Mini Pinball MAME Machine Is Small Enough To Fit In Any Game Room

A huge collection of pinball machines in your basement is one of the crowing achievements of a geek, but what if you could have a huge library of physical pinball machines at you fingertips? [veriix] shared an imgur gallery in a reddit post documenting his wee little pinball machine he built from scratch.

Inside the pinball cabinet, there are two monitors. A 4:3 Samsung monitor serves as  the backglass for the machine while a 23″ HDTV provides the playfield. On the software side of things, [veriix] used PINMAME and Visual Pinball 9 running on an old motherboard he had lying around. The result is impressive. The HD monitor playfield provides the right perspective to fool [veriix]’s brain into thinking he’s playing a real pinball machine.

We’ve seen PINMAME builds before, but those were encased in full-size pinball cabinets that took up far too much room. [veriix]’s machine is much smaller, and perfect for the garage, den, basement, or anywhere you’d like to set up an awesome game room.

You can check out [veriix] playing his mini pinball machine after the break. Thanks [Johnny] for sending this one in.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtdDIQQV9Zk&w=470]

14 thoughts on “Mini Pinball MAME Machine Is Small Enough To Fit In Any Game Room

  1. You need to get the game called PINBOT, i am its master, i can roll it over endlessly. once spent abut 6 hours straight playing it without losing one try when i was 15.

  2. Well I think this is pretty cool.. I’ve got a couple of real pins, but can’t afford more of them (or the space to keep them) so I might give something like this a try! Nice job!

  3. Now what I’d do is have a plunger to “launch” the ball, a tilt sensor, and something to thunk a box so you get that nice percussive sound/feel like a real one.

    Then I’d realize I’m halfway to making a real pinball machine…

  4. Nice build, but even as small as it is, stills takes up a lot of real estate in a room. Priority decisions I guess, Do I want a game always at the ready or bench space for the shop notebook computer? Either way the answer is evident for many,and isn’t not right nor wrong.

  5. After finding this little gem, I started building my own. I had to give up pinball years ago as my wife warned she would leave me if I didn’t quit hanging out at the “Beercade” here in town. No with this project, I think I’m going to miss her…

  6. Why do people insist on recording videos in portrait? If you’re planning on putting it online or think it might EVER be view on something other than the phone, film in landscape.

  7. The only thing that makes pinball interesting to me is the actual physical mechanics of it going click clack and watching how things react .I can’t imagine I’d have even a 10th of the fun on this software version. It’s a cool project and it looks pretty awesome but If I made that, I know i’d have those screens out for something else within a month lol

    1. I’m no programmer, but since the sounds are already emulated in the software, would it be much of a jump to add a few solenoids or the like linked to the software to impart the feel of flippers bouncing, bumpers bumping and such? perhaps even a small gyro chip to act as a “tilt” interface?

  8. Hi All
    Great build :)
    BUT…..Am I mistaken? Or is that thing playing the 2008 Batman by George Gomez/Stern?????
    That’s the SAM system-I didn’t know that was even emulated yet!
    Is this Visual Pinball/Pinmame or something else?
    Thanks
    Andy

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