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A Home-Built Bartop Arcade Project
Hope you enjoy this page!
After coming across websites from people who built similar projects, my wife Cathy and I decided to build our own arcade machine. We initially thought we'd build a full stand-up game but instead we chose the small size and practicality of a bartop. Our goal was to make a modern-shaped, full featured bartop arcade machine. Here were our initial planning specs. Yes, they were optimistic but we accomplished everyone of them!
A modern-spaded custom cabinet that would fit on a small end table - no larger than 24 inches tall, 20 inches deep and 18 inches wide.
PC components beefy enough to play 80s arcade games as well as today's high-end games - AMD XP Athlon 3200+ processor, Asus A7N8X motherboard, 120 GB SATA hard drive, 1GB PC400 DDR RAM, NVidia 6600 GT video card (AGP), DVD drive, 350 watt power supply.
17" (viewable area) flat-panel monitor, max resolution 1280 x 1024.
Stereo sound from the top front of the cabinet with knobs for volume, treble, bass and microphone accessible from the outside of the cab.
2-player control panel, each player with 7 micro-switch arcade buttons (NEO-GEO style). 4/8 directional joysticks switchable from the top outside of the control panel. USB Trackball with left/right mouse buttons. Pinball flipper buttons on the sides of the cab.
Custom lighted marquee.
Power switch, USB 2.0, Firewire and Ethernet port on outside of case.
Custom software front end, multigame emulators to include MAME and Daphne, PC games (sports, trivia, shooters, etc), Jukebox software for MP3s.
The completed Barcade.
Cardboard cutout of initial dimensions.
Open cabinet.
Control panel.
The marquee and front speaker grills.
Rear power switches, ports and fan grill.
Side view.
We just finished the cabinet today so stay tuned - there's more to come on the specifics!
Gregg V.
Want to see more home arcade projects? Visit http://arcadecontrols.com/arcade_examples.php