Cocktail Cabinet To Be Proud Of

At a glance you might think it’s the real thing, but if you look closer you’ll see that The Distraction Contraption is an extremely well-executed cocktail cabinet recreation that hosts a MAME setup. [Sam Freeman] took pictures of the entire build process and has posted them, along with captions, as a Flickr collection.

The project started after some inspiration from this diminutive cocktail cabinet. He wanted his own version that was closer in scale to the coin-op versions that would have been found in bars a few decades ago. He designed the case to fit a 17″ LCD screen using Google Sketchup. From there, he cut out the parts and routed the edges. The controls feature buttons and joysticks, as you’d expect, but that red cap on the end works as a spinner. He tried out a few different ideas for this auxiliary control. He found that using LEGO gears to map the spinner’s motion to the axle of a mouse worked best. To give the plastic knob a better feel he loaded it with pennies to increase the mass, bringing momentum into play. The final look was achieved using wood-grain contact paper, and custom printed skins.

17 thoughts on “Cocktail Cabinet To Be Proud Of

  1. This ROCKS! I need to get off my rump and build a couple of these for my kids to play on. Then I could have the Xbox 360 to myself more often. I mean, I’m pretty sure I bought a 360, I just haven’t been able to use it much.

    Nicely executed build. I have most or all of the same resources at my disposal so no excuses.

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