The kRiSiS Arcade
In high school, I had a dream…
Well, I had two dreams. One dream was to own my own company. That one hasn’t happened yet. But the other dream, the other dream, was to have my very own Galaga arcade machine.
Far-fetched, for sure. Old cabinets were selling on eBay for upwards of $1000, and weren’t guaranteed to work. I couldn’t justify spending that much on essentially one game, especially with a meager near-minimum-wage budget. So I did what any crazy kid with a love of shooting aliens would do.. I begged my parents. Alas, they echoed back my sentiments. I forgot about it for a while, until I stumbled upon an equally crazy website. Here was a dedicated group of people who were building their own arcade machines on the cheap! They used the arcade emulator, MAME, to run so many games on a computer, and built a cabinet around it. Armed with this knowledge, I crafted the diplomatic message: “Mom, I want to build an arcade machine for a school project.”
Surprisingly, fantastically, she skeptically agreed. All I had to do was show some initiative — draft a budget and create a prototype. I did these things with an Excel spreadsheet and some cardboard, and my dad, long-time creative wizard and perpetually bored, agreed to help with the construction of the cabinet wherever I lacked experience. Work started before the project officially began, and I was assigned a few teammates at school to get the ball rolling. I was officially a leader. I struggled to assign tasks according to each person’s experience, maintain good relationships, and make sure everyone was doing their part. Honestly, I think leading a group of people is tougher than building an arcade. There are nuances to everything in human relations, and that project has endured long after the arcade was completed. Humans are fascinating creatures.
But I digress! I worked excitedly on lists, plans, schematics. So many new things had to be put in there! And after about eight months, the arcade was complete. Inside was a computer, a TV, a Dreamcast game console, Playstation 2, an awesome custom marquee a friend designed, a dynamic power distribution system, joysticks and buttons for two players, a working coin-door with a trick to give free credits, NES and SNES controllers hacked to work on the computer’s printer port, and a freshly-built Dance Dance Revolution dance pad with a custom arcade interface. I even put a trackball in there that used a hacked, old ball-mouse circuit board to act as the PC mouse and in-game trackball.
Not all was gravy in arcade-land, though. There was a point where we painted the coin-door front panel and controls panel and it didn’t come out smooth. We used paint stripper to try again but it gunked up the whole thing and we had to buy and cut fresh pieces. There was also a point where I’d cut, stripped, soldered, and crimped all 56 wire connections for the buttons and joysticks on the detachable control panel, only to find that when I popped the control panel in place, the wires were too short to reach the main cabinet junction points. I had to do it all over again with longer wires.
Still, the process of designing and building the arcade was an incredible experience. Nothing can describe the feeling you get when you roll your work into a public space and get an overwhelming response. Nothing can describe the feeling you get when you stand back, wipe another round of sweat from your brow and think, “It’s done? For real?” Total awe sets in.
Up until I built my portfolio website, this was the greatest project I’d ever undertaken. I’ll never forget the experience. As I look at my arcade, standing tall on our living room floor, I start to get the feeling again that it’s time to play some Galaga.
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