Since about 1997 when I first found Mame I’ve wanted a decent arcade gaming platform to play games like Street Fighter, Asteroids, Outrun, Pacman, Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble and the like.. I’ve thought about upright cabinets, cocktail cabinets but with no space and 3 kids these are still a pipe dream. Over the years I’ve tried putting arcade emulators on various machines running Windows and Linux, with with USB controllers and dedicated arcade controllers, none of which is quite what I’m looking for.
For a while I considered using a tablet / phone but with the advent of the Single Board Computer (SBC) like the Raspberry Pi I’ve designed and built a standalone counter top arcade gaming system, with built-in arcade controls, display, processing unit, battery, speakers and power on / off, etc.
I used the following:
£10 Square wooden box external 340mm x 250mm x 50mm
£20 Arcade Controls (joystick, buttons, Zero Delay USB encoder)
£ 3 USB travel speaker
£31 Raspberry Pi 3
£11 Power bar
£ 9 5″ 800×480 XPT2046 HDMI LCD
£ 4 A4 Perspex sheet I chose purple, the choice is yours
£ 2 Power switch
£ 4 Pack of 3 Male USB A to Micro B
£ 6 Spray on Lacquer
Some thin electrical wire
Undercoat / primer
Left over sparkly paint
Tools-wise I used:
Electric drill, Li-Ion battery is the best
Hole saw kit for 22mm, 24mm and 30mm holes
Jigsaw
Jigsaw blades specially for cutting Acrylic
Rasps
I started with the unpainted wooden box.
I gave it a sand and a clean, and then marked out the holes for the screen and arcade controls. I used some paper on which I’d drawn some grid lines, and then marked out where I wanted the screen, the joystick and the buttons to go. 22mm for the joystick, 24mm for the 2 smaller side buttons and 30mm for the larger top mounted buttons. I then laid that onto the box and pushed through with a pencil to mark out the hole centres, and the corners of the screen.
To cut the wooden box for the LCD panel I drilled some small pilot holes in the corners I’d marked out. I made this the size of the front of the LCD panel so that it fit snugly, the perspex goes on top and overlaps the LCD slightly making everything look neat. I used a small drill bit, wider than the jigsaw blade width. I started drilling inside the line so that the edge of the drill bit was on the line. I drilled about 5 or 6 holes next to each other along the line until it was long enough to fit the jigsaw blade. Once I’d done each corner I use the jigsaw. I finished with the wide rasp with square corners.
Cutting the holes for the joystick and top mounted buttons I placed a block under the top because it is a little flexible without the perspex.
Once I had cut all the holes I needed in the box, I put on a couple of coats of undercoat / primer, inside and out, sanding the outside between each coat with a very fine sandpaper. Then after cleaning I used a roller to give it 3 coats of paint on the outside only, sanding between each coat with a very fine sandpaper. Once the last coat was on I left it to dry for 24 hours. Then used a clear lacquer spray to finish the box, the trick here is lots of very light coats, otherwise the lacquer pools and runs. I did around 4 coats on the bottom / sides first leaving 5 minutes between each coat. I think I ended up doing 8 coats on the top / sides, I didn’t intentionally spray lacquer where the perspex was going to cover. I left this to dry for 24 hours.
To cut the perspex for the LCD panel I used the same technique as for the wooden box except the following. I put the perspex on a wooden block so that any exit marks on the bottom of the perspex were minimised. I set the jigsaw set to its fastest setting. I clamped a metal rule to the perspex with some cloth to ensure it didn’t scratch the surface to help keep the line straight. The hole in the perspex should be smaller than the hole in the wooden box, to overlap the edges of the LCD you don’t want to see.
To cut the perspex for the buttons and joystick is similar. Using the correct sized hole saw – I used 22mm for the joystick and 30mm for the larger buttons. I’d already marked on the perspex where the buttons were located. I put the perspex onto a wooden block and drilled into that to ensure the underside of the perspex was not damaged.
In the above picture I’m running Mame, though now its running RetroPie so its also emulating NES, SNES, Mame, PS2, N64 as well as running Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Quake, and of course, an Atari VCS…
