I had a brilliant idea the other day. I had just finished my "scrapper" pc. It's a computer made up mostly of parts dusting in my drawers as a result of upgrades to my high-end gaming pc. I had no idea what to do with this "love child and ultimate manifestation of my hobbyist passion". Then it dawned on me...
How about an ARCADE CABINET?!! I know, a smashing idea! I can sense your eyes are already gleaming with memories of good times from decades ago. What? No?! In that case your too young. Go play some Call Of Duty or something... (To be perfectly honest, I'm more of the Nintendo generation myself. I've never been to a real arcade in my life, or have any fond memories of one, but it's nice to give an impression that I know what the hell I'm talking about... :)
I am of course talking about a machine typically found in traditional old school arcades. Some are still around today. Especially in Japan-land. It's like a small wardrobe capable of running fascinating games involving racing and violent contact sports, among other things. Sorry, no space for clothes here, baby! My cabinet is going to be a bit different (read: better) because instead of running on steam and old genuine arcade circuit boards, my cabinet is running on Windows 7. That means I can emulate several different kinds of software and gaming platforms. Of course it means it's not a real arcade cabinet, but rather a cabinet that suits my exquisite tastes. It would be way cooler to have several cabinets in a row at home running single games, but somehow that brings an image to my head involving my dearest wife with an axe in her hands, looking quite cross with me... So, no. I'll have to be satiated with one for now.
I'm happy to inform you that after briefly consulting with my dearest wife about my new project, she seemed almost as enthusiastic as me. With one difference. Here is her quote about it: "You ain't bringing it home, are you?". That is when I cried a little inside.
"No use worrying, lad. Venture on towards new disappointments!" I could picture someone like Churchill saying something like that. Of course he didn't, but humor me. To kombat tears, I opened up my browser and typed in the search box: "arcade cabinet". I was immediately overwhelmed with a flurry of enticing pictures of arcades of all shapes and sizes. The ones that seemed to pleasure me most were dedicated to fighting games, the likes of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Okay, I've got an image of what my cabinet will roughly look like. Time to fire up SolidWorks and hit the "Extrure Gaming Cabinet" button...
...NOT! As it often is in real life, there are few or no short-cuts. So, to keep my motivation up into the foreseeable future, I began the task of hunting down arcade pieces!
It didn't take long before I ventured into the Teutonic realm of ArcadeShop.de. As the smartest of you have already deducted from my subtle hints (or went ahead and clicked on the link), it is a Germany-based shop dedicated to selling arcade spare parts. From there I ordered some much needed parts for my gallant project. The items I placed an order for included the innerds of an arcade for a two player configuration: 1 joystick, and 6+2 push buttons per player. I will be keeping an eye on the expenses of this project in a separate text which I will update as the need arises.
So, to recap, the aim of this project is to follow closely the evolution of my arcade cabinet from birth to evolution and the inevitable looming demise. Welcome to the ride of your lifetime, involving blood, sweat, tears, hadoukens, shoryukens, and possible nostalgia! Allow me to be your guide! Wait!! No! Don't leave! Why do they always leave?!
PS. This is a sort of a shadow blog of my firts blog written in the native language of Finland, Finnish. These texts take a while to translate, so in order to read what I'm up to more quickly, I strongly advice you to learn yourself some Finnish!
PSSH! Here. Have a duo of sweetrolls. You were so brave to read all the way down to here. See you soon!
Picture 1. On-nom!
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