS Street Fighter cabinet. A four player control panel, and a lot of work to do....