My MAME cabinet collection. 20+ years of MAMEing!

[IMBerzerk]

Hi.  I've been restoring/building arcade cabinets for some 20 years.  I don't do it often, but when I do.. I like to do it retro-style.   I've been able to find/purchase a few good ones over the years and covert them to MAME units.  Mostly because the cabinets were in really bad shape, missing parts, or pretty much scrapped.  I know that somewhat devalues the cabinet to some, but I'd rather bring it back to life at a working MAME cabinet, than a rotted, cobweb/dust covered warehouse scrap piece.  So having said that.. avoid the questions of why... the answer is simple.. because it was too far gone to save back to original.

 

An original Stern Frenzy cabinet converted to Berzerk... aka IMBerZerk!

I purchased this cabinet in 2001 from a local shop that was throwing it out.  I paid $50 for it, mainly because I didn't really know anything about MAME and I always loved BerZerk.  When I bought this... most of the places you buy arcade parts from now did not exist, so there was no way to fix or replace many of the broken or missing parts.  It was missing the original joystick, the monitor was gone, and most of the inner wiring was missing.  The PCB was there, and was sold to someone on eBay.  My intent was to convert it to BerZerk from day one.  The cabinet was orange, and black trim as it should be.  But looked horrendous.  It had extensive water damage, one side of the cabinet at the control panel was severely damaged, and the Bezel/Marquees were in very bad shape.

 

In it's final stage as of two months ago... it's seen 3 PC swaps, was running a 21" CRT monitor which was recently swapped for a 20" Dell LCD.  I replaced the original WICO leafspring based joystick with two back when WICO was still open for business.  So they are authentic WICO's and not remakes.   The spinner is a first gen type from Ultimarc, which replaced a spinner I had made from parts out of a trackball mouse and hard drive bearings.  Again... this was restored back when you couldn't get parts.  You had to make them.... what's a trackball mouse?  LOL... 

 

I hand painted the side art with stencils I made out of large oaktag sheets.  It was a hard process as I had nothing to go by as far as measurements.  I had to use whatever pictures I found online back then, which there wasn't many.  I think this was even before the KLOV site even opened.  I found a few and used bolt heads and the cabinet thickness as reference points to try and re-create the artwork as best as possible.  The colors are off, but again... what did you expect.  Lol.  I like the lighter colors anyway.

 

I restored the coindoor.  It was heavily rusted up, missing paint, and jammed.  I sent it for media blasting... fixed everything and was able to purchase a new STERN logo for the door.  the rest came clean with a lot of polishing and re-wiring of the lights.  So everything is properly functional. 

 

The single mounted speaker is a 4" Polk car speaker with the hidden speaker behind the marquee running trough a Logitech 2.1 PC speaker system. It's loud and full of bass because other than the PC and sub- the cabinet is empty.  I've since rewired the entire cabinet for safety and properly secured everything.

 

It's running off of an older I-PAC2 and the spinner is a direct plug-in to the USB port.   At one point, I ran several other emulators so I could play Atari, Intellivision, C64 and Colecovision... but I have since moved those over to a Retropie box and only run Daphne and MAME through the very easy to use GameEx front end.  

 

The control panel was destroyed and the decision was made to move on from it.  My first version was pretty crappy.  I used contact paper with a lightening bolt look to it.  Pretty much the go-to graphic 20 years ago.  Again.. this was before I-phones were popular, and no one was printing artwork like they do now.  After 10 years, I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator and reworked a new layout based on a downloadable CP pattern one of the new printing sites had.  I took the design over to Staples and had them print what you see now... covered it in Lexan, and it's still looking like new.

 

These are recent, I have some older pics at home I'll post later.  This was just a few moths ago during the final upgrade I did.  You can see the monitor and old PC there as well.  It's much better now... and even thought I miss the CRT, the build-in MAME sharers and higher quality of the LCD just makes it look the way it should.  It looks better and brighter than ever before. 

 

More pics to follow... 

 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2021 by IMBerzerk

[IMBerzerk]

During restoration... 2001

 

A really old website I made dedicated to the story behind the cabinet... I never finished the website... as really... who was reading it anyway.  LOL!

 

https://imberzerk.tripod.com/cabinet.htm

 

Looking at it now, I'm going to do yet another refresh of this cabinet.  The control panel still isnt right, so I want to rebuild the entire box.  It's very noticeable in the front pic of the Frenzy cabinet.  It's offset on the right side.  I just need to source a new metal plate, or make on myself.

 

Edited August 25, 2021 by IMBerzerk

[IMBerzerk]

Finally completed a total teardown and rebuild of a thoroughly trashed Gorf cabinet that had been converted to a Blood Blade... or something like that Neo-Geo fighting game.

 

Almost 8 months of work.  I rebuilt the entire upper half with new sides and using much of the original cross pieces for the monitor and control panel supports.  The entire cabinet was painted over in thick, gooie black paint.  The coin door was completely rusted over and need work... it was almost tossed out at one point.. but thankfully, I kept going.  It's now all modernized with a 20" Dell LCD screen, a mini-PC running Win7 and all LED based lighting under and throughout. 

 

The graphics are courtesy of a few vendors on line.  Escape Pod for the side art, which I know is totally the wrong size, but I kept it as I liked how it looked.  I always felt the original side art was kinda small.  

 

The harder-to-find inner side panels were from This Old Game and I highly recommend using their version of it.  The blue is slightly darker and deeper, but not nearly as bad as everything else I sourced.  It's a minor flaw as compared to the high quality of the material and graphic itself.   I'm VERY satisfied with them.

 

The control panel I designed and had printed at Game On Graphix.   Excellent service, and as you design it, is as it comes.  I did screw-up on the design, I moved the red button to the top row for wrist ergonomics, so I will eventually get it reprinted and reapply.

 

The speakers were replaced with new from Arcadeshop and as they are supposed to be direct replacement... no.. they definitely are not.  So I had to re-jig the entire top design to fit the deep pans of the two speakers.  To the avid collector, this would be highly noticeable in the pitch of the top piece.  The original angle of the top plywood is a lot steeper than mine is now.  BUT... who cares... its a MAME cabinet and the new speakers completely kick-ass.  Tied into a 4" subwoofer I have being driven by a mini-amp.. this cabinet really booms.

 

Finally, the sticks and controls.  The sticks are original Wico leafs with completely reconditioned switches and new sticks.  There were from an old Crazy Climber cabinet.  The buttons and trackball are HAPP.  You may notice the lit 2 1/4 trackball.  Yes... I added that in.  The socket is available from Arcadeshop.com for really cheap, and it's worth doing if you ever want to add light to the 2 1/4 as they don't come with it stock.  The spinner I bought on Amazon.  It's a very nice unit and very smooth.  It's made for Arkanoid style series, but works fantastic on everything I use it with.

 

Summing up the extras... I added in LED strips under the cabinet to give it a "throb" like rocket thrust appearance.  The Marquee above is an 18" LED shop light from Home Depot, sitting far back from the graphic as it's very bright.  The reset of the bulbs are 300 Lumens LED bulbs to save energy and heat... oh yeah.. this cabinet in original form is very warm from all the incandescent lighting.  Fire hazards removed.  I had to hand fabricate the light bulb mounts out of then sheet metal from Lowe's as mine were missing.  All the wiring was using as much as possible from the original cabinet and other left-overs I had.  The light bulb sockets are available out there if you need to replace them.  They are exact duplicates of the originals and very inexpensive.

 

All-in-all... from a completely destroyed cabinet covered in thick black paint.. stripping it away piece by piece, I began to expose the original graphics, I just got more and more motived to restore it.  Taking it back to being an original Gorf was next to impossible as I was missing all of the original PCB's...MAMEing it was the answer to preserve and appreciate such an amazing looking cabinet from 1980.  

 

If you ever come across this cabinet and have the opportunity to own it... don't pass it up.

 

If anyone has any questions on the paint I used....it's oil-based cabinet paint from Lowe's.  Its the best stuff I tested.  And the finish is Minwax rub-on polyurathane.  

 

Ask away on this thread if you'd like know more about how I do things, what software I use... etc.  I'm happy to answer any you might have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2021 by IMBerzerk