Blame73's DIY Arcade and Pinball

How I did it, in the following post.

When Simtools 2.0 had been released, I modified the hifi rack I had to hold a kiosk PC I had around at home to use it with the Remote Profiler.


Once it was there I plugged in a gamepad and tried to run Mame (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). It worked, even if the kiosk specs didn't allow me to fully enjoy the experience, but it finally made me start the arcade diy console I always delayed.
So I switched the kiosk with a regular monitor that I plugged to the way more performant PC, and the arcade diy begins...

button layout


I needed the box to also hold keyboard and mouse, so I chose this dimensions: 60x40x15 (cm)


Arcade led kit


Kit test


Carbon like vinyl


Let's place the buttons


Wiring test


Back view


Front view


The first test HAD to be done with one game I spent a lot of time (and MONEY...) playing it when I was kid: R-Type!

I also built an arcade pinball, more about it here

oh god Nooooo. Not another thing i have to build. I still have my original xbox full of emulators, but a cabinet would be awesome. I have on it MAME, snes 9x, amiga, atari ST, atari lynx, NES and mega drive emulators. i used to use it all the time but i broke my wireless controller. I have 1000's of ROM's. i might just have to buy a cheap PC and build one.
Ill be following this

Love the glowing buttons and the setup for a pinball table . This is ours which my son built (old photo - has a few more transfers now on the top) .

@Blame73 Can i ask where you got the button kit. I see there are boards in the wiring so wasn't sure whether they come with it.

I had a lot of Mame roms, but a month ago I found a guy that has it ALL. Something like 26 Gb!
I had the first XBOX too, that was a fun console, but I mostly used it as multimedia device with XBMC (XBox Media Center) - that then became KODI

I built this arcade because playing with it in 2+ players is a lot of fun. Playing standing was something I forgot

There's a link in the second post, here you go:
Amazon Italy amazon.it/gp/product/B01G8MD1KE
Amazon.com amazon.com/Easyget-Encoder-Joystick-Illuminated-Buttons/dp/B00WAY9848

Boards come with it

I was unsure if building a complete arcade like that or the one I then made, I opted for the little version because I can pick the button box (2-3 Kg) and take it wherever I want to

That's awesome, great stuff, been tempted to do something like that for ages, will happen one day!

really nice stuff you have built mate. So much creativeness! I remember the good old times, I had so much fun playing these gaming machines. BTW a new forum makes less sense - especially if it has nothing to do with SimTools or simulators in the broadest sense. Just my 2 cents, nothing is set in stone.

Thats pretty much how i had my x-box setup up with xbmc. The guy that modded it for me put a 250gb hard drive in with a disc ripper too, so i would borrow my mate games and store them to that. i could also FTP them to my PC and burn to disc, or download etc. i loved it. i would never sell that. It would be good if i can use the xbox controllers with that button kit. ill buy a couple of cheap ones from ebay.

Thanks for that. i noticed they are usb so would just go Pc or old laptop based. There are loads of sites to get the roms. Im probably missing loads as i only have about 12gb across all platforms. I think its funny how a lot of the games are pretty good and about 3mb of data.

PM me if you need a link

I put two lateral buttons for playing pinball games, and... wow, what a fun!
old C64 games suck with pinball, but Pinball FX2 on Windows 10 is really a must have in an arcade setup!


You can also find it on Steam:http://store.steampowered.com/app/226980/
and there even is a VR version! http://store.steampowered.com/app/547590/

i've sure that's what i have on the PS4. I used to play it on the 3D tv and some of the tables are really good

I bought the VR version on Steam but asked for a refund cause you can't assign buttons and it only works with 360/ONE gamepads, so it's useless with the Arcade.
Couldn't make 360ce or xpadder work emulating the 360 controller

thats crap. did you get to see what it was like though?

Im sorting out those roms but it will take a couple of days as it kicked me out after 5GB for 6 hours so will get them monday. you can only down 5GB every six hours, so will just leave running.

Yes I played it for an hour trying yo make any joy/key emulator work. The game looks pretty good and if I hadn't had to play it with the Arcade box I would have kept it.
It really feels like you're playing at the tables. I even scarred me when 'something' appeared from behind the table. I'd suggest buying it.

i might just get that then. at the minute i'm trying to get the poxy xbox 1 controller to work on this pc. it just will not install the driver. I have even pointed it in the right place and nothing,