Tag Archives: arcade cabinet

Arcade Cabinet Cat Playhouse: Pew, Pew, Mew, Mew

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The Arcade Cabinet Cat House from MeWooFun is just that: a cat house that looks like an arcade cabinet. Available on Amazon (affiliate link), the house comes in four colors (green, grey, pink, and orange), includes a removable scratching mat, and is the perfect addition to the video game and cat lover’s home. This will look awesome next to my Street Fighter II arcade game. You know, the one in my imagination.

The arcade cat house measures approximately 19″ x 15″ x 19″ and features a joystick, as well as “interactive holes,” presumably for putting toys and catnip in. Although based on the look of the cats in these product photos, I’m not sure they need any more catnip. Like, ever again.

Now my cat can play video games while I play video games! Of course, it won’t actually be playing video games, it’ll be licking itself in a tiny wooden arcade cabinet replica while I curse dying to the same boss in Elden Ring for the twentieth time, but you get the picture.

[via DudeIWantThat]

Retro Arcade Squirrel Feeder: Insert Coin for Nuts

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Most people treat squirrels like unwanted pests. But if you’re among the animal lovers who prefer to feed the squirrels in your yard, you might want to get a squirrel feeder. And if you love classic arcade games, you’ll want to get this squirrel feeder that looks like a miniature arcade cabinet.

Etsy seller The Tree Rat Symposium makes this tiny arcade machine with its CRT display ripped out and replaced with a place for storing nuts and other snacks for squirrels. Now, if I were a squirrel, I might be disappointed if I saw a “Squirrely’s Arcade” machine and got to it only to discover I couldn’t play Pac-Man or Robotron 2084. But then I’d be like, “but snacks!” and forget all about the crushing disappointment of not being able to spend those quarters burning a hole in my furry squirrel pocket.

My only concern about this thing is that the squirrels will start lining up to play, and then I’ll have to build an entire squirrel arcade with 10 of these things, some squirrel pinball machines, and a squirrel bill breaker. But if you’re not worried about such things, you can grab one over on Etsy for $34.

Taito Egret II Mini Arcade Cabinet Can Switch from Landscape to Portrait: Old Bird, Old Trick

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Many popular arcade games are side scrollers, but there are just as many classic ones that play from top to bottom, like shmups. Well, mostly shmups. The important thing is that someone at Taito had a stroke of genius and revived a forward-looking feature from one of its old arcade cabinets. The Egret II Mini is a mini arcade cabinet with a 5:4 display that can be physically switched between landscape and portrait mode, just like the original Egret II.

You simply push in the display and rotate it to your desired layout. Taking advantage of that display are the 40 built-in games, which include Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, and Elevator Action.

But that’s not the only modern convenience of the Egret II Mini. It has an HDMI out if you want to play on your non-rotatable but larger TV or monitor, and it has two USB ports for the optional wired controllers. There’s a controller version of the built-in arcade-style layout, there’s one with a classic gamepad layout, and there’s a paddle-style controller. The latter is even more special because it has an SD card slot, and it comes with 10 games that are meant to be played with paddle controls.

You can pre-order the Egret II Mini and its controllers now from Rakuten, but there’s no need to hurry because they won’t ship until March 2022 at the earliest. The mini arcade cabinet costs around $170 (USD), the paddle controller is around $110, the arcade controller is around $80, and the gamepad goes for about $30. That’s a lot of money. The Switch Pro or whatever it will be called might be cheaper than the Egret II Mini’s whole bundle.

[via The Verge]

Xtension Gameplay Arcade Cabinets Are Perfect for Raspberry Pi Systems

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I love playing classic arcade games. In fact, I love them so much, I spent several thousand dollars having a custom-built arcade cabinet put together. But you don’t have to spend nearly that much to have a professional looking cabinet these days, thanks to folks like Rec Room Masters and systems like their Xtension Gameplay cabinets.

The cabinets come in kit form, and make it easy for you to put together a great looking, full-size arcade system that won’t break the bank. The base 24″ system starts at $499.99, while the 32″ version starts at $749.99. They come with two-player Suizo-Happ arcade controls and everything you need to build a system – other than the computer, the display, and speakers. Thanks to bargain priced monitors and Raspberry Pi systems, you can add those things for under $250, and complete your arcade system for less than $1000. Rec Room Masters provides instructions not just for building the cabinet kit, but for adding on and setting up a Raspberry Pi arcade system.

If you want to splurge, they also offer an upgraded cabinet called the “Emulator Edition” which adds a real arcade trackball, and 10 buttons for controlling on-screen menus.

Rec Room Masters makes a number of other arcade cabinet designs, including cocktail style, sit-down, and virtual pinball machines. For more information on these and other arcade cabinets, head on over to their website.

Go Back to the Arcade with the Pong-inspired OriginX Cabinet

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Back in the day, most of the games in arcades were stand-up cabinets, but a few were sit down table style games. I don’t remember ever seeing wall mounted arcade games back in the day, but there are a handful of them available these days. Industrial designer Love Hulten is showing off a slick wall-mounted arcade machine that looks like it was transported from the early days of video games.

The OriginX looks like it came straight out of the arcade days because it’s an obvious homage to the original Pong cabinet from 1972. Inside the cabinet is a modern computer that has all the old games you might want to play, thanks to MAME. It can be customized to run the original JAMMA board of your choice though if you prefer to run with original hardware.

It has a 19-inch 4:3 LCD and a custom barrel distortion filter to mimic CRT monitors from the arcades of yore. The cabinet can be customized to your color desires and only 50 units will be made.  This thing is far from cheap, selling in Europe for €2,899 or about $3,400 (USD). There is no word on availability outside of Europe, but hopefully you’ll be able to buy one of these stateside if you’ve got deep enough pockets.

[via Love Hulten]

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Bring the Arcade Anywhere with These Classic Arcade Mini Cabinets

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I spent a whole lot of time and a whole lot of quarters in arcades when I was a kid. Now that I’m a grown-up and make a halfway decent living, I’ve got my own custom-built MAME cabinet in my mancave, so I can play all of my favorite games whenever the mood strikes me, and without spending any more quarters. That said, I wouldn’t mind having a few of these tiny arcade cabinets to decorate my office.

Each of these games features a miniature version of a classic arcade game, and is fully playable. While they’re by no means accurate to the original games in terms of graphics or cabinet proportions, they’re still a neat idea, and would be a great gift for any fan of classic arcade games.

The games feature 4-color displays and “original” arcade sounds. The graphics don’t look nearly as good as the ones on the hard to find Basic Fun Arcade Classic games I’ve seen, but the gameplay and cabinet art still captures the spirit of the original games, and the sounds are way more accurate on these.

They actually kind of remind me of those rudimentary LED handheld games from the 1980s, but with sharper displays and better sound.

ThinkGeek has Q*Bert, Frogger, Asteroids, and Centipede mini arcade games for just $19.99(USD) each.

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Legend of Zelda Barrel Arcade Machine: If Donkey Kong and Link Had a Kid

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This barrel-shaped Legend of Zelda themed arcade cabinet is not only fun to play, but a great piece of home decor too. It comes from Redditor LetsbuildsomeShit. He is living up to his name big time with this awesome build.

This Raspberry Pi 3 / RetroPie-powered arcade machine is completely custom. I love how the map is behind the controls and around the screen. This is a beautiful build. If you want to try something like this yourself, you can find an overview of the build in the gallery of images.

Legend of Zelda Themed Barrel Arcade Build

This would look so good in my house. If only I had the time to build one.

[via Nerd Approved]

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Dude Restores ’80s Centipede Arcade Cabinet and I Want to Play

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I loved the arcades back in my youth, at least when my dad would let me raid his stash of quarters and go. I had a particular penchant for Centipede mostly because it had a trackball rather than joysticks, and for some reason that was awesome to elementary school me. A dude named Tony Temple laid hands on an original Atari Centipede arcade cabinet and decided to restore the thing to pristine condition.

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The cabinet was in decent, but rough shape and needed lots of cleaning. He took a few pictures to show us how the process works. I’d have rather had a video, but whatevs.

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It looks like some of the steps required soap and water, something that was strictly banned from the arcades.

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At least the awesome cabinet graphics were in good shape and survived the restoration. The front portion where the coin holder goes had to be replaced, however. Check out the completed cabinet below, and the full restoration process on Tony Temple’s website.

centipede_restoration_6a

[via Kotaku]

Namco Arcade Machine Collection Gives Action Figures Something to Play

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The NAMCO Arcade Machine Collection are miniature replicas of some of your favorite arcade games from way back when. While they’re no playable, you could still use them to create your own mini arcade hall right on your desktop.

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Each is a 1/12-scale reproduction that uses the original schematics and cabinet artwork of the original machines. Everything is recreated in stunning detail, from the controls and the screen to the coin slot and the individual art pieces.They look like machine-accurate replicas to me, and I don’t even care if they got some details wrong or not.
I need these.

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Only five titles are available right now: Pac Man, Tank Battalion, Galaga, Galaxian, and Rally-X. I’m hopeful more will be added soon.

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[via Goodsmile via Cool Things]

Make a Tiny Arcade Cabinet from Popsicle Sticks

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If you’ve been meaning to make an arcade cabinet for your phone, here’s a fun way to do it. This video will show you how. Your first step is to eat a whole bunch of popsicles, so get to work. That’s the best part of this project, at least until the end when you have yourself a cool phone-sized arcade cabinet.

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The end result looks pretty awesome. The build comes courtesy of American Hacker, who demonstrates how to make an glowing arcade cabinet for your phone out of popsicle sticks, vibrant paint, and an LED rope light kit. It really does look amazing and could easily fit in with other machines in a retro arcade, aside from the fact that it is phone-sized of course.

The video will guide you through the process of making one for yourself. I better get to work on those ice cream bars.

[via Laughing Squid]