It's Alive!

With one final thrust of effort on a day off of work, I managed to finish all thepainting & wiring! It's now 100% playable (though currently still needs a bezel & a second spinner.

Level_13:_Secret_Level: Video Game Art series

Level_13:_Secret_Level

Finalized MetaCab Art (Finally!)

So I was still futzing with the CP art and Marquee art and just now feel it's finally ready for ordering from Mame Marquees. I've been over-analyzing since I couldn't make up my mind about control layout until now and also don't want to order anything twice from mame marquees since it's sorta pricey.

I am now locked in on a 19" LCD monitor, 2x spinners (both with silver skirted SlikStik Tornado knobs), 1x 3" Red Happ Trackball, 2x 4/8-way switchable Ultimarc MagStik Plus, 2x 6-buttons, and a variety of pinball/utility buttons.

Here's the latest cabinet mockup with marquee and CP overlay updated.


Here's closeup of the new Marquee look (just changed font to Intellivised & added some red.)


And here's a closeup of the new CP Overlay.


Once I've triple checked my measurements, I'm going to finally place the order from Mame Marquees which should break the deadlock I've been in progress-wise. I'm going to wait until I have CP Overlay to start drilling any holes as this way I can guarantee everything will line up with CP and Plexi.

I've got almost everything else I need (other than plexi, T-Molding, and a few other odds & ends from Radioshack). As can be seen by the typical cluttered workbench photosbelow.

The Official MAMEY page

The Official MAMEY page

Awards Site for Mame cabinet developers. Some really sweet creations here...

PacMan + Piet Mondrian == PacMondrian

What happens when De Stijl Art meets early 80's video gaming? This modern art cum video game is a great concept in both playable art and themed cabinet design.

Rather than stop at the custom pacman cabinet art, he even wrote his own game in Java which lets you effectively eat the colors of Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie.

What is this CRAP?

A hilarious review of the many horrors that are created by misguided mame cabinet builders....

Doc's Modular MAME Concept - modular control panels

Oh man, Just when I thought I had my new Metacab CP design figured out, I stumbled across this sweet modular approach to CP design. While it's less polished than what I was originally picturing doing (there will be seams), you can literally re-organize the entire panel with no tools and some simple plugging in/out of RJ45 jacks. This means you can totally mimic original layouts in many cases with no excess controls and no extensions beyond the width of the cabinet.



I also really like the idea of the utility buttons on the vertical side just below the monitor - this really means the side wings I pictured having on either side of the notches would be irrelevant/unnecessary.

The other reason this seems particularly appealing is that it didn't sound completely trivial to get dual spinners and dual trackballs working so this lets me slack on that indefinitely since the modular design allows you to add panels as needed with no commitment to lock on a single layout right now.

TARDIS MAME Console

Very sweet, very thorough interpretation of a Dr. Who TARDIS that serves as a MAME Arcade Cabinet.

Cup holders

Just was looking at what some other folks have done for their cabinet & found that Happ Controls has not only the best in authentic arcade controls (i already knew that), but also the cup holders I've been looking for! seems like a must to be sure people aren't trying to set (and subsequently, spill) pop and beers on the slanted control panel surface. In the mean time there's a nice little fold-down table right by the cabinet which most like dates back to the 50's when the in-wall rotisserie was originally built.

Atari Concept Art

Here's some sweet atari prototype concept art. A wide range of marker renderings for arcade cabs I doubt ever saw fruition.

--update-- I went to take a look at these again and the site is down so here they are below (complements of Internet Archive):