Tour of My Basement Arcade

I'm green with envy. Star Wars sitdown, droool. And you rescued a Space War, bonus!

One of these years I'm going to have to finish my MAME in a Tempest Cabinet and finish building my MAME cocktail cab.

The Space Wars was sitting on the side of the road waiting for the garbage collectors. I had to rebuild the power supply, the vector monitor, and the control panel, but the game board was OK. The cabinet was water damaged and I had to replace some of the particle board too. It's a huge cabinet and I have thought of selling it to make room. I did have a minty Donkey Kong once, but sold it ... kicking myself now for letting it go. Probably the most fun though was a Mortal Kombat that I once had. It was a blast playing and finally beating it. The Star Wars was a pain to get in the basement. My brother and I were in the process of moving it down to the basement and it got wedged between the steps and the ceiling of the basement. I was stuck downstairs and had to make a sizable cut in the ceiling to get it unstuck. I have made a few changes since this movie was made. One addition is a Mame cocktail cabinet ... probably similar to the one you are building.

Wow Dave very awesome!Love your whole set-up in there i hope to be able to do something like that someday.

Question...How hard was it to get everything down there and set-up to play?

Thanks! I have been collecting games for about 25 years. The first one was Galaxian ... I signed over my paycheck to a bar owner after a long night of drinking. We live in a quad level house and with the exception of the Star Wars cockpit, I moved them all down two short flights of stairs by myself. I dolly them into the house and then slide em down the carpeted stairs on their backs. Gets a little dicey with some of the heavier games, but I would get below them on the stairs and muscle them down. Actually, it's easier to push them up the stairs. I have Teflon sliders on the bottoms of the leg levelers and they slide around the carpeted floor pretty easily. I have two 20 amp circuits to supply power and it seems to be sufficient. My setup now is a little more crowded as I moved two other games down that were in my family room.

Dave Neuman, on Mon Nov 16, 2009 4:19 PM, said:

Heh, probably not. If you check out my profile on BYOAC (although I haven't been there in years), IIRC my avatar is a POV render of the concept. It's a 3 sided cocktail with modular control panels entirely made out of maple & maple ply. I have a lot of it cut out, but I'm stymied by two things: 1. staining maple & how to mount the monitor PCB to the bottom of the top.

Hmm... I just realized that I've got an IEC male to female extension cord at work which would be great for the project...

Tempest, StarWars sitdown and Tron.. Dang.. My envy increases even more.

Quote

This is very cool. Ideal for playing virtually every game. Although I have done some woodworking, I opted for a cocktail kit to assemble. I'm very limited in what I can play with only one joystick and two buttons. I made a few end tables out of pine and did some limited woodworking with oak (hard and brittle wood but sure stains nice), but never worked with cherry although it is a beautiful species. These will probably not work for your application, but I used them to mount an arcade monitor in my cocktail.

Wow... that's a very cool arcade! Man, I'd love to have a setup like that. For that matter, I'd love to even have a basement.

Congrats on rescuing Space Wars - that (along with Starship 1) was one of the first video games I ever got hooked on.

If I were setting one up for myself, I'd have to get at least these five:

• Battlezone
  
• Bosconian
  
• Gorf
  
• Tron
  
• Tempest

After that, maybe Armor Attack, Joust, Mad Planets, Vs. Golf...

This could get expensive.

Quote

That Tempest was really a mess when I got it ... rats nest in the bottom with old rat skeletons. Had to rebuild monitor and then spent weeks troubleshooting and finally fixing the Game PCB. I first played the game on a o'scope. I traded a PacMan upright for the Tron. It worked OK, but I gutted it stripped the cab and resprayed it in my garage with an automotive spray gun. I remember sending all the contol panel parts out for powder coating and buying sideart from Phoenix Arcade.

Dave Neuman, on Mon Nov 16, 2009 8:45 PM, said:

Cool i was wondering how you were able to get everything down there.

Quote

Thanks!!

Quote

I have come close to getting a Battlezone, but always just missed. Gorf is sweet also with its speech synthesis. I've always wanted a Joust ... groundbreaking in its style of play. There was a time when you could get arcade games for a good price. I recall paying $50 for a non-working Donkey Kong and $100 for 2 non-working Pole Positions from a local operator. Man those days are gone. Did you notice artwork on the wall by the Baby Pacman game.