Contra Arcade Cabinet (Arcade1Up Conversion)

Over the summer I bought an Arcade1Up Simpson's cabinet and converted it to a vertical screen Contra MAME cabinet.

The Simpson's Cabinet

I got the cabinet when it was on sale at my local Best Buy for $300.  I felt this was worth it because:

• It has a nice scale and form factor complimenting my existing Golden Axe cabinet.
• I would not have to do any woodworking on the cabinet.
• BOE 4:3 LED screen.
• Lighted marquee.
• Two yellow button coin doors (needed for my Golden Axe cabinet)
• PCB and control panel (traded for another red button coin door)
• Stool (sold for $40) 

Graphics

Marquee and control panel

I got this excellent custom "Slip-On" Marquee from Szabo's Arcades. 

The control panel graphics are from Arcade Graphix and are printed on a thick laminated vinyl which avoids the need for a custom deck protector.

The sides were lightly sanded and painted with Behr spray (lunar surface color) and a generic glossy black spray paint went over the yellow trim.

The graphics were found on Redbubble.com and looked a lot better than the silly beefcakes Konami used in their artwork. We all know this game was supposed to be Dutch and Rambo versus the xenomorphs from Aliens... so why not? I also ordered a large Contra image for the Riser (bottom Contra logo).

Screen Rotation

I used a router to cut a vertical slot for the screen in the existing horizontal mounting [Note: this is actually the screen from my Golden Axe cabinet, as I did a screen swap over there because I preferred the mostly blank bezel graphics].

To complete the rotation, I purchased a piece of lexan, cut it to match the size, drilled holes for the attachment screws, and spray painted the back-side black (after masking the viewing window).

Lexan was a good choice here (3x more expensive) but it cuts and drills very easy.

Masking the window for the screen with Blue 3M painters tape was a mistake though. The paint left a residue and I kind of micro scratched the screen cleaning it off. It looks great, you don't see it, and I'm not complaining. But I would do it differently next time.

Power Distribution and Wiring

I mounted the display control board to the back of the monitor using a 3D printed template I found on Thingiverse. This does not actually fit the board correctly, but was forced to work and screwed into the back of the monitor using some screws used on the original PCB housing and my own collection of random screws.

The LCD control board is not connected and instead two buttons on the top panel the cabinet are connected to control the output volume.

The volume buttons on the top of the cabinet

Sound is wired to use the original A1Up speakers as driven by the display board and communicated from the PC over HDMI.

A single 12V power supply provides all of the power in the cabinet. The original cabinet was 3A 12V and the mini PC was 3A 12V.  So I bought a single 6A 12V supply from Amazon.

The 12V power is distributed to the various components in the cabinet via a terminal block which can also be found on Amazon.

Control Panel

The control panel was custom built from 1/2 inch MDF and black T-molding. T-molding, buttons, and joysticks are all from t-molding.com.  Sanwa sticks with red tops, red Suzo Happ concave buttons, and white P1 and P2 buttons. The USB encoder boards from Amazon came with all of the wires used here.

The lighted coin door build is documented here. Since I swapped the dual coin doors for a single panel, I took the front panel from my Golden Axe cabinet, made the modifications and hit it with the same black spray paint.

Mini PC

I bought a BeeLink mini PC and mounted it to the inside of the cabinet. It runs Linux Mint and MAME 2.4X and is not connected to the internet. It boots when it receives power and a script automatically runs MAME on startup and shuts down as soon as MAME is exited.  I even added MAME splash screens during boot.

Overall it is very clean and as fun to look at as play.