One of my favorite things I own is my custom MAME cabinet. For those who don't know, MAME is a program that emulates thousands of arcade games from the last four decades, and has become the backbone of many custom home cabinets. Hobbyists sometimes take a vintage machine and gut it, replacing the internal components with a PC running MAME, while others (like myself) buy a pre-fabricated or easily assembled kit from companies like Xtension, X-Arcade, or North Coast Custom Arcades. Prices range from affordable to "you will die before you pay this off," which leads some people to build their own cabinets of, let's say, wildly varying quality all by themselves.
Now, I understand some people love building things. It's not for me. I grumble putting Target bookshelves together, but more power to those with the drive and know-how to build. Some people are also cheap, and sometimes those two groups seem to crisscross, resulting in a poorly conceived mutant cabinet that no reasonable person would want to show off. That's what we'll be taking a look at in these posts. What do you say we get started? You can click to embiggen the pictures so you can better appreciate these monstrosities for yourselves. (And yes, I know you can see my phone's UI.)
Mario Bartop
This one isn't too offensive to start with, but don't worry, this is just the beginning. This bartop highlights several pet peeves I see frequently.
The first, and most obvious flaw, is the complete lack of a consistent theme. Personally, I don't really understand the appeal of having an arcade cabinet that plays console games. Most of them don't play particularly well with a joystick, but whatever - if that's your jam and you want everything ever on one machine, do you, player.
What you should not do, however, is throw a bunch of stock images of CG Mario and combine it with enlarged sprite rips from 8-bit games that stand out. If you insist on doing so, at least don't be lazy and reuse the same characters. Why do we need Mario jumping on the bezel and standing with his arms crossed, like he's disappointed in the person who put his image on here, on the side? You put Ryu Hayabusa running on the left side, and two Simon Belmonts (albeit from different Castlevania games), so why not another 8-bit icon like Mega Man or Link instead of duplicates?
Turning our attention back to the control panel, I can get behind the Pac-Man maze theme. I'm not sure why the "Multi-Pac" logo is plastered on there, other than because the creator found it in a Google image search. The biggest offenders are the LED buttons. This is a popular modification for custom cabinets these days, and I hate it. Not only are they gaudy, they are actually less responsive than standard buttons. Since a vast majority of retro games are so reliant on split-second timing and precision, and most people are likely using an LCD monitor, you want to mitigate input lag as much as possible - not add to it with shiny buttons.
The cherry on top are the blue LED lights along the sides. Nobody cares that your machine glows in the dark. Unless your aim is to wash out the screen and cast a bunch of glare on it, don't put a bunch of LED lights around the goddamn monitor.
Metroid Bartop
Sigh. Did you not hear a single word I said? This is obviously the same person who designed the Mario bartop, except this time it's Metroid-themed. To their credit, at least the side art and the control panel are consistent, without random characters from other games sprinkled in. The marquee, however, is the same Marvel vs. Capcom 2 marquee, and this time they've really doubled down on the LED lights.
Like, really, really, really doubled down. Jesus. Is this thing called the Epilepsy 2000? Who would want to play games in the glare of all those lights? And now you've even replaced the old ball-top joysticks with sparkly LED ball-tops? Why stop there? Why not add a disco ball and some strobes at this point? This thing is single-handedly responsible for 90% of the home's power consumption.
Ohio State
As a native and lifelong Michigander, I'm apparently legally required to hate Ohio State, but the truth is I couldn't care less about college sports. I do hate this hideous cabinet though.
I feel like the market for this kind of thing is pretty slim, and it raises so many questions. Why is it so upright? Most arcade cabinets have some curves in them for ergonomic reasons, but not this one! RIGHT ANGLES ONLY! What is with the giant front plate? Was it just so you could display a larger Ohio State logo, in case the four on the monitor bezel didn't get the point across? At your asking price of $2,500, that's $500 per logo. Why didn't they build a space for the marquee? That's a missed opportunity for at least three more logos!
Ignoring the aesthetics, let's take a look at that control panel. Why is the stick on the right?! Have you ever, in your life, seen an arcade cabinet where the stick is on the far right? Even if you're left-handed, the stick is on the left and the buttons are on the right. That's how it is, that's how it should be. Not only is it reversed here, but they're about as far away from one another as you can get without putting them on the actual sides of the cabinet. Three buttons also limits the types of games you can play, although it's possible they don't care about fighting games. You may be wondering why there are both one and two player start buttons, but only one joystick. In fairness, a lot of older arcade games - which would indeed use only one or two buttons - used alternating 2-player modes. The better question is how do you insert coins? If this thing is running MAME, you need a button to "drop" a coin. True, MAME is very customizable and you could map any other button, or combinations of buttons, to various functions such as inserting coins or backing out of a game to a menu, but there is so much empty space on that panel! Look at the desert between the joystick and the buttons. You could have put coin and/or menu buttons there! And maybe another Ohio State logo.
Arcade Emulator
Have you ever seen a movie where there's like a deformed version of a character whose face is all droopy on one side and they slur "kill me?" I feel like that's what this machine would say if it could talk. From the top down, this thing is hideous. Look at it! The speakers look like red eyes filled with hatred for its creator, and the Dell monitor - because of course they didn't frame the bezel properly - will suck the soul out of all who approach into its black, gaping maw.
The marquee is almost halfway decent, with a collection of classic characters. There's Dirk the Daring (and Daphne in the A) from Dragon's Lair, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Space Invaders, Pac-Man and the Ms., Mappy, Q*Bert, Reptile from Mortal Kombat... and Raccoon Mario, for some reason. You almost had it there, but you just had to throw in a non-arcade character. And don't hand me that "Mario is in Donkey Kong, and Mario Bros.!" shit either. Raccoon Mario is strictly a Super Mario Bros. 3 image. That's the box art, for Christ's sake! PlayChoice-10 doesn't count either! Even if I let that slide, you could have called this anything you wanted, and you went with "Arcade Emulator?" The emulator is the program that powers your cabinet. That's like if actual arcade games said "Jamma PCB" instead of the game name on the marquee.
But the pièce de résistance is that control panel. What is that, formica? It looks lovely. It's nice that you made it big enough to prepare a meal on too. Why are the controllers at such odd angles? The left side is considerably higher up, and at a sharper angle relative to the monitor, that player one might impale themselves on the jutting edge of the board. I assume the three buttons in the top left corner are coin or menu buttons, but what the hell is that center button for? It's hard to tell since there are no labels on anything. Then again, would you want to ruin that beautiful countertop?
NES 1up
Our last subject for today also hits a lot of the "Don'ts." This is an Arcade 1up cabinet, which are cheap (both cost and build quality), 3/4 scale arcade cabinets. They've become pretty popular as of late, and as with any new piece of technology the first thing someone did was stuff a Raspberry Pi into one. I love the aesthetics of the 1up machines because they mirror the original arcade cabinets, but the smaller size means they're not really comfortable for me to play, and certainly not with multiple players.
This guy's line of thinking must have been to solve that problem by adding a control panel that completely ruins the aesthetic and is almost as big as the rest of the entire cabinet. That super-squished image of the front of an NES console really adds a lot, don't you think? But wait, there's more!
Oh, look, there's more modern CG Mario artwork plastered all over the sides! Because when I think about arcade cabinets, I immediately think about New Super Mario Bros. U! And what's that on the control panel? A picture of the NES Advantage stick? That seems kind of odd, considering there are actual buttons on top of the picture of buttons. Speaking of, hello, LED buttons, my old friends! I see you've brought a giant green trackball with you. It seems he's fallen into a hole though, since there's no guard ring, so you might want to wear work gloves if you're going to use it unless you like having your skin pinched against wood.
Those are just the first five of many, many failed experiments I've found for sale on the Facebook Marketplace. I hope you've learned a thing or two.