MAME Cabinet Build

It was a normal day, around two months ago. I was perusing the local CL ads for vintage stereo gear. It's one of my "things." I find old Marantz, Pioneer and Sansui gear, fix it up, listen to it, sometimes keep it, sometimes sell it and move on to the next piece. It's been a pretty rewarding little hobby.

That day however I didn't find something manufactured by those audio brands of lore. No, this was better. It was a dedicated Mortal Kombat II arcade cabinet.

I quickly had flashbacks of when my family got together on Cape Cod during my summers as a kid and rented a house in Dennisport. It was a short walk to the beach, and an equally quick jaunt to the local mini-golf/arcade joint. My sisters and cousins must have pumped $40 a piece into that machine (and others) back in 1993 or '94 or so when that game was in its heyday. I always told myself, "when I grow up, I'm gonna have one of these in my house!"

Needless to say I quickly called the seller who informed me that the cab was already gone. Feeling dejected and alone, I browsed for hours looking for a similar quality unit at a non-astronomical price. In my googling, I was reminded of MAME. For those that don't know (I can't imagine any here at 2o2p), MAME is a emulator for ROMS pulled from actual arcade hardware for your PC. These are the "real deal." I won't go into the the legal technicalities of it as IANAL, but it seems as long as you don't try to make money of of one of these rigs or something else dodgy you should be safe.

Most people are content to run these ROMS on their PC with a joystick/pad/keyboard setup to relive the glory days. But a sick few, take this to the extreme and recreate the actual icon itself. The Arcade Cabinet. Complete with authentic buttons, joysticks, monitors, coin doors and any thing else you might think of to transport you back to your youth.

Being a reasonably handy guy, at that point (after a quick consult with the wife), I decided that I might be one of the sick few.

This was to be a Mortal Kombat themed cabinet after all, so I designed the side panels to mostly match with the style of the MK cabinets (thank God for Google SketchUp).

My first purchase was an authentic MK arcade marquee. How sweet will this thing look lit up with fluorescent in my man-cave!?

After that, it was time to get some dust flying. In a short time I had this:

I used 3/4" MDF for the sides and made a frame using 2x3" and 2x4" lumber for extra strength.

I carried the thing into my basement like this. I stood inside the frame and "walked" it down. I looked like one of those steak heads who carries cars.

Once in it's resting place I began installing the guts and laminate to pretty it up.

I had a 20" TV lying around not being used with an S-Video input and an old gaming laptop (3.0GHz P4, 1GB RAM, ATI Radeon9600) that ran all of the games I was interested in flawlessly. Rather than blab about it, I'll show you some more recent pics.

The T-Molding really pulls it together along with the lit up marquee.

My control panel wiring (I went with Happ sticks and buttons because they are more MK authentic and they are easier to mount in thick (3/4" in my case) control panels. You can also see the little T-amp I have there driving the pair of 6.5" car speakers. This makes volume adjustment pretty easy on-the-fly.

You can see the coin door that I picked up from 2o2p's own "Waterborn." I know the door is mounted a bit low, but I needed the clearance to be able to slide out my laptop on the drawer to make adjustments if necessary.

So, I've still got a little bit of work to do. As you can see some T-molding, laminate, bezel work and side art still need to be installed. And the control panel artwork will be done custom by my sister. It'll be a Baraka/Kung-Lao themed CP. I'm pretty stoked to see what she's gonna cook up. I'll keep you posted. Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments below!