Gather ‘Round This Unique 4-Player Arcade Cabinet

May 11, 2024 by 4 Comments

Usually when we see arcade cabinet builds, they’re your standard single-player stand up variety. Even one of them takes up quite a bit of room, so as appealing as it might be to link up two or more cabinets together for the occasional multiplayer session, the space required makes it a non-starter for most of us.

But this cleverly designed 4-player cocktail cabinet from [OgrishGadgeteer] goes a long way towards solving that problem. The circular design of the cabinet gives each player a clear view of their respective display in a much smaller footprint than would otherwise be possible, and the glass top allows the whole thing to double as an actual cocktail table when it’s not game time.

The cabinet was modelled in 3D before construction.

According to a post on r/cade, it took [OgrishGadgeteer] three months to go from paper sketches of the cabinet’s basic shape to the final product. Most of the components were picked up on the second hand market, which brought the total cost of the build to around $350. That wouldn’t have been a surprising price for a traditional full-size cabinet build, so for this, it seems like an absolute steal.

A Dell OptiPlex 7060 small form factor PC provides the power for this build, with the video output passing through a 4-way VGA distribution amplifier into 20 inch monitors. At $75, the four player control kit ended up being the single most expensive component of the build, though you could make do with some parts bin buttons and a Pi Pico if you wanted to really bring this one in on a budget.

Perhaps the most surprising element of the whole build is that, despite the cabinet’s complex design, [OgrishGadgeteer] pulled it off without a CNC to cut the plywood panels. Instead, a vinyl cutter was used to make full-size templates of the cuts and holes that needed to be made, which were attached directly to the wood. After that, it was just a matter of following the lines with a jigsaw. Not the fastest or most convenient solution, but it’s hard to argue with the final results.

We’ve seen other cocktail cabinet builds in the past, but this is the first that managed to cram four players in. Well, unless you count Dungeons & Dragons, anyway.

Rare Arcade Game Teardown And Mods

September 9, 2023 by 7 Comments

[Video Game Esoterica] loves a 1990s video game called Operation Tiger. Apparently, there are only a few of these known to exist in 2023, and he managed to find one of them. Well, it is really just a module so he has to figure out how to give it enough input and output to be actually playable. You can see several videos of his work with the Taito game below.

The board has a lot of ICs and a Power PC to handle the 3D graphics. The graphics seem clunky today, but they were impressive for the time. According to the video, the CPU board was only used for this game. The ROM that holds the software is separate with a mix of mask-programmed memory and EPROMs.

The machine is meant to live in an arcade box. So wiring things like coin selectors, video, speakers, and controllers is a non-trivial exercise. The wiring paid off, though, as the board started up but with no buttons, it wasn’t able to start in the first video. The controls go through a 60-pin connector and he tackles that project in part two.

The next step is to actually update the game software, which is hard but possible. Of course, you can run many of these old games with MAME or, if you prefer, use it to score that primo engineering workstation you used to covet.

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A 4-Player Arcade Hidden Inside A Coffee Table

May 11, 2023 by 3 Comments

[Ed] from 50% Awesome on YouTube wanted to build a retro gaming system with a decent screen size, but doesn’t have a great deal of space to site it in, so a good compromise was to make a piece of useful furniture and hide all the fun parts inside.

Building an arcade machine usually involves a lot of wiring

This video two-part build log shows a lot of woodwork, with a lot of mistakes (happy accidents, that are totally fine) made along the way, so you do need to repeat them. Essentially it’s a simple maple-veneered plywood box, with a thick lid section hosting the display and some repositioned speakers. This display is taken from a standard LG TV with the control PCB ripped out. The power button/IR PCB was prised out of the bezel, to be relocated, as were the two downwards-facing speakers. The whole collection of parts was attached to a front panel, with copious hot glue, we just hope the heavy TV panel was firmly held in there by other means!

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Showing the end result - a Defender machine copy in all its glory, with a colourful front panel with joysticks.

Defender Arcade Rebuilt To Settle A Childhood Memory

March 3, 2023 by 7 Comments

[Jason Winfield] had a nemesis: the Defender arcade machine. Having put quite a number of coins into one during his childhood, he’s since found himself as a seasoned maker, and decided to hold a rematch on his own terms. For this, he’s recreated the machine from scratch, building it around the guts of a Dell laptop, and he tells us the story what it took to build a new Defender in this day and age.

Defender was a peculiar machine — it was in cocktail table format, unlike many other arcade machines of that period. From pictures, he’s redesigned the whole thing in Fusion 360, in a way more desk-friendly format, but just as fancy looking as before.

As for the laptop, gutting it for its mainboard, screen, and speakers was a surprisingly painless procedure — everything booted up first try. A few board-fitted brackets and a swap from a HDD to a USB flashdrive for the OS later, the electronics were ready. As he was redesigning the entire arcade machine anyway, the new design control panel was also trimmed down for ease of use, while preserving the original colorful look.

All in all, an impressive build from [Jason]. After all was set and done, we don’t doubt that he went on to, let’s say, settle some old scores. It’s not the first time we see a desktop-sized arcade cabinet, and you gotta admire the skills making such a machine smaller while sticking to the old-timey aesthetic! Or, perhaps, would you like a cabinet that’s more subtle?

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A handheld game console made from bare PCBs

Minimalist Homebrew Hardware Recreates Arcade Classics

January 22, 2023 by 1 Comment

Classic video games might look primitive by today’s standards, but the addictive gameplay of Breakout or Pac-Man remains fun no matter what decade you were born in. Keeping the relevant hardware running becomes harder as the years pile up however, so when [Michal Zalewski] decided to introduce his kids to classic video games, he didn’t dig up his old game consoles. Instead, he decided to recreate several games from scratch using the bare minimum amount of hardware needed.

The first project is a copy of Snake, the arcade classic that millennials will recognize from their Nokia phones. [Michal] made an initial version using an ATmega328P with an 8×8 LED matrix as a display, but quickly upgraded the hardware to a 16×16 display powered by an ATmega644, and added an LED seven-segment display to show the score. All parts are simply soldered onto a piece of prototyping board, with no need for any custom PCBs or enclosures.

Game #2 is a side-scrolling space shooter called Dino in Space. This game runs on an ATmega1284 and uses a 4×20 character text display, allowing simple graphics as well as an on-screen score counter. Similar hardware, although with a 128×64 graphic OLED screen, powered game #3, a Breakout/Arkanoid clone called Blockbuster 7000.

[Michal]’s blog post is filled with interesting tips for real-life game programming. For example, a true random number generator creates a rather odd-looking bunch of asteroids in space – tweaking the distribution to make it a bit more uniform greatly enhances the game’s playability. Source files for all games are available on [Michal]’s website, and include a description of the exact hardware setup needed for each game.

Recreating Snake on custom hardware is sort of a rite of passage for microcontroller hackers, as you can see in  many impressive projects. Breakout-style games can also be implemented on various hardware platforms, including analog oscilloscopes.

LEGO Race Car Simulator Is Like A Mechanical Arcade Game

November 14, 2022 by 6 Comments

We’ve all played some variant of that simple old racing video game. It’s the one that involves swerving around cars in front without crashing, as the pace steadily increases further. [Dr. Engine] has recreated that very game in the physical world, with the help of LEGO Technic.

The design uses what appears to be a LEGO tank tread to create a treadmill for a LEGO car. The initial design is hand-cranked, but [Dr. Engine] soon upgrades this with a motor. The wide treadmill is then fitted with a steering wheel. This steers the car laterally along the treadmill via a simple pulley system. From there, it was a simple job of adding gearbox to change the speed of the treadmill, and obstacles for the car to dodge. Double-sided table affixed small die-cast cars to the track to fit the theme of the build.

It’s great fun watching the car buck and weave over the undulating track, and we’d certainly love to compete with friends for the high score. We’ve seen similar builds before, too, like this all-LEGO suspension dyno. Video after the break.

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TVout Library Brings Cardboard Arcade To Life

August 12, 2022 by 12 Comments

Recycling old CRTs is a true Hackaday tradition, and [Rob’s] mini arcade is sure to grab your attention.

First of all, you’ll probably appreciate [Rob] circumventing the supply shortage by getting all his components from recycled material. That’s probably the only way to get anything these days. He salvaged a small CRT from an old-school video intercom system and snagged the buttons, speakers, and switches from other unused devices laying around. Not all is lost, however, as [Rob] was able to purchase an Arduino Nano and a few resistors online. So maybe things are turning around in that category, who knows?

You’ll probably also appreciate how remarkably simple this hack is. No need for a Raspberry Pi as your standard 8-bit microcontroller will do the trick. And, fortunately, [Rob] found a nice library to help him generate the composite video signal, doing most of the work for him. All that was left to do was to build the arcade cabinet. Recreating the classic design was a pretty easy step, but you might opt for something a little nicer than cardboard though. But, hey, if it does the trick, then why not?

Cool project, [Rob]! We’re definitely happy to add this project to our retro collection here at Hackaday.

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