Tips when assembling a Porta-Pi from Retrobuiltgames

24 min readSep 5, 2016

It all started with @codinghorror giving me ideas. Jeff is a great friend, but also someone who happens to have fantastic nerdy-time-consuming-money-spending ideas. Long story short, I brought a Porta-Pi Arcade Kit from RetrobuiltGames (http://www.retrobuiltgames.com/the-build-page/porta-pi-arcade-kit/)

After watching the video(s) and reading the manual(s) twenty times, I started. A month later (that is, about 3 or 4 weeks longer than what it should take), I finally finished. The following is a recollection of mistakes, comments, ideas, tips, etc.

Some things are not in the manual or the videos (or they are not obvious), which is not to say that the documentation is bad, au contraire, it's actually very good, but it's hard to follow a PDF/Video while trying to compare with what you have.

A final note before starting: this is NOT a replacement for the manual. DO NOT USE THIS AS A GUIDE. Let me repeat that: THIS IS NOT A REPLACEMENT FOR THE MANUAL.

Ok, now that you know that this is not a replacement for the manual, I guess I can show you the world… (remember that your mileage may vary).

Before You Start Assembling Anything

Depending upon what your expectations are, if you have access to Amazon Prime, it will save you some time. If you plan on painting/sanding/etc., order your paint in advance. Painting is what will demand most of the time and the anxiety to get things started will only make it worse. Unlike Ryan (the creator of the Porta Pi) you are unlikley to have 5 kits to play around. So you have to sand, prime, sand, prime, sand, prime… that takes time. You can't just force-dry paint. If you are not going to paint anything, which is totally cool, I suggest sanding a little bit with different grits (all the way to 800 if you have). The wood panels are very soft if you do that.

If you are not going to paint, don't worry about ordering painting tools, but if you do and you expect everything to come from Amazon, remember that spray paint and such not only require "signature" to be received, but also take 2–5 (or sometimes more) days. They rarely have Prime and when they do, they are on orders of 25$ or more (Add-On items) which means at 3–4 bucks per can, you have to buy a bunch.

Unless you are an expert at painting, buy 2 (or 3) of each can. I suggest you get 4 of your base color. They are cheap and you may need to add more layers if you frog anything during painting. Buy them in advance, because they will take time. Order sand paper in advance too, and if you don't have a sanding machine, this is the right time to spend those extra 30 bucks in one, it will save you initial time (even if you don't paint) and… it's a powertool, who doesn't like powertools!?

Spray painting is hard if you're a newbie (like I am). You may want to cover all the surface in one pass. Don't. Just spray from 10–15+ inches afar in one pass and move onto the next "row".

Let paint dry (can't stress this enough). The can may say "ready to be sanded in 1 hour". Wait 8. Trust me.

Ordering a finisher/glossy is nice too (they are also in the same spray paint can). Order 2–3 of these too. In fact, of you don't paint, you can apply a coat of a transparent finisher.

Before painting or sanding anything, look at all the wood pieces. Put them together (they will stay together). Make sure you know which one is which.

Pay special attention to the pieces that hold the F1/ESC and Display Buttons, for these can be (depending on the LCD you got) left or right oriented. The manual (or video) mentions this very briefly and I frogged it up (I had to use wood putty and a plastic pistol to fix the stupidity). It looks ok now (after I painted it) but I was mad for not paying attention.

Speaking of wood putty, I don't think the manual mentions this (until you're already told to use it), so get those, they are cheap (add to cart in amazon!).

Regarding tools, the manual recommends a few of them and you will need them.

To make it easier (and because I took the time to find them), here's a handly shopping list with extra stuff you need/are expected to have/come in handy before you start your Porta Pi assembly. Remember not all of these are needed, but these are the things I have, so you're one click away from adding to cart:

A Putty Knife: (e.g.:) TEKTON 69274 2-Inch Flex Putty Knife
Wood Filler: Elmer’s E855 Carpenter’s Wood Filler, 3.25-Ounce Tube, White
Sander: BLACK+DECKER BDEQS300 1/4-Sheet Orbital Sander
Clamps: The manual says one or two. I recommend more. They are cheap. These are the ones I have (12 inch): 2 of TEKTON 39182 12-Inch by 2.5-Inch Ratchet Bar Clamp and 18-Inch Spreader and Spring Clamps 6 Inch, Muslin Clamps — One 6-Pack Set of Large Plastic Clamps(a piece of Rebecca cloth included)
Wood Glue: You don't need a big bottle, I've used 2% of this: Franklin International 5063 Titebond Original Wood Glue, 8-Ounce for the entire project. (Seriously)
I ordered this Raspberri Pi 3: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Motherboard
And I wanted to have a lot of space, so I ordered this SD card: Kingston Digital 32 GB Class 4 microSDHC Flash Card with SD Adapter (SDC4/32GBET)
My friend Jeff recommended a heatsink and sent me one (thanks Jeff) and I don't know where he got it, but this could work: Addicore Raspberry Pi Heatsink Set for B B+ 2 and 3 (Set of 3 Aluminum Heat Sinks)
Depending on the heatsink, you may need to glue it with Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive 5g or similar.
If you don't have a cable stripper, I have this: IRWIN VISE-GRIP Self-Adjusting Wire Stripper, 8", 2078300 It's ok, not perfect but does the job and saves you a lot of annoying frustration.
In the notes/manual/web, Ryan talks about dissolving the primer with Floetol, this is it: FLOOD/PPG FLD6–04 Floetrol Additive I tried but because I don't know what feels to do it without it, I can't tell you what to do with that. It's cheap so can't hurt to have it.
Speaking of primer, this is enough for over 9000 arcades: Masterchem Industries 20002 KILZ 2 QT Primer
The Paint I ordered (in different colors) is: Rust-Oleum 249127 Painter’s Touch Multi Purpose Spray Paint, 12-Ounce, Flat Black This black was my base color (as you will see in the pics)
And the Clear Glossy Coat is: Rust-Oleum 249117 Painter’s Touch Multi Purpose Spray Paint, 12-Ounce, Clear (I got one, but should have gotten two of these). The rest are just some Key Lime yellow, Almond White and Grape or some sort of violet.
When you paint, wear a mask and gloves, they are cheap: Liberty Glove — Duraskin — T2010W Nitrile Industrial Glove, Powder Free, Disposable, 4 mil Thickness, Large, Blue (Box of 100). I already had a mask, but if you don't, this is what I have: MSA Safety Works 817662 Paint and Pesticide Respirator
Amazon sells a lot of paper sand, so just search for it and you will get "assorted" packs with different grits. Make sure you have between 150–400 at least, but you can go higher depending on the paint job. Remember the higher the grit, the softer it will feel.
If you have absolutely no tools whatsoever, you may need screwdrivers and what not; if you see my pictures, you may notice these: Craftsman 9–31794 Slotted Phillips Screwdriver Set, 17 Piece I had them for a while and they are good. You only use one or two, but if you're thinking: I should have screwdrivers, that's a good kit. I have been asked what the magnetic bar is, it's this: Master Magnetics AM1PLC Magnetic Tool Holder, 24" Wide, 20 lb per inch, Black Powder Coat with Yellow Stripe. Really good, I may even buy another one soon.
Dremel Vs. Hotglue. I have a dremel 4200 and it's fine (and I used it a couple of times), but if you are thinking about buying one for this project, don't. If, however, you always wanted to have one, go ahead. It's a very handy tool. I'd argue that I used the hot glue more than the dremel, in fact, with a hot glue gun, you can (later) hot glue cables and stuff to leave things "nicer". If you have both (like I do), good for you, but remember, a Dremel is not really needed for this project.
Soldering Iron. If you don't have one, get one, they are cheap and you will need them for any sort of project. I personally have one of these TasiHome Best 60W Adjustable Temperature Long-Life Electric Soldering Iron Kit, Durable Heat-Resistant Polymer Handle, Stainless Steel Casing, High Qu (better than Vastar 60W 110V Adjustable Temperature Welding Soldering Iron with 5pcs Different Tips and additional Solder Tube for Variously Repaired Usage, which I have and I reviewed at Amazon). If you're on a very tight budget, then the Vastar will work, just make sure you don't leave it unattended at full temperature or it can melt. The TasiHome is actually really good.
Both come with the worst soldering iron you can possibly imagine. Do yourself a favor a buy one of these and it will probably last so long that it will be present at your funeral: DMiotech® 0.5mm 150G 60/40 Rosin Core Tin Lead Roll Soldering Wire (assuming you took good care of it, otherwise, it won't show up).
If you're getting that, then get one of these to preserve your soldering tip: Hakko 599B-02 Solder Tip Cleaning Wire and Holder
Safety Third! :) so get Googles like these: DEWALT DPG82–11 Concealer Clear Anti-Fog Dual Mold Safety Goggle. Sanding can get dusty, soldering iron tends to jump to places called eyes if you're not careful and the smell of rosin and what not is very toxic. Don't be an idiot.
The kit comes with all the wire you need, but I have one of these that I used a few times and it's very handy, especially if you're not too experienced at soldering and clamping and what not: Electronix Express — Hook up Wire Kit (Stranded Wire Kit) 22 Gauge (25 Feet)
Speaking of wire: I have this too: Hakko CHP-170 Micro Soft Wire Cutter, 1.5mm Stand-off, Flush Cut, 2.5mm Hardened Carbon Steel Construction, 21-Degree Angled Jaw, 8mm Jaw Length, 16 G. I think Ryan has a similar one in his videos.
Multimeter: You want one, you always wanted one and you're taking too much time to get one… I have this: Etekcity MSR-U1000 Autoranging Digital Multimeter / DMM with Non-contact Voltage Detector (Red) This come in handy when you have problems or to make sure you don't have shorts in your magnificent wiring, especially important near the end when you have to solder the DC power. They are not very good at explaining how it works, you're expected to know. Don't despair, there are good You Tube videos and chances are you will use 5% of all the features. That's fine.
Patience, tho you can't order it online I guess.

That's it! If you made it this far, congratulations. None of those links have affiliated stuff, I have absolutely zero gain from them. I felt like it was important to mention that.

Shall we get started?

Painting: The Devil Within

Painting (unless you're good/professional/expert at it), is a pain. It's fun, but messy, and it's what is in-between the fun of putting all the kit together and, you know, playing games, and you. But you have to be patient. Ryan does have some tips and pictures. Study them. Take your time. 5 thin layers is better than 3 thick ones. Otherwise sanding may ruin the picture and leave artifacts and you will have to re-sand, re-pain, re-wait, re-frustrate, you get the final reel. There's not much I can say about priming/painting that you can't learn from Google. Problems I dealt with (in no particular order):

Wind: I was painting in my garage with the doors open. San Francisco is a windy city. Try to stay clear of the wind.
Light: It was a little bit dark inside, make sure you have enough light or you may not see details or apply too much paint.
Not enough paint: I mistakenly brought one can of each. Because I'm bad, I had to order more, which took 5 more days… twice. So order a few cans in advance, they are cheap.
Priming is not painting, it's there so you can prepare the surface to paint. Meaning you will sand, prime, sand, prime a few times. You will also put the wood filler to fill some gaps and make the surface smoother. This will take time, everything takes time away from the fun; it's worth, but be patient. Very. Remember, each thing needs to dry.
Paint, as thin as it is, occupies time and space, so it may be slightly harder to insert some panels after they have been painted a few times, be patient, the wood is more fragile near where the connections are made.

I will add some more tips about the painting stage later, for there are a couple of things that I recall I could have done differently and it would have made painting some parts easier.

Assembly

Before painting anything, you need to put the kit together, to make sure you understand it, where parts go, and etc. This is an excellent time to look at your LCD and its tiny controller to see whether the flat cable is on the left or right. Imagine that tiny pcb with 4–5 buttons will be facing down on the top of the cabinet, but the wood panels are designed so you can flip them and it's the same; however, you need to glue two of these and you need (if you have a dremel) to route them a little bit on the back side, which you must find before you route, because, if you are like me, it will be on the other side and you will have to do some magic tricks to fix your stupidity, like I did. :)

So basically, grab those panels, look at the manual and make sure you understand how they fit together and what not. Even Ryan messes up in his own video where he claims his brain farted while doing that. That's because it's hard to see where each wood panel goes and what it does. Just plan carefuly, eventually you will figure it out. The point is, that top thing that goes below the marquee, can go either left or right and you need to glue it to the cabinet while assembling, so before you glue anything, triple check that you understand which side faces up and down and left and right in those particular panels or it will be very hard to press the buttons if they are facing inside the cabinet. I'm talking about this part:

See that ribbon cable on the right, it turns out that you may get a model where the cable is on the other side, so the whole panel flips and the two black/red buttons end up in the right. Since this is a part you have to glue within minutes of you getting started, you must get it right, or you won't be able to flip it later. Also, this part consists of three layered pieces of wood, this is how it looks from inside:

See that panel? do the same, write with a pencil which side goes where, it will do your already confused mind a favor in the future. The third panel is the one that covers these buttons in the first picture, since you have to paint that one (tho you won't be installing it for a while), make sure you also mark which side you have to paint, you don't want to waste paint and time on the inside.

Test the back/top pieces while assembling, be careful, but make sure they fit, and leave them on while you're not working, this helps keep the wood in shape as the temperature/humidity changes during the day/night. Be gentle, this is not made of titanium.

If you are wondering how much glue I've used… let me show you:

The cabinet doesn't really need a lot of glue

Electronics — Where the Fun Begins

The instruction manual and video are very helpful, but they are not the same. Ryan recommends the manual before the video for obvious reasons, it's easier to update a PDF than a 2-hour video. But I recommend you watch the video as well, if anything because you can see how he does it and how you should try to do it.

Random tips in no particular order:

Keep the LCD protective sheet on until the very last minute when you close the cabinet, but make sure it's easy to remove. The little tab to pull the layer out got stuck behind the wood and I had to unscrew the display a little bit to pull it out. It was easy-ish, but annoying. Just pull it out a little bit right after you install and before you tighten it and leave it there, easy to pull in the future.
Before tackling each section, separate your nuts, bolts, washers from the bag where they come all mixed into buckets (you only need a max of 3) #4, #6 and #8. It will make your life easier when Ryan says: using the two #6 flat head… be organized and it will pay off.
Assemble all the joystick/switches cables in advance. The joy of inserting the switches and buttons and seeing how it all takes shape can be slightly obscured if you have to interrupt that precious moment to strip and crimp cables. Instead, on a rainy evening, just sit down with your tools and, by reading the manual and looking at the distances you need to reach, create your cables and what not. It will be appreciated by you in the near future. When it comes to length, always leave extra, it's easier to cut and re-solder than to add extensions. Look at the cabinet, measure, add a few extra inches. You want to have enough cable coming from the front to the back (where the Raspberri Pi will live), because you will need to test, debug, remove the front, test again, put the front, remove it, unplug something that is not working, re-plug it, you get the drift. So short cables: no bueno.
Soldering: If you have never soldered before, I suggest you practice with some cable, and watch some YouTube videos. There's only a few points of solder to accomplish in this kit, but if you are unfamiliar, you may want to practice a little bit in advance. I have changed guitar pickups and soldered many times (and I'm not gonna win a Soldering Nobel Prize anytime soon), but my experience paid off when it came to soldering. Remember, even if you destroy a cable, everything the kit comes with in the wire department, is available on Amazon, so you're not "lost" if you burn your crimps, just try not to, but if you do, order more from Amazon. Don't despair.
Test your power supply with a multi tester on day one. I mention this because mine was faulty and even tho Ryan was very kind and obviously shipped another when I returned the faulty one, the anxiety of not having power when you're ready to test the fruits of your labor is annoying. Mine was outputting ZERO volts so I brought one at Amazon because I was anxious, but since you won't need it for a few days, the sooner you get your replacement the merrier. Unless you're lucky and yours work fine, which must be the case with most people. I realized it was not working when I plugged it to the kit on the last day… much to my suprise, nothing happened, so my first though was: I destroyed everything.

Ok enough talking, do you want to see some pictures?

These are from "day one" while putting it together and adding wood glue.

Clamping stuff, notice the back and the top and not glued, just there for stability.

The wood was already sanded with 150 grit at that point. I didn't take pictures while priming, but it looks white and what not. Notice I had already added some wood filler on the sides.

I only primed/sanded and gave a base (black in my case) layer of paint, my dear @Inconcinnus did the magic with the painting.

An interesting tip here. The Joystick and buttons cover will later be attached to another piece, I suggest you do that now before painting, because you have to glue those two together and put a clamp between them to make sure they are fine. That can mark your paint and I haven't seen a reason not to do that now, for you will later need these two parts together to put the switches, buttons and joystick. Just glue the button cover and the other similar wood panel now, paint after that's dry. I didn't and I regretted it. Do not touch the acrylic cover (if you have it), that one can wait with the protective sheets and be set aside until you really need it.

Agos spent a lot of time making that paint art… days; we had to wait for the paint cans to arrive too… so it took us 3+ weeks. If correctly planned it may have been reduced to just two or three days. Lesson learned.

After this, I started with the electronics (and fun to me) part.

In the above shot, you can see the LCD panel installed, together with the top buttons. I glued that flat cable with double sided tape. I later added a thin line of hot glue because the tape sucked. Just to keep it tight and to prevent it from flying around. I had already soldered a ground wire to the top buttons (daisy chained) and had inserted the side buttons wiring (that I had prepared weeks in advance while the painting was being done). The Speaker mounts are in place and so is the LCD flat cable that goes to the display. Basically all those colored cables that go from the display controller to the LCD panel below.

I got the acrylic cover for these (optional) and it looks nice. I made a few mistakes in this panel:

There are marks (top right?) because I had to clamp the two pieces of wood while the glue was drying and I had already painted. Even tho I put a cloth to protect, the clamp strength marked the paint.
I suck at countersinking and you can see how one is deeper than the other.
My kit came with a missing screw there so the top left (where my finger is) is just a hole.
The acrylic thing is nice, but there's nothing holding it in the left side, so it raises a little bit if pulled. I may do something about it in the future. The extra 5 bucks is worth, it gives it a better feeling.

That looks s little bit more organized in the final version, but that's a lot of cables, use the plain cables that the kit supplies to your advantage, don't just blindly split everything. It's easier to deal with a "single thick flat" cable than 10 small ones.

I tried to respect the button colors with the cables, this was a nice touch that helped me ensure each cable was what I thought it was. Yellow button = yellow cable.

A tip here: in the manual, it shows you that if you have a Japanese style joystick (like I do), you just use a flat cable like that and connect its ground to the RPi. That is five cables, ground, left, right, up down. For some reason that was not working for me. What I recommend is to use the same ground for the buttons and the joystick. Daisy chain the whole thing. That way you run only one ground from the front to the back. Electronically speaking, since all grounds at the RPi are the same, it shouldn't matter, but I don't know what was happening with mine (probably a cable was causing a short, dunno). In the end, I am happy with the results of One Ground To Rule Them All, and in the RPi, short them. (That was… tacky). The picture doesn't reflect that since I took that days before I had to diagnose/fix this problem.

Speaking of the devil or monsieur RPi, I had to print that thing at a scale of 77% to perfectly fit. Ryan says 100%. My printer disagreed. I have been living with my printer for a long time, so I trust her, even tho printers are minions of Baal. It fitted nice at 77% scale and here's how it looked:

Notice I have also added my @codinghorror supplied heatsinks. Big heatsinks make Jeff Atwood happy, and you don't want an unhappy Jeff Atwood.

Btw, the paper slip helps a lot when connecting the cables, but when in doubt, count pins and take your time. My fingers are like a keyring of sausages, so it's hard to operate them in a tiny space with tiny cables trying to get inserted in the wrong pins all the time. Eventually it all works out.

Which reminds me, do what the manual says and don't tie the RPi until the very end, you will be plugging and unplugging stuff because you will make mistakes and will have to fix them.

Audio

Time to talk about the audio, easy to assemble and only 4 points to solder, simple. Here's how mine looks. I routed the cables before cutting them and then added hot glue to keep them in place.

Notice the position of the switches, both off. This is required for the side volume buttons (white) to work.

Also notice how below the audio jack on the right, there are 3 pins. I have added a cable that goes from there to a ground in the RPi. This is explained in the Noisy Audio section of Ryan's website as a method to reduce noise. It did, but not all of it. That ground pin is obviosuly internally connected in the PCB to the cables above. (black/gray/white), it's just an extra ground pin (it's the center one in my board) that you don't need for this kit, so you can use it. The black one is the ground that connects to both white buttons on the side (visible in the bottom right corner of the picture) and then the gray/white is the live wire from each button. By connecting this ground to the RPi, you make a single ground in all the circuit (vs. the audio amp having it's own isolated ground). Remember the audio amp and the RPi share two cables in common: Audio cable and DC Power, so closing the ground loop is a nice addition. (Electrons are weird).

Not much else to say, remember to never turn the amplifier on (i.e. power it) unless you have the speakers connected. This is another electron-world problem, but you can fry your amp if you don't.

Now some close-up pics:

A closer look at the RPi with most cables in. Still not bolted to the case.

These are the Esc and F1 buttons, the other points of solder in the kit. I added hot glue to reinforce them and route them. These cables go to the RPi of course.

Power, DC Jack / Mini USB

Ok, up until now, and because there are no batteries, there was no current/power/etc. So you couldn't really fry anything. But things are about to get powerful if you allow me the bad pun. The moment you insert power into this thing, those electrons are going to start dancing and if you don't route them through the appropriate places, they get hot. Things have certain heat resistance, but at some point they melt and later burn. This is no bueno, so you want to be extra careful (but not afraid) when soldering/connecting power cables. You are not going to explode like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, but you can fry your electronics, even the LCD. The truth is, most outcomes of a bad powering tend to be bad, and the price for having it right is that it works, nothing more. Just be careful.

Hot glue is your friend too (and electrical tape if you have), to make sure things don't wiggle under some pressure/movement. The last thing you want is a hot wire (with electricity) to go rambo inside your cab.

That is the back of my DC Jack. There are FOUR cables there. Two (+/-) from the DC splitter (that later splits the power into the LCD and the Audio Amp) and a USB cable that I peeled and soldered to bring those 5V to the RPi. You really want to make sure you did the right thing. Center Positive, Outer Negative. Repeat this 20 times and use a multitester to make sure they don't touch. Double check with your power supply, it should have a graphic saying which one is which, they always do, because failure to connect the right one, means you will certainly fry whatever you connect to it. It's like expecting a handshake and instead getting a punch in the back. You don't want to punch your LCD.

I added a lot of hotglue to cover for my bad soldering skills and what not, but the truth is, it makes the connection very secure.

Final Notes

If you have made it this far, congratulations. Now do the Software thing (which I did in advance because well… painting took a while). All the manuals/videos that Ryan wrote talk about Windows. If, like me, all you have is Mac… do not despair, it's free and easy to create the image.

Download the appropriate image for your RPi model from retrobuiltgames website. Then download ApplePi-Baker (Free). Then just insert the SD Card in your reader (Macbook Pro users have an SD Card reader on the side and it works). Unzip the image (goes from a few hunded MB to a 3+ GB, just sayin') and then launch ApplePI-Baker it will ask you for your password (it needs it to access the filesystem, because the software is not in the Apple Store). Anyway, just use the Restore Backup function (select your SD Card on the left, and IMG file on the right. Tap Restore Backup. Now wait, cuz it will take a few minutes. Once it's done, make sure it's ejected and take it to your RPi and you're ready to blow things up… or hopefully, enjoy your arcade.

My LCD did not come preconfigured to work with HDMI, I had to press (in my case the right most button) a couple of times to go from VGA1, VGA2, etc. until HDMI showed up. Do not touch other buttons because the RPi may be asking you a question and you can't yet see it.

Have a USB Keyboard handy, you can plug it in the back to the RPi and it should work.

Tips on RetroPie

If you have a keyboard, press F4 and you will be in the command line. Type `emulatorarcade` and you're back.

If you press F4, then you can test that all your buttons work.

E.g.: the buttons are labeled B A R X Y L, they should type those letters when you press them (lower case). If you press the side button that you assigned to RIGHT SHIFT, the combination should print the letters in uppercase. The other side button is "ENTER" so press it, and see your magnificent new line.

The ESC/F1 are easy to test too and last but not least, test your left right up down, they should move the cursor and the typing history.

The Volume Up/Down is also testable here, the RPi is a little bit noisy, so there should be some noise. Volume buttons can be press and hold for a fast up/down adjustement. So try them.

Anyway, if you want to copy your Roms, just google it, the information is everywhere and it's very easy. Just remember it takes TIME, a lot of time. Can be 10 minutes for just 100 roms or it can be 6 hours for 5000. It's a slow process. Leave the arcade in peace while it does that. The RPi doesn't have a lot of processing power and it needs time. Be patient.

Last but not least… have fun with it! Thanks Ryan for making this kit available and my lovely Agostina for painting it ;) I hope the receiver (a friend) likes it. Yes we did all this for a friend in common.

Here are some pictures of the final product:

I own Contra in real life, in fact, my twitter handle is @gryzor, because that's the name the game had in Europe. I'm terrible at it.

There are some finishing details but overall, the experience has been great. The missing screw in the joystick bothers me :)

Have fun!

Update (Sept 10th)

My friend loved it! A couple of extra comments.

While we were putting this together, @Inconcinnus realized it would be nice to have rubber feet underneath the cab so the paint wouldn't scratch the surface and also to make it more "stable" as in less slippery. It was an excellent idea, so I got these Peavey Small Rubber Feet and simply drilled them at the bottom. Yes, it comes with its own screws and they are "too long" but if you drill in the four corners, it doesn't bother or come close anything inside the cab, so it's "safe". Here's how it looks:

Great idea! These are apparently for Peavey amps and music gear, but I'm sure they don't mind ;)

Speaking of Roms, the main intention for me was to use some MAME roms I had lying around since the age of dawn. No I cannot tell you how to get them because unless you own them, it's not good, can be copyright infringement or some legal stuff like that. The point is that the scrapping process of finding the art/details/metadata about a ROM, takes forever. Like it can take 2+ days non-stop for 300 roms, even if you are connected via ethernet. Maybe the ones I had were very obscure, but still, it took forever. In fact, after about 200–300 it had crashed (to the point where we had to literally power off the arcade). Just keep this in mind, perhaps if you have a lot, it's best to add them in batches.