Building an Arcade Cabinet in 2019 — Part 2: The Plan
Since my very first arcade experience over 20 years ago I’ve wanted to own an arcade cabinet for myself. Cost, size, shipping and availability was always part of the excuses. However, this summer I went all-in and jumped into a project. In this article I’ll go through the planning, purchasing and prototyping processes and share my pros and cons.
The Arcade Cabinet
Getting hold of the correct cabinet is key to getting the full retro experience. Since the early days, long before the introduction of the JAMMA standard, arcades were reusing old cabinets for newer games by replacing the marquee and adding stickers. This means that there is a large possibility. For us living in Europe, there is a huge possibility that the cabinet design was created in one the countries with passion for woodworking and coin-ops, like Italy or Spain. Here in Norway it seems like many of the NeoGeo era cabinets were created by a local but now defunkt company called Lars Berg AS. Their cabinets have a very characteristic design which I, personally, are not especially fond of.
Personally, I’ve always preferred the classic US arcade design. The upright cabinet with the monitor pleasantly tilted a few degrees backwards. The classic cabinets like the NeoGeo MVS-25 and the ones used by Capcom for the Street Fighter-series are cabinets of my liking and qualities I looked for when choosing a cabinet design.
Living in an apartment with limited space meant that even very limited woodwork was totally out of the question. The uncertain time-frame of the project also made it difficult to borrow or rent space. This forced me to decide between a flat pack kit or go for a used cabinet.
I Norway, there is only a handful of used cabinets on the market at any time in a mixed bag of quality between the collectors and the other guys. The hardcore collectors usually sells very nice cabinets, but these tends to be from the older generation. Most of them did not fit my requirements, and besides, what kind of maniac would strip a perfectly working Atari System 1 cabinet with RoadBlaster for parts? The other ones are usually selling various Frankenstein-projects. A few of them even modifications of said Lars Berg-design. This is probably a good time to tell anyone interested in building their own arcade that this is a highly personal project. Any return of investment or ability to break-even, should be considered pure luck.
I had a brief period where I looked into used cabinets from abroad. NeoGeo MVS and the Sega Astro City are cabinets I really like and hope I someday will be able to own. Shipping is however very expensive and the eBay auctions I found not convincing quality wise. I guess that you need to hang around in the right communities to get good deal on complete cabinet here. As I did not have any luck finding my dream cabinet, I decided to look for a flat pack kit.
I ended up choosing Bitcade as my supplier for the arcade cabinet. Their upright Cyclops-kit fits my idea of a good design. Its slim depth, which sadly means support LCD-monitors only, means that it is perfect for home use. The guys at Bitcade were able to supply the cabinet as well as custom printed artwork. Being a UK based company meant that shipping prices are fairly reasonable all over Europe, including Norway.
I’m pretty happy with my choice, but in hindsight, I could probably have wished for a cabinet design that was slightly taller and deeper. The Cyclops with it’s 166cm is a little short compared to most of the popular cabinets, which lies around the 180cm mark. Support for fitting a B&O BeoVision monitor, would also be welcome.
The Artwork
Early in the process I realized that most of the kit brands supplies unlicensed and therefore unoriginal artwork. Some of their designs are kind of good looking, others are horrible done. As I could not get proper replica artwork for my arcade, I decided that I could just as well create my own.
After some thought I decided that I wanted something from one of my favorite art styles and started looking into Cyberpunk or New Retro Wave inspired artwork. My brother has followed the New Retro Wave music genre since it’s very beginning and shown me tons of great music over the last years. I personally love how the genre has pushed the 80’s experience to the max. The art styles of the artists Lightracer (with his Everdune project), Mitch Murder and Kavinsky started out as part of my inspiration.
After some dialogue back and forth, I was able to persuade freelance artist Michal Kváč to do the cabinet artwork on commission for a reasonable price. He has a large selection of artwork in the relevant genres and based on his portfolio, I was pretty sure he was the right man for the job. He did not disappoint!
My cousin Håvard took interest in the project early on and has been of tremendous help throughout this project. He works professionally with 3D modelling and CAD designs and was able to help out during the design process with Michal by providing important feedback and reality checking the design with 3D models of the arcade cabinet.
One of the lessons learned regarding the artwork was the need to coordinate everything. With people working on projects outside their comfort zone, you need to make sure that all the required information is available to prevent mistakes. Luckily everyone showed a good amount of flexibility so everything got delivered within reasonable time frames. This process was basically a crash course in project management 101. We managed to make a great result, but not without some challenges:
The sheer resolution of the artwork was flagged as a potential issue by Michal as his preferred method of work is raster graphics. It was therefore decided to work on all the panels in different Photoshop files to reduce the complexity and hardware requirements. Not enforcing the same PPI-resolution in the PSD-files caused some confusion and delay in the printing process.
We also learned about color spaces the hard way. We were half-way in the design process long before color spaces even became mentioned. At this point we did some conversion tests which resulted in the decision to continue on the RGB train and cross our finders.
This issue could easily have been avoided by asking the guys at Bitcade the correct questions about printers and material from the start. Luckily all both Håvard and his older brother Robert was able to help out during the RGB to CMYK color mode conversion process. We ended up using the CMYK color profile PSOcoated_v3 from ECI with good results, even though the choice was based on educated guesswork.
The Hardware
Most of the tutorials on the internet assumes that you want to create a cabinet for MAME emulation. Basically converting your LaunchBox enabled computer or RetroPie into an arcade cabinet. There are plenty of kits available that emulates different keyboards game controllers. Ultimarc I-PAC is the king of the hill, but pretty much any Chinese product will do the trick for a budget build. This was my original plan too, until I for some unknown reason got obsessed with the idea to create a cabinet which could play original JAMMA games.
I started to research the concept of JAMMA. The YouTube guys told me that the only I needed were some joysticks, a couple of buttons (duh!), a JAMMA harness, a pair of speakers and a power supply. With this setup, I could use an Ultimarc J-PAC to get my LaunchBox computer up and running in minutes and at the same time enjoy full JAMMA compatibility. Good idea, right?
The Drama
It turns out that creating a modern JAMMA compatible cabinet with original hardware requires a tad more know-how than this. Again, the YouTube consensus is to happily assumes that you want to use one of the many all-in-one boards out there (which in my opinion defeats the whole purpose of a JAMMA setup). The most versatile one, Pandoras Box, provides you with a HDMI connector and 720p signal for full convenience. An original JAMMA board however, provides a professional grade RGB+TTL Sync. While these signals works perfectly with arcade monitors and most PVMs, these signals operates at voltage levels way over the recommended specifications for regular consumer TVs and is therefore potentially dangerous to video upscalers.
In my first iteration. I tried to solve this with home made circuitry which used a set of resistors to take the voltage down on safe levels on the RGB. I used the VGA port on my OSSC as it can handle the TTL Sync voltages. I did however not receive the stability and monitor compatibility I wanted. My LG OLED ate the signal perfectly. Sadly the 27" computer monitor I actually indended for the arcade setup literally spazzed out when it saw the signal.
The design also had issues with the audio. The whole audio circuit was a study in DC bias and grounding errors. Attaching the shield to ground caused the arcade PCBs to short circuit and restart. A high-low converter meant for car ensured the proper isolation and fixed the problem.
The third issue I stumbled upon with a Shenzhen JAMMA-harness is the unoriginal button layouts. It might be JAMMA 101, but the JAMMA standard only officially supports three buttons. The NeoGeo MVS supports four through the JAMMA connector, but other game systems like the CPS-I/II and others, requires the use of a kick harness to utilize the last three buttons used for kicking in most fighting games (thereby the name). The cheap JAMMA-harness have all 6 buttons wired to. This does no harm to the spec for the first five, but the sixth button is utilizing a pin that is intended for ground. The sixth button wire is basically incompatible with anything, but the all-in-one pirate PCBs.
The Solution
In search for a solution to my many issues, I stumbled upon an open source hardware project by Frank_fjs’ at arcade-projects.com. Turns out, Franks’ creation, a supergun was exactly what I needed. A supergun is a device originally made to convert an arcade PCB into a home console. Turns out this basic, but proven design, solved all the mentioned issues for all my arcade boards. I have ended up visiting this forum regularly. It has a great community and is perfect for all kinds of arcade related projects. A few weeks later and I’m now the proud owner of a Minigun Advanced. Designed in Australia — Assembled in Norway.
To get my Street Fighter II CPS boards up and running I needed kick harnesses. As these harnesses utilizes various proprietary Japanese connectors, you get the problem that even unoriginal adapters are sold at black market prices on eBay. I just ended up purchasing crimping equipment to make them myself after sourcing semi-expensive crimping equipment of RS Components. In the end I paid a lot more than the eBay scams, but at least I’m now the owner of proper crimping equipment.
The Arcade Boards
During this project, my arcade board collection have grown way beyond what I actually intended. I now own six games on four different systems in addition to the J-PAC. I still haven’t found a good way to switch between the games as the market of JAMMA-switchers are divided equally between expensive and sketchy.
The following games are in my possession:
- Metal Slug 2 (NeoGeo MVS)
- Metal Slug X (NeoGeo MVS)
- Mortal Kombat (Clone)
- Street Fighter II Champions Edition (CPS)
- Super Street Fighter II (CPS-II)
The Mortal Kombat clone board lives up to a clones’ reputation and does not give a proper video signal when scaled with the OSSC, but works decently with the Framemeister (which sadly reached end-of-production this summer). The other ones are working flawlessly with the Minigun Advanced setup.
In the future I’ll look into the Darksoft NeoGeo Multi-MVS cart as well as the Darksoft CPS2 Multi Kit. These are both crazy expensive solutions made to play backup games on original hardware, but to be fair only a fraction of the price of actually collecting the games. At the very least I need get hold of a copy of Armored Warriors.
For the interested, SmokeMonster has created a good video on how to get started on original NeoGeo hardware. I agree with him that the NeoGeo is a good system for beginners with its relative low cost, many games and high compatibility.
The Lessons Learned
Unless you really want to play with original hardware stick to a MAME setup and USB adapters. I personally see no point in the extra work with a JAMMA setup if your goal is to purchase a Pandora’s Box. It is basically a SBC like the Raspberry Pi anyways.
Going down the JAMMA road, be sure to get yourself a modern and upscaler safe supergun (like the Minigun Advanced), a proper upscaler is mandatory (OSSC is the best performing conteder at the moment). I recommend to purchase a pre-assembled supergun. Making your own is simply not worth the time and effort, unless you’re really interested in testing your soldering skills. All the Minigun revisions should work perfectly if you want to replicate my setup. The guys at the arcade-projects.com forum are selling surplus gadgets regularly, prices are usually reasonable too, especially when you count labor and material cost.
Regarding AliExpress, my experience is that connectors and crimpers are usually decent to good quality. The pre-assembled cables are not. When it comes to electronics, you get what you pay for. I would seriously stay far away from any electronics connected to mains voltage.
I’ve wasted big $$$ on import fees. Better planning and could have saved me a lot. If you’re based in Norway, just stay away from DHL if you’re in the risk of import fees. They are charging three times the competition.
This was originally supposed to be a two part article, but I’m still waiting on some parts to be able to finalize the build. There will be a third and final part there we have a look at the assembly and final product.
