We’re guessing that if you ever though of buying an arcade cabinet it was only briefly, and you decided against based on the difficulties of moving and finding a place for such a large and heavy item. You could go the opposite way and build a controller for a MAME box, but for some, there’s no replacement for the real hardware. This Christmas gift is the best of both worlds, a JAMMA box which uses traditional hardware in a more compact cabinet.
[Majtolycus’] boy friend is a sucker for a game of Battle Balls. She looked around for an original logic board and after several weeks of searching had to settle for the Japanese version of the game called Senkyu. To patch into the board she also picked up a JAMMA harness, power supply, RGB to VGA video converter, speaker, and some Happ arcade controls. The whole thing goes into a wood box which connects to a VGA monitor (or the VGA port on your HDTV).
The system is easier to store than a full-sized cabinet, and if a deal comes along, you can buy additional JAMMA logic boards to play.
[Thanks Adam]
A good idea and good execution, but if you want the real experience, I’d rather go with a full cabinet MAME’d than the actual JAMMA board hooked up to VGA to a LCD. At least with that cabinet you can use a nice CRT display and play the game mostly how it was meant to be played.
Nice build and idea, but yah, The reason why I’d get a cabinet is for the feel of the arcade, and with this it would feel like I was using like those cheap consoles (not saying yours is.) Also, I think with this standing would be best :D
Awesome for using legit PCBs and not MAME!
That’s an AWESOME present! Not because it is an arcade console, but because she made it for him from scratch. I wish that my wife would do something like that for me.
I did something similar at one point. I had a couple NEO-GEO single slot boards, and I had the steel control panel off a full cabinet, so I bolted that to a piece of plywood, added the board, a speaker, a power supply, and a video converter. I put it on an endtable with a 19″ LCD, and dubbed it “THE UNCABINET”.
It wasn’t terribly pretty, and some day I should really ‘finish’ it so it’s a fully portable unit you just hook up to a monitor…
But just a couple months later, through a fortuitous confluence of tax refund and an eBay auction, this now sits in the exact same spot.
For those interested in this kind of thing look up “JAMMA supergun” for a lot of other builds.
As for thinking about buying an arcade machine, I spent a fair bit of time researching and looking around for machines before picking up the one I have.
Heh. I just had a neat thought; pick up a broken VCR/receiver/etc., and install your setup in it. It will fit right in with your other electronics. To deal with the joystick sticking up, replace its rod and knob with a removable one that uses a volume control (or w/e) dial for the knob. When you are done playing, slide the rod out and insert it into a hole on the front of the unit; where the receiver volume control is, for example.