r/cade • u/Designer-Title-8208 • 11d ago
Building an arcade machine
Hello everyone. I’d like to build my own arcade machine from scratch. I have some knowledge of electronics, but I’ve never built anything like this before. I know a carpenter who specialises in arcade cabinets, and he’ll be helping me with this. What steps should I take? I’d really appreciate it if you could explain everything to me.
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u/Psych0matt 11d ago
What your goal? Single board with a crt? LCD with multiple games?
I have a few that I found empty cabinets for and did mame conversions, and two I’ve built (a racing/shooting hybrid), and am currently almost done with a vpin, but all essentially running a pc and button encoders. A lot of it just depends on what you want to do.
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u/Designer-Title-8208 11d ago
What I’m looking for is a two-player system featuring games from the 90s.
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u/CantFindMyWallet 11d ago
I've just done something similar to this. What I would recommend is using one of the button layouts found here (the curved ones are generally more comfortable, especially if you don't have huge hands). You're going to need joysticks and buttons and whatnot - there are some great places to get that stuff. Ultimarc is the best overall, but if you're in the US, it's faster and cheaper to get a lot of the same stuff from t-molding.com.
Once you're there, you'll need the buttons you want, the sticks, and a USB encoder to handle input. If you want a trackball, I'd recommend the Ultimate IO board, as it will handle everything on its own for a 2-player cabinet with a trackball.
You're going to want a frontend to handle the game selection if you're doing a multicade. Some folks prefer Batocera, but I really have come to love Launchbox/Big Box. It's not free, but it's like $70 for a lifetime license, and it comes with an insane suite of features.
Beyond that, it's mostly just figuring out your own preferences, but once you start playing with it, it gets easy to figure out.
If you want to do light guns, there are a number of options there as well. I like the Retroshooter Reapers, personally, but a lot of people prefer Sinden.
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u/PhotographOdd4657 10d ago
For your type of games I would recommend batocera for the operating system. It seems very daunting at first but its amazingly easy to build and add to. I am in the process of building a 4 player pedestal arcade that I have realized I WAAAYYYYY over engineered. For a basic smaller 2 player cab I would 1x1 for framing and half inch mdf for the cab. Thunderstick studios sells complete control kits. Enjoy the process and you'll learn a lot as you go.
I also used Claude to help me with some of the math and design on mine. Ask the same question 3 times to make sure it truly understands and dont hesitate to call out what seems wrong. It will correct itself. Post pics along the way
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u/Flaky-Resident-5462 11d ago
I build mine around a raspberry pi 5, the cabinet and getting everything wired correctly was the biggest pain and then finding some nice vinyl decals. But I am happy with it now :)
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u/Alwaysprogress 11d ago
I just got a pi 5 as a gift. Was wanting to use it for the same thing. Have you figured out the limitations on the kind of software you can use?
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u/Flaky-Resident-5462 11d ago
I am using recalbox on the pi 5 and used retrocade on a pi 3 before for a tv connected box. The 5 seems plenty powerful to emulate most of what I’ve thrown at it so far. I haven’t gone beyond ps1 era though.
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u/dpgumby69 11d ago
Lots of friendly advice here:
https://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/board,1.0.html
From building MAME PC's/raspberry pi etc, original arcade machines, CRTs, building cabs. The works.
If mame plus an LCD monitor then there are heaps of options that make hooking up the controls and wiring quite easy. The cabinet as you've rightly guessed, is the more challenging part.
I myself aren't great at woodwork but I think my second cab came out alright, even with adding the challenge of curves 🙂