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Or you could just pick up one of these

I know exactly where you're coming from. About a year ago, I decided to build the mother of all arcade cabinets. Got a kit and custom built panel from Slikstik, grabbed a decently powerful PC on sale at Fry's, and spent the month or so while I waited for all the parts to arrive tracking down, downloading, and setting up emulators for every home and arcade system ever. Fully built, this thing has ROMs and emulators - all accessible from a simple menu - for literally every Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Atari (all flavors), Arcade (all MAME-supported plus Daphne for laser disc games), Genesis, TurboG16, N64, Gameboy, Super Gameboy, Color Gameboy, Lynx, Colecovision, Jaguar, etc etc etc ever made.... ...and I haven't even turned it on in 8 months. It sits as a giant, 500-pound coffee table next to the front door of my apartment. I skirt around it, guiltily reassuring myself that I'll "play some games tomorrow" nearly every day on my way out the door. It's depressing, and baffling, but there it is.

I built my cabinet using these plans: http://users.adelphia.net/~seanhat/arcade/ (click on the Design link on the left) You can download the plans in .pdf form. I modified them a little to my liking. I had never done any woodworking like this before and I found it extremely rewarding. Now for the controls. I priced out all the parts I wanted on Happ Controls website (http://www.happcontrols.com/) and came to the conclusion that if I bought a prefab control that I wouldn't be out of so much more money. After careful research, I settled on the best: http://www.slikstik.com/ If you want to shell out the dough, it is well worth it. I used a fairly decent pc I had around and then found a 27 inch tv cheap at circuit city. I used a 19" monitor at first but the tv was so much better especially on the older arcade games which didn't really have great resolution anyway. Then, I finished it off with some cheap 5 1/4 car stereo speakers. Good Luck! Tom

I don't know why this hasn't been mentioned, but if you long for a home arcade cabinet that is bound to be better than almost any that you are likely to be able to make at home (unless you have extensive manufacturing experience) then you really need to look at SlikStik. They have everything from the simple to the elaborate, and most anything in between. You have to put it together, of course, and there is still some work to do, but most of the hardest work (esspecially for the tech-savvy) will be in the cabinet construction itself.

That having been said, SlikStik handles all of that by providing a cabinet that is arcade quality, easy to assemble, and though somewhat pricey, probably the best you're going to be able to find. They can even provide functional coin doors.

Here soon I plan on buying a 33 inch cabinet with the quad controller.

A quick list of prices for all components in my controller (from HappControls and SlikStik

32 buttons: $60
Top Fire 8 way Joystick(2): $65
Optical Perfect 360 degree joystick: $90
Stainless Joystick handles (2): $50
4 way joystick: $15
56 Input IPac: $65
Trackball (lighted): $100
spinner: $90
Wood (4x8 3/4" MDF): $20
laminate: $40
misc construction supplies: $30

Total: $625 without taxes, shipping or labor

I know I'm forgetting something because I came out a little over $700 last time I did this.

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I just finished building my MAME cab a few months ago and researched many joystick options (including building it myself). It cost me $850 for the control panel alone but it was WELL worth the price.

SlikStik is the place to go if you are looking into a MAME arcade joystick. The quality of their joysticks is second to none (they have great customer service too).

I don't know how these guys make any money on their control panels. Pricing all the controls at the same places they get them (at bulk prices) and other contruction supplies, the total I came up with only $40 less then their shipped cost - and that didn't include my time to build it.

Seemed like a no brainer to me just to buy one instead of making one.

Oh, yea - This thing ROX! With over 6000 games loaded on it, I can play just about any classic video game you can think of (including pinball) and feel like I'm in an arcade doing it.

Go to Retroblast.com and see how gorgeous this combination looks. It's the stuff of dreams, ladies and gentlemen.

For a $1000 cabinet, you'd be better off buying the Slikstik cabinet, though, keep in mind that the wood and other materials needed to build only the cabinet cost about $150 or perhaps far less if you use a painted cabinet rather than using laminates or melamines and take off the coin door.

I spent a total of about $1600 building my cabinet from scratch, but that includes all hardwareincluding the new 27" arcade monitor, computer hardware, and controls.

Just set a budget (both for your money and your time) and buy the best stuff you can. The cabinet takes the most time to build, followed by the control panel; however building vs buying a cabinet is where you will save the most money. The other good option is to buy (or often times get for free) non working machines from a local amusement vendor and restore them, then fit your own cpanel to them. This has the greatest cost/time benefit for you; plus you can recycle. The drawback is that you don't get the flexibility that building whatever you want brings you.

The maintainer of the BYOAC website is putting out a 500+ page book on the cabinet building subject, so it might be worth getting one of those when it comes out before you make any decisions..

~GoRK

There are two schools: convert an old retro cabinet, or build one yourself. Building one yourself entails quite a bit more; for starters, better already have invested in thousands of dollars in carpentry equipment. Jigsaws are just the beginning, friends.

The other school can have you going in little time: get an old original cabinet cheaply somehwere (from a local arcade, or collector, check RGVAC usegroup). Or, if you're feeling weak and imptatient, spend 10 times more than you should and buy one on Ebay (my first mistake). Now, the *ethical* concerns of corrupting an old cabinet is one thing, but after cleaning out the 20-year old crap in there, you got yourself an empty cabinet.

My dream machine will involve the Classic Slikstik control panel , a 27" Wells Gardner arcade / monitor hybrid, and a 2ghz machine processor computer.

MAME depends entirely on your processing power; it ignores your video card. Keep this in mind for the digital games like NBA Jam, Mortal Combat and recent SHMUPS.

Retrogaming / collecting is horeendously addictive and it's possibly the geekiest thing going today. Proceed with utmost caution. But at the same time, I can't believe how many friends come to my house and say "Wow! That thing is cool! Does it have . Then they proceed to play it all night. Never fails.

You can buy an entire cabinet with control dashboard if you've got deep enough pockets.

Slikstik sells both cabinets and controls making the creation of a top-quality custom cabinet a fairly simple chore.

Just add your own monitor and system of choice and you've got a professional looking cab with true arcade controls. You can even get a working coin-door.

The resources are now so easily available, there's no excuse for someone to make a Mame cabinet that doesn't look professionally built unless they just don't take their time to do it right.

You can buy an entire cabinet with control dashboard if you've got deep enough pockets.

Slikstik sells both cabinets and controls making the creation of a top-quality custom cabinet a fairly simple chore.

Just add your own monitor and system of choice and you've got a professional looking cab with true arcade controls. You can even get a working coin-door.

The resources are now so easily available, there's no excuse for someone to make a Mame cabinet that doesn't look professionally built unless they just don't take their time to do it right.

You can buy an entire cabinet with control dashboard if you've got deep enough pockets.

Slikstik sells both cabinets and controls making the creation of a top-quality custom cabinet a fairly simple chore.

Just add your own monitor and system of choice and you've got a professional looking cab with true arcade controls. You can even get a working coin-door.

The resources are now so easily available, there's no excuse for someone to make a Mame cabinet that doesn't look professionally built unless they just don't take their time to do it right.

Use MAME and you can build your own control panel, and choose a spinner that best suits your needs.

You don't have to own an entire cabinet to get something nearly identical to the original... Or if you're industrious, be like thousands of others and have one cabinet, but put a PC in there running MAME... Now you have an entire arcade in one nice package.

There are MAME controllers that have spinners on them. Slikstick being one of them. Have mine on order, now just need to find a decent cabinet to mount the bloody thing on!