Now back to our program…ming

OOPS.

Well it was a holiday and there was a lot of traveling so I’m behind on my bloggery. But I did lots of work so let’s take a lookery-loo, and I promise never to say lookery-loo again.

Arcade Patchup

With my beautiful arcade cabinet smashed by reckless (yet wreckful) movers, there was no chance to make it into a commercial arcade. However, it was still upright and I thought I could potentially get it into shape as a demo unit to shop around. I’d have to build a new one if I found a customer, but it seemed worth it to try. At least, that’s what my good buddy Rob from Three Flip Studios insisted, as he drove all the way up from LA with tools, supplies, precut wood, a bezel AND A FRICKIN’ TV!!! He was serious about getting this cabinet into a presentable state. I was in a deep, deep depression.

Before

In the above photo, you can see the crushed corner, the cracked top and side, and where one of the pocket screws ripped on the speaker panel. Any pressure on any of this and it would be nasty. So the first order of business was to keep the corner from ripping off entirely. We put in a screw into the side where the corner was cracked to secure it to the cabinet. Otherwise it was in grave danger off snapping off.

We recessed the screw hole so it would not stick out when the art goes on the side.

The most damaged section was the top, so we filled it with wood glue and clamped it between two pieces of scrap for 24 hours. Also, for the crack down the top, Rob had pre-cut some more of the blocking wood to use as reinforcements inside the cabinet.

Solution?

Once the glue dried, it looked a lot better. But for tall people, the damage is still very obvious:

Not great but a lot better.

After securing the rest of the damaged areas with recessed screws, it was time to create the monitor mount. Since the original design was for a large CRT, we had to make custom rails for a bezel and a wooden support structure for the LCD monitor, which due to viewing angle issues needed to be mounted upside down! Again Three Flip Studios came through with precut pieces of wood for this purpose. Huge thanks to Rob & Anthony for all their help! My depression was waning…

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With that it was really starting to look like an arcade cabinet! The bezel really makes it, I think. We had to cut it down as it was too wide, so we used a long metal ruler and box cutters to score the plastic over and over again until we broke through to trim off the sides.

The bezel helps; it has a bevel.

I can’t thank Rob and Anthony from Three Flip Studios enough. There is simply no way I could have done all this on my own. Now that it is more or less patched up, I can finish building the rest! I’ve already put in the marquee lighting:

no they don't
They call me Marquee Mark

To be continued….

It has not all been arcadery! I have been working on new stuff for SSDT: Season Mode and will share in the next blog, “Now back to our program…ming PART 2”.

 

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