So with the cabinet built I began installing all the guts. This was pretty easy, just lots of Molex disconnects (so it can be moved in 2 pieces) electronic tape and screwing. Here's some various shots of the cabinet:

Inside the marquee light - a $5 cheapy from Menards. Good enough for me! You can also see the speakers which thankfully don't block the light or make shadows.

This photo reminds me of eBay for some odd reason... Anyway there's a power strip (rewired to a big toggle switch on the top of the unit for "main power on"), the AT computer power supply, the 6 slot MVS board and a load of wiring. Yeah a person can buy fancy power supplies for arcades, but an old AT computer power supply has everything you need and you can get them practically for free.

For some reason I wanted lightning in the logo, along with red gradients. It actually looks pretty cool, considering lightning is usually reserved for things like tattoos and motorcycle airbrushing. I mulled the idea of having the phrase "Why Electricity Was Invented" under "Neo Geo" but decided that was pretty dumb. This is actually a double-layer transparent graphic (to ensure rich color) with white translucent vinyl backing on the rear side of the clear acrylic.

Most of the graphics (with the exception of the oval logo below) were done on a wide-format Mimaki printer. I really ramped up the CMYK values to get rich black shades. Sure it meant thick layers of ink but it dries EVENTUALLY. (That said I waited several days after printing before applying or working with the graphics)

This logo doesn't really match the scheme of the marquee but I don't care - I like ovals! Besides someplace on this thing I had to tout "MVS - Multi Video System" I used 2 fonts for the whole project, Times New Roman & Arial, based off the boot-up logo in a Neo Geo game. In that "Neo Geo" is Times, "Max 330 Pro Gear Spec" is Arial.

The controls have the same theme as the top marquee. The vinyl print graphic is under the 1/8" acrylic top layer. I did a layout of this with lightning connecting all the controls (ala the marquee) but it looked too busy so I just did a slight yellow glow. For any visible screws I used steel as it would match the brushed aluminum. So this cabinet is basically steel (white), black and red. With some yellow. The black on the printed fades almost perfectly into the black paint of the cabinet. Um, just like I planned it would!

I also used 2 coin doors... Even though the Neo Geo really only needs one it looks a lot better (and symmetrical) with 2. Of course this means I need TWO coffee cans to hold the quarters, but that's something I can live with.

  The Coin / Cases of Beer Counter

Alright now for the part I'm really REALLY proud of. See, I didn't want this thing to be on "free play" - it HAD to take quarters. But how would I convince people to put money in?

The solution came to me the first night after I'd brought the cabinet home - a money indicator! I had a Basic Stamp (easy to use programmable microprocessor) laying around that I bought years ago but never had a use for. When I was considering making a pinball table it was going to run the dot matrix LED display so I had some parts for that still. So I figured I'd use the two 8x5 LED matrixes I had to create a 5x16 display that would run off the Stamp.

Sadly the most advanced circuit I have ever built

The Basic Stamp has 16 output pins/bits that can go high and low, also sense high and low (logic levels) For this,  5 pins are used to indicate which 5 LED's on a column light up, 4 more bits indicate which column to light (a 4 bit number gives you 0 through 15) The 4 bits go into a de-multiplexer / logic inverter circuit to drive the LED display. What you do is cycle through this quickly to give the illusion of all the LED's being on. I know this is pretty basic stuff but it's the first time I've built and programmed on from scratch so I'm proud of it.

The coffee can is packing $10.25 in currency! This would actually be a really bad feature for a public machine if you think about it...

I used a cool black acrylic for the coin door. It appears black but light can shine through it. So you only see the LED's when the machine is turned on. The Basic Stamp uses an EPPROM for program memory so the money amount can be written to the bottom of memory and be retained when the machine is off. Granted there's a 10 million cycle limit on the EPPROM writing but if made $2.5 million off this thing I probably won't care about wrecking a $50 Basic Stamp.

Alright so you're probably wondering "how does this encourage people to play?" See the display shows the dollar amount, and then says "Cases... of... beer" and shows how many can be bought using the current cache of coins (in this example 0.6 as it divides the cash by 1600) The idea is if we have Neo Geo parties the coins pay for the next party's beer. Makes sense to me! (Time will tell if it actually works) A reset button inside allows you to clear it to $00.00 when you remove the cash.

  In Conclusion...

After 15 years of waiting and 1 week of building my ultimate dream project is finally a reality! The best part is I can put other JAMMA connector games in here as well and they'll hook right up. So basically any arcade game from 1985 to 1995 should work with little problems (though none can beat the mighty Neo Geo) There's a few things I'd like to add still, such as "Player 1 / Player 2 Beer Holders" and a vintage bottle opener, but those can be added anytime.

Jason Jones, who appears in the long delayed but still coming Port Washington, gives his opinion of the Neo Geo Arcade

Of course building this gives me other ideas... and Jones already wants me to build him a 4 player "Konami Machine" for his up-and-coming "Media Basement", which would be cool for stuff like TMNT, Sunset Riders, The Simpsons and X-Men. Who knows, I might even be persuaded to build arcade cabinets beyond that for other people...

As for my next personal arcade project I'll probably try and make my very own custom PINBALL machine once I save up some more bucks. This will of course be 100 times more difficult than the Neo cabinet was, but why make something EASIER? But don't worry - I already have a theme for it, based off my favorite actor! Take a look at the backglass display I've started on:

In, 10

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SURPRISE!

(And no, I'm not kidding)

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