I finally decided on a cocktail machine versus a stand-up machine. My motivation? My wife thinks it will take up less space. But seriously, it probably will and it’s what I spent many years playing in restaurants and bowling alleys. Pac-Man, Galaga, or Space Invaders? I’m not sure of the theme. I have a couple of working arcade boards but am leaning toward emulation if it has the right feel. In the pictures, I am using a PC. I initially tried to use a nice PC monitor, but it’s so big it would take up the entire box (literally)! I fitted it with an LCD for now to evaluate my options (decase, real arcade monitor, etc). An LCD could work, but you miss that curvature of the screen, so I’m not sure how I feel about that. Also, I’d need some kind of better bevel around the screen, but for now we have black cardboard! You can see my youngest trying it out. I think he likes it.
The next step is probably to decide on a theme and get the underlayment and piece of glass to match. I think it would be easiest to cut the wood top after I have all that. For now, I’ll just keep prototyping as there are a lot of details to figure out.
