For a long time I’ve wanted to make a post about an arcade machine conversion I made years ago for my frat house.

It started as an old Arch-rivals video game that a former alumni donated. It worked fairly well for a few years, but finally succumbed to age (being 16 years old). The monitor was snowy, the controls barely worked, etc. So I decided to scrap it and make it a MAME arcade machine.

I ripped out all of the guts, put in an old computer and monitor, speakers, a marquis light. I created graphics for the marquis and new control panel.  I built the control panel with buttons and joysticks from Groovy Game Gear, and hooked it to the computer with a device called a keywiz.

The computer had Windows XP installed, the MAME program and a program called MameWAH for the graphical interface. It allows users to work the game selection via the joysticks. There are more than 4000 games that people can play. But most stick to the more popular games, like Marvel vs. Capcom.

I did the machine conversion in December of 2005 and it still works to this day four years later. Surprisingly the already ancient computer inside and my hack job with MDF and contact paper has held up!