Your Arcade Collection Stuff and Latest Pick Ups

[Bradtemple87]

I didn't know you had grouped that many cabs Aaron. One of my roommates has two, and I hope to get a second in the next couple months to lineup 4.

[fastbilly1]

I only have two:
Sega Astro City
Nintendo Vs Tent

Both have retrofitted monitors and consoles in them. The Astros monitor blew and Ive yet to find a replacement, so in the meantime it has a 27inch lcd mounted inside. The Tent was VS baseball and the monitors have horrible burn in. So it has a RetroAVS inside outputting to both monitors and NES padhacks. I can swap either back in an evening if I ever find the replacement parts I need.

I would love a Digital Pinball machine and a EM table. But for now I have three Pachinkos.

[Bradtemple87]

This picture needs more pics

[Ziggy]

Ugh, I no longer own any arcade hardware.

Once upon a time, I wanted a Mortal Kombat II cabinet. [...]

Anyway, I totally regret selling off the MKII board. [...] When I got mine, quite a few years ago, it was sub $100. Now there's not as many of them for sale and they're all several hundred dollars.

I decided it's something that I really want, and I should just get one. So last night I purchased the game boards for Mortal Kombat II from a seller that looks good. I also ordered a compact SuperGun so I have everything I need to at least test the functionality of the boards right away. After that, this'll be a project for me. I plan to make a consolized Mortal Kombat II setup. I'll probably start a thread and post picture updates when I get around to starting it.

[bmoc]

I plan to make a consolized Mortal Kombat II setup. I'll probably start a thread and post picture updates when I get around to starting it.

That sounds awesome. I can't wait to see how that turns out.

This thread (and others like it) sure do make me miss my Mario Bros cab. I wonder if I can convince my wife to let me use one of the kids' rooms for arcade cabs after they move out. I only have 10+ years to warm her up to the idea.

[Tanooki]

You definitely got my curiosity. I don't think I've heard of a dedicated MK2 consolized supergun setup. That could get fun if the talent is there to go nuts on the enclosure and potential joystick panel/array too. You could go crazy or try to dead on mimic the original as best as possible.

[Ziggy]

I'm not the most talented guy out there, but I'm pretty good at crafting stuff. It's gonna look awesome. I'm still mulling over the design and aesthetics in my head. I wont really have a final design locked down until I go to build it. I'll need to have all the parts that I'll be using before I can determine the size of the enclosure, and the final size will help determine the appearance.

My first instinct is to go black with red trim and mimic the look of the MK2 cab. I'll most likely make it out of wood, so I may leave it wood grain. Since it's gonna be kind of large, wood might make it a little heavy. But if I make it out of wood, it'll be better protection for the expensive boards. I could probably throw it down a flight of stairs and the boards would survive (not that I will try doing so).

I have one idea that I'll probably end up doing. The MK2 board is quite large, and it has an additional sound board. Plus a power supply and SuperGun circuitry, the enclosure will have to be a decent size. The front facing side of the enclosure, which will be the longer dimension, might be large enough to use the marquee. From back when I originally owned the MK JAMMA boards, I kept the marquee for MK2. My plan was to make a back lit frame for it so I could hang it on a wall and have it light up, but I never got around to doing that. So I'm thinking the front facing side of the enclosure could be the marquee, and it can light up when you power the game on. The marquee I have is original, but I also purchased a reproduction that I wont mind cutting down in size (obviously, I'll want to make the enclosure as small as possible).

[Tanooki]

Well to save some hell, perhaps an original MK2 joystick panel. If what you have is that slim in your supergun perhaps it would fit there. You'd need to make the box for the original panel and the device to rest on but it could be cool and it would have enough weight not to flop around all over.

[Ziggy]

Again, I'm not going to finalize a design until just before I go to build it. But I'm thinking that, when I say consolized, I mean just that. There will be a box with a bunch of I/O on the back of it. Any kind of controllers will plug into it, just like a console.

One thing I'm mulling over is having easy access to the main board. There's two EPROMs that can be swapped to change the revision, and there's plenty of hacks available (including the popular 9.1 and "Chalenger" hacks) for this game. I have an EPROM programmer, so I can burn them all myself. I was thinking I could have a switch on the outside of the console that selects the revision, but I don't think I want to mod the PCB. So if I'm not gonna mod, I need easy access to swap the EPROMs out.

[Tanooki]

No that does make sense. It's also why I kind of said what I did and it wasn't just for looks. The joystick panels on cabinets commonly roll out away (towards you) when they're detached from the cabinet. I figured if you did an almost 'tv games' type style with the ports on the back for your cables of choice, you could have a couple latches back there that snap shut you can easily release to then get to the guts without any hassle of deconstruction. The NeoGeo I have has two snap over metal latches that loop over a hook, then drops back in the other direction into a firm latch so it never flies off in a public space. Something like that but on the exterior in this case would be totally secure for your chip reburn/swapping needs.