This article was written 3 and a half years ago. It was one of the first stories I ever posted. Please forgive any grammar mistakes or invalid links. I still feel this is quite a fun read, as do a lot of our readers. Enjoy!

Introduction

Have you ever thought how cool it would be to own your very own arcade unit? Well, what if that cabinet could play over 1000 different games? All the classics, like Pacman, Joust, Gauntlet, and even up to the Mortal Kombat series. Well, that's the goal I was after. MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, allows you to play the original roms from most of the classic arcade games. I am not going to go into detail with the emulator as I am sure many of you have already heard of it. If you want more information, just check out their website. After reading a lot of documentation on various sites, like the PC2Jamma page, I began my quest for a cabinet. In the following pages, I will show the steps I took in completing this project.

Finding The Cabinet

Ok, this is the hard part. There are many ways to go about this. Sure, you can find one on Ebay relatively easily. However, expect to pay $200 or more for the shipping alone. Other options would be asking your local arcade or looking in the classifieds. I tried this and there wasn't much of a selection. I live in a fairly big city (Columbus, OH) and I couldn't find anything to my liking. I was looking for a JAMMA cabinet, which is a standard used on most of the arcade games used today. The standard allows you to simply snap a new board into the JAMMA harness with no rewiring necessary. The best way to find one of these cabinets is to go to an amusements auction. There was one coming to my area and that is where I found my cabinet. I recommend checking out US Amusement to see if there will be an auction in your area. I found mine for $180.

Finishing The Cabinet

You may not be able to tell from this picture, but the cabinet was in pretty bad shape. Some of the corners were chewed and the sides were pretty scratched up. Also, the control panel had a peeling NBA Jam sticker on it. It was a metal control panel, so drilling the buttons where I wanted them would not be possible. I would have to custom build a new panel.

The unit used to be an SNK P.O.W. machine that was later converted to NBA Jam. The sides still had the SNK stickers on them but were painted black. I didn't just want to simply repaint the sides. At the suggestion of a friend, I bought 2 full sheets of Formica to cover the whole cabinet.