Arcade Cabinet Projects

Various arcade related projects

I can’t believe it’s almost been 4 and a half years since I completed my custom fight stick project. I haven’t used it any where near as much as I anticipated I would. Mainly because at the time it was built, I was working for a game development company and we would often play Street Fighter (or FIFA & PES) during lunch and after hours. But I moved on and solo fighting wasn’t nearly as fun. But towards the end of 2016, I began to get back into playing fighters again. This time though, my main platform is Playstation 4 (no longer PS3 & X360). The Dual Strike 2 board I used in this fight stick was compatible with PS3, Xbox360 and PC – which isn’t much help to me now I’ve moved on to PS4. It’s time to “upgrade” my fight stick to make it PS4 compatible.

PS4 Fight stick
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I find it hard to believe I’ve had my Galaga machine now for over 3 and a half years. This machine is where it all began for me. Seems like yesterday I was constructing it and playing it for the first time. Before this project, I would struggle to hang a picture on the wall properly. I’ve since gone on to build and restore several arcade machines and I now find myself wrapped up in Pinball restoration and repairs. Time flies all too fast. Recently I purchased a 4/8 restrictor board to install into this machine and decided to fix up two other issues at the same time.

Over the 3.5 years, the machine has held up really well. Even with two young kids in the house, there is minimal cabinet damage and marking. The coin slot has survived a few scares as the kids loved to insert anything they could find into the slot (and if they were lucky, it would pass straight through and come out the return slot – which made doing it again even more appealing).

Galaga
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I fixed up two of the large inserts on the lower play field last night.

When I picked up the machine there was already some damage to some of the inserts. One of the worst hit was the right side “when flashing” inserts. It looks like a decent chunk of the plastic has been ripped up with the mylar that was removed from that area in the past. Some of the other inserts have suffered the same fate, but this was the worst hit.

Fireball classic inserts
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My work on the Arkanoid arcade machine has been cancelled. I’ve moved on to pinball, so will not be building any more arcade machines for awhile. Instead, i’ll be restoring Pinball machines 🙂 Since the original Arkanoid post, I fixed up the wiring for the power and game harness. The board has now been moved onto a new home – so hopefully it will live again inside a new machine 🙂

I had planned to build a Mortal Kombat cabinet this year for the board set I purchased last year, but have decided against it. I also cancelled my plans for creating a Taito cabinet for an Arkanoid board set I purchased around the same time.

Instead the parts have been sold off and the funds will be used to purchase another pinball machine to service and restore. So sadly no MK cabinet posts 🙁