Over the holidays my sons and I (mostly them) got everything running on my MAME Arcade Cabinet. MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. The software emulates the old computer hardware that played the arcade games and uses copies of the original hex code that was stored on EPROMS on those computer boards.
Buttons, joysticks, spinners, and trackballs are all wired into specialized controller cards that convert those signals into what appears to the emulator as keyboard and mouse signals. When it’s all done correctly you can’t really tell that you are not playing the original game on original hardware.
In the process of getting my cab back in shape, one of my sons decided he would like to build a cab for himself. I always wanted to build a second cab, so I was all in. The first step was to determine what kind (shape) of cab to build. I suggested he consider the old TAITO cab. For one thing, I had one in storage that we could use for measurements and possibly parts, and two, I think it is one of the cleanest and well designed cab shapes. He agreed and we were off to the races.
He wanted an OSU Cowboys theme, but not like my cab. I found some reasonably high res images of the original art for this cabinet, as well as a good set of plans for building one.
I digitized the side art and used that as a starting point for the design:
While I was working on graphics, my son was busy modeling the entire cabinet (including every bolt and nut) in Solidworks for we would have a model:
Along the way I also digitized the TAITO logo and a graphic from another cab for use in the Attract Mode Screen. This was the pic I got off the cab:
And the Redrawn art:
I also took the TAITO Logo:
And made it a “PETES” logo:
And then used those elements on the Attract Mode screen:
