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OVERVIEW
The first step in the design process is defining your goals. Because I live in the inner city, my main goal is to make something that occupies the least amount of space possible. Of course it still has to provide an arcade experience, or what's the point in building it? My main game focus is classic shooters up to the early eighties. Thus we have the critical tensions pulling on my design. These are the central unique design features of the Space Invader:
- LCD Screen
Yes, you read right. A rare choice indeed but the savings on space and easy rotation, plus the fact that its not constantly charged with a million kazillion volts ready to blow my friggin brain out the back of my head, make this the top choice.
- Upright Cabinet
"Madness!" I hear you cry. Cocktail is the space efficient choice, everyone knows that! Well not necessarily. A cocktail cabinet requires space for players either side. Also LCD screens don't work too well when viewed off axis. If you look at my design you'll see the cabinet is low profile with a small footprint, around 60cm deep, 55cm wide and 140cm high, providing what I reckon is the best compromise between space economy and an authentic arcade experience. It can be tucked away in a corner somewhere and will be a beautiful decorative piece that will add thousands of dollars value to our home. Honestly. I really mean it.
- Single Simultaneous Player
At least for the time being my cabinet will be set up the old way, with controllers for one player at a time, allowing me the small cabinet width. This is fine for the shooters I love, but blocks out fighting games.
- Simple Construction
I've done a little wood work but I'm no carpenter. The design needs to be pretty easy to assemble and has to look good when its finished or Mrs. Bob will get tetchy about it.
DRAWINGS
EQUIPMENT
- CPU
 The CPU is a DELL PIII 450 with a 4GB hard drive, 128MB RAM, onboard 4 MB video and onboard sound. I've upgraded the video card to a 32mb TNT2 M64 PCI card that supports hardware stretching.
- Controls
 For controls I used an old arcade style controller I had for my megadrive called "The Tank".
- Controller Interface
I've got an I-PAC interface because these seem the way to go. Very easy to set up and works a treat.
- LCD Monitor
 I'm using a Benq FP767 17"
LCD Monitor, its black, its beautiful, its half my budget at AUD$680.
- Speakers
A set of Creative Inspire 2.1 speakers. These are a good powered speaker for AUD$75, and have a neat little remote volume control you can hide somewhere on the cabinet.
SOFTWARE
- Windows 98 Second Edition
Terrifyingly close to stable, relatively modest system requirements.
- MAME Win32 0.53 (i686 optimized).
I've changed to an older version of MAME. A few games were dropping frames, but switch back to version 0.53 and everything is rock solid. It supports all the games that run well on this machine anyway, and I can always have the current version on standby.
- Game Launcher 0.9.8.
I like this front end, its basic but highly configurable. It seems wrong to have a multi-windowed graphic intensive front end that takes you through to a game of pac-man, ya know what I mean?
- WinCab mp3 Jukebox.
This is by far the best mp3 Jukebox software for MAME cabinets IMHO. Give it a go, its free! It provides a whole other dimension to your cabinet. I've split the audio out from my machine using a $5 cable from Dick Smith Electronics, and one line feeds the cabinet speakers while the other goes to my multi-zone home stereo system. This means I can have the cool arcade cabinet jukebox running in the study providing music for the whole house. How cool is that? I'll tell you! Very cool! Very bloody cool indeed!
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