Nostalgiatron - The Building of a DIY Arcade

Galaga that was the very first arcade game that I ever remember playing my brother would take me to the 7-eleven across the street babysit me by letting him watch punk quarter after quarter into the machine I always got one quarter to play at the very end I didn't last very long I remember thinking to myself how awesome it would be to have an arcade machine in my house I could play forever then when I was eight years old my parents got us a Nintendo for Christmas that thing kept raise me having a video rental store next to the 7-eleven I was allowed to rent video games during the weekends I was in heaven then along came the Super Nintendo the Nintendo 64 many fond memories I have of growing up involved video games then eventually I was married I soon learned that I had to prioritize things great playing games became a guys night out activity every few weeks then a few years ago I was reminded of my childhood dream to have an arcade in the house our kids are expensive my wife has not gone to approve a thousand dollar expenditure for something that only played one game no matter how much it gave me warm fuzzies about my childhood it was then I decided that I would build my own I told my wife that I could do it for on 50 bucks our kids would love it I would love it I did my research did even more research made blueprints for the design then I started building I have to go out and say up front but I'm no experienced carpenter I learned a lot from watching my dad build a lot of things that being said I was comfortable enough to use the power tools I had also since this will be my first arcade build ever I knew that it wouldn't be perfect no matter how hard I tried I went to Home Depot with the hope of finding some really good priced wood I soon found out that I might have to fudge my $50 budget I wanted the machine to look decent since my wife wanted the machine to quote look like a piece of furniture instead of a big black box tough criteria I spent around $90 on the glue I found an old TV on Craigslist for around $10 I had a 9 year old computer sitting in our closet collecting dust I also had to buy a new video card that had video out for around $30 the computer only needed to be fast enough to run the emulators needed for the hundreds of games it would run during my research I found a company called xrk that sells arcade buttons and joysticks around $40 my original plan included me pulling apart a keyboard and wiring the buttons to the keys but after figuring out it would take me days just to accomplish that task spend another $30 on a USB controller from the same company since I couldn't paint the thing black and have cool screen printed decals on the sides I still wanted to have a cool title on the front I came up with the name nostalgia Tron it of course is a play on the words nostalgia and the Tron on the end makes it sound kind of robotic in a way it also nods to a few childhood favorites Tron transformers I originally wanted to have custom the up lights built form but after finding out that would blow my already blown budget well into space I decided on making backlit brushed aluminum letters to finish the arcade I spend another $20 on a nice stain and fish that would fulfill the compromise with my wife to make it look like a piece of furniture how did it turn out well considering that I was able to have a nice project to do with my son's play all of my favorite video games that I had while growing up and have my wife be willing to forgive me for being close to $200 off budget I think it turned out very well Oh

Channel: supergeekforce

Views: 232,329

Keywords: DIY arcade Vince Penman, nostagliatron, Mame Cabinet, Video Games

Id: LGu6rKFNimU

Length: 4min 35sec (275 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2011