I've been thinking about making one of these for a few years now but it wasn't until my neighbor Mark put one together that the wheels really started turning for me. His machine kept with the traditional size and look of 80's arcade machines but I knew I wanted to break from that a little. I wanted to go minimal with the thing. Seems to be the running trend with me these days. Initially I contemplated using fiberglass and wire mesh for the shell. I thought some nice curved edges and a smooth fluid finish would look appealing but if you've ever worked with that stuff in large doses, you can probably figure out why I shied away. I went with 3/4" fiberboard instead but it didn't make things much easier. I used an LCD monitor to shrink the top depth to about 7 inches. It appears very svelte from the side. It gets a little thicker at the bottom so the PC and subwoofer can have a place to live. The one real omission is a coin door. It may make it on there one day but I really don't feel like spending the money for one and why should I have to carry around quarters in my own house.
I think I enjoyed making it more than I enjoy playing it. It really is a great hobby because there is still so much more left to do. The high score display is almost finished, as you've probably already read about, and I hope to have the automatically rotating monitor function completed shortly after. And then there are more lights. You can never have too much lighting.
I'm still a kid at heart and it's kind of comforting to find out that at least one thing hasn't changed about me. I am still terrible at playing video games. It's a good thing I like making them.
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