I miss the days when video games were simpler. Mario, Link, and Sonic were the heroes of my childhood. By comparison, today’s kids play video games from another world. Games are more graphics-oriented than story-focused. Every mindless shooter makes me wish we could turn back the clock and enjoy the games of our youth.
Apparently, I’m not alone. One Redditor recently did just that by turning an old school arcade game into the video game machine of my dreams.
The plan was to gut this machine, clean it, paint it, then implement a MAME system with an upgraded screen and over 5000 games. This was accomplished using a good quality box unit.
Unfortunately, the “clean it” part seemed to take forever. Everything had to be scrubbed off.
Just before removing its guts, the builder played the original game one last time.
Then comes the inside time.
Cleaning all the nooks and crannies off every inside piece.
And prying open the boards.
Then came the fun part. A modded Xbox (200gb hdd with Visionary and Coinops frontends), Happ buttons, Zippyy sticks, and blue T Molding. And wires. Lots and lots of wires.
He even had some custom logos made up for the outside to personalize the system.
See that blue light? It’s a volume knob!
Here’s all the important guts of the build, up and running. The circuit boards are Xbox controllers with wires soldered to them for hooking up the arcade buttons.
He had to install a new screen. The old screen was a little tired and didn’t quite work right with the Xbox.
Then it was time for the first test run…
…success!
She looked like a beauty when all put together.
Check out the final result!
(via Reddit)
It’s pretty darn obvious what’s going straight to the top of my Christmas list. Either that, or it’s time to pay a little more attention to this DIY guide and make one myself. It can’t be THAT hard, right?
