Better photos of empty Metacab

As promised, here's some better pics of the empty cabinet. Dunno if you can even tell given the quality of the phone pix, but these reflect the fully cleaned up sides post-marker and magic eraser.




Also, here's a shot of the control panel prototype I roughed in with cardboard.



As you can see, I'm not using the T-shape used by Ubercade (another Taito MAME cab someone made). Instead, I plan to notch the control panel so that it actually has some button space on either side of the sidewalls of the cabinet. This should fit in pretty well and while it looks weird, what mame cab CP doesn't look unauthentic given how many different controls they typically employ.

I feel this design gives the most free space for the controls so that utility/P1/P2 buttons aren't infringing on the trackball/joy/spinner area. I wanted to be sure not to put buttons above the trackballs since overthrow rolling of the hand e.g. when bowling sucks when it accidentally quits your game.

So basically, top row is two trackballs (possibly I'll add another Player 1 Btn 1 for centipede etc next to that but I think the block of 6 below should work for both players without being too non-ergonomic.

Bottom row is spinner, 8/4-way joystick, 6btns and then another block of the same for player two.

Then pause, quit, coin, and P1 left of side wall and coin2 and p2 right of sidewall. Pinball buttons horizontal on sides/front. I'm still toying with option to put coin buttons on the front since this seems most like using actual coin door at least in terms of where you're reaching. I have no plans to actually use the coin door any time soon - just keeping it for looks.

I'm hoping to finish the Adobe Illustrator version of the control panel layout which will be the basis for designing a CP overlay to scale... hopefully this will be my next post & not too long in coming.