Fans of the Star Wars series will immediately recognize these illuminated vertical bars as a piece of the style from the original movie. They decorate the MAME cabinet recently installed in this home bar. You’ve got to admit, it looks amazing. But we’re always on the prowl for the build log and this annotated 46 image set has no shortage of goodies.
The project started off as a very ordinary looking plywood frame. But it takes shape quickly as the rounded-over grills were added to the box. Holes were cut behind them to accept the acrylic that serves as a diffuser and to allow the LEDs to shine through from the inside. There are several shelves which will be used to store additional gaming systems in the future. For now all that’s inside is a pretty beefy computer that runs the emulators, allowing games to be played via the arcade buttons or using wireless Xbox controllers.
Make sure you get all the way to the end of the build images. We were delighted by the custom icons in the arcade buttons. Instead of the common player one and player two images there are silhouettes of Star Wars characters and objects. This attention to detail really makes the build something special!
[Thanks Jason]
They made the wiring look so clean, and so well done, but yet their are wires all over for the finished product. Come on, hide those wires!
Very Nice!!
Which frontend did you used?
Yeah, I didn’t build this but this is in my house. The wires weren’t hidden because this pic was taken months ago about 5 minutes after I hooked it up to make sure that it was working correctly. The wires have since been hidden :)
Where did you source the buttons and joysticks?
Can’t speak for John personally, but I got a pretty decent set on ebay a couple of years back, just need to finish the project now!
seems like a missed opportunity to refer to the bar as a cantina.
Builder here. The frontend for the cabinet is Maximus Arcade. I was going to use Hyperspin for the extra shiny factor, but I couldn’t quite get it to work right. Something about the file structure or rom naming conventions. So, I went with the bullet proof and easy to use Maximus Arcade, complete with all the extras like screenshots, cover art, marquees, and samples.
cool, though i would want a 4 player panel
Got the buttons and joysticks from focusattack.com. They are a little expensive, but they keep a fairly decent stock and they have all the Japanese Sanwa and Seimitsu lines, as well as being the North American distributor of several great control PCBs for joysticks like the Cthulhu from Toodles or the PS360+ from akishop customs.
We decided against a 4 player panel to minimize the clutter, and due to the space it was designed to fit, there really wasn’t room for 4 people to stand shoulder to shoulder. I had an outside limit of 4 feet width. That’s why I added the wireless XBOX receiver, so that you could hook up any XB360 wireless controller or joystick, so that player 3 or 4 could sit at the bar and still play. :) It isn’t designed to play every game (like trackball or spinner games) but to play the ones John liked most really well.