The MAME arcade cabinet

Like many people born back in the 70's, I grew up with arcades.  The arcade was the magical place that had pizza and innundated you with random sounds from all angles.  There were never enough tokens, even if you had the spend $5, get $5 in tokens free.  Especially if you even tried playing Dragon's Lair.  The beautiful machine that i didn't quite understand how to play, but still kept stuffing quarters in to, just because it looked like a cartoon.

Now arcades are few and far between due to the proliferation of console gaming in the last 20 years.  Even going to an arcade now is depressing.  Games in semi working order,  dead games everywhere and the only things that are functioning are the redemption games.  Click this button and time it right and win some tickets. Exchange $10 in tickets for a piece of junk.  Where's the fun in that?  No space invaders, no q-bert , no pinball.  Somehow all the magic has been lost. 

Since my boys will never really be able to experience a redemption free arcade, I've decided that I should build my own.  Not to the same scale of course, but a more compact, efficient version.  I've got a pinball machine which they love so far.  But now it's time that they get introduced to true arcade gaming. 

I've decided to build a MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator http://mamedev.org/) .  This one arcade cabinet will play every arcade game ever.  I'm in the process of designing and ordering all of the parts to make this machine work.  I'll be posting all of the details here for all to enjoy.  I'm initially building three of these; one for me, one for my brother in law and one for a friend.  This way I only have to pay 1/3 of the shipping and they get to be my guinea pigs.  Not to mention that my sister is not a fan of arcade games and this is a great opportunity to continue my lifelong role as the 'annoying little brother'.