It seemed our “Happy New Year!” was somewhat of a failure this year, from losing several family members and then moving into global pandemics and plenty more beyond. We’ve been through it all and we needed a victory. So, I hatched a plan to do something awesome both with my kids and for the kids… And for the grown-ups too, if I’m completely honest. We’re building an arcade machine. In the words of Jeremy Clarkson “how hard can it be?”
Prototype
I grabbed an old monitor, a mini-PC dongle, a couple of PlayStation Classic controllers and a basic MAME arcade front end. I left it on the table for the kids to play the older classics, and they quickly took to fighting on Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Metal Slug. So far so good then.
So we set about the plans and I researched the tools I would need, of which we had almost none. I searched YouTube for the skills required, all seemed accessible to a certain degree. Then we built a to-scale prototype out of old boxes.
I knew what I wanted for a monitor, a 22″ (well, technically a 21.5″ panel) monitor, widescreen and running at 1080p. Many old arcade games use older 4:3 panels, but I wanted support for modern games too, so widescreen is a must and as you’ll see later, you get a virtual bezel on the 4:3 stuff anyway.
More Projects – I Built My Own Light Gun for my PC & Arcade Machine
