Finished: 2/3 Scale Donkey Kong Arcade Cabinet

Post by **melarky** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 9:29 pm

I posted a while back about cutting out an arcade cabinet (a donkey kong to be exact). I had programmed the cabinet into vectric and scaled it down to about 9" tall to make sure all of the pieces fit (cut it out of 1/4" birch). you can find more details about that project in my previous post:

http://vectric.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=506

As I stated in my previous post, I planned on making this cabinet when I found out we would be having a baby boy in November (my son was born on November 14th, both baby and mom are healthy and happy). Well, I finally got around to making the larger scale version (around 5' tall, not quite as tall as the commercial cabs which were over 6' I beleive, I like this smaller version as kids like them more, and they are comfortable for adults to use by simply pushing a standard chair up to them). I didn't take any progress pictures again (I really meant to, sorry), but I finally got a chance to put some pictures of the finished cabinet online.

It really came out nice, and it was so easy to scale the parts up with V-carve. It was especially nice to use V-carve for the front speaker grill (which would have been a pain to program and cut without v-carve). It's mostly being used as a TV for now (my wife watches while feeding the baby in his room), but will probably be used more as an arcade once he's old enough to play games.

Post by **melarky** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 9:36 pm

Heres a few more pictures (I'm pretty proud of this project):

Post by **Wemme** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:08 pm

Hi Stew.

Congradulations with your New Born.

Awesome work on the cabinat, Nice!
Your attention to detail is great
What did you use for the edging? thermal tape or T tape?

I use to have an MAME system (~4000 games) I built out of an old Arcade cabinat, With fold down Beer holders the lot.
Unfortunatly I ended up moving so sold it, but was definatly great fun.

Regards
Bart

Post by **melarky** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:57 pm

I used t-molding (from http://t-molding.com). They have a specific nintendo flat white t-molding they sell which is a great reproduction of the original stuff that was on the commercial machines, but they only sell that in 9/16" size, so I bought the 3/4" rounded white t-molding instead (http://t-molding.com/store/product.php? ... =18&page=1). I have purchased from them in the past, so I knew they would be great (fast shipping, a pleasure to deal with).

You should CNC yourself a new mame machine. There is a website that has many of the old cabinet plans available in jpeg or vector format (that is how I got this donkey kong programmed for v-carve, just downloaded the vector format of their Donkey Kong plans, used their tracing of the side, and then created the rest of the pieces from their measurments, it was a blast to cut).

The site is http://jakobud.com/, just click on the link that says "Cabinet Plans" and then choose from many available plans (I think I may make another, possibly Crystal Castles, Centipede, Pac-Man, or all 3

)

Thanks for the kind words.

Post by **Jason Marsha** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 3:13 am

Congrats on your new born, he was born on the best day of the year.

When I finish my big cnc I should be able to rustle up one of these cabinets in quick time.

Jason

Post by **melarky** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 7:41 pm

To give a better idea of how big this cabinet is, here is a picture with my wife and me (holding the new baby) standing next to it. Just realized without any reference, it just looks like a normal size machine...

Post by **dighsx** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 9:51 pm

Cute kid man, congrats. I like the way you work 'Honey I'm building this Donkey Kong machine for the "kid"!" What's next? 'Honey I'm installing these beer kegs and bar for the "kid"!"

Makes me want to get a kid. Yikes I can't believe I just said that.

Nice work all jokes aside.