My first MAME cabinet (Part 1)

I grew up in a time when video game arcades were still around, but were starting to fall in to decline.  By the late nineties the internet was a relatively common thing to everyone and on-line gaming was starting to make important strides such as battle.net.  In contrast, an arcade took physical space to rent, required constant maintenance on the machines, required hiring employees to monitor the physical space and had the disadvantage of biased politicians and law makers working to have them shut down.

I can't remember the day where my favourite arcade actually closed, but I know it would have been sometime around 2000.  The 'Tour D'Orleans' arcade was on the second floor of the Place D'Orleans mall, but would have been shut down in order to expand the 'Bay Home Store' which opened in September of 2000.

As a kid I always thought it would the coolest thing in the world to have my own arcade cabinet. Even just one cabinet would be amazing considering how rare and expensive arcade games were. Twenty years later and I'm finally realizing my dream.

Being an adult finally pays off.

This is an old Sega/Gremlin cabinet (I think), either a Frogger or something similar, which I picked up off of Kijiji.

As you can see, there have been some modifications to the original cabinet as someone has drilled two push buttons in to the front panel, and that 'Cobra Command' marquee doesn't seem to be legit. Actually, despite the awesome 80's woody-whack, I don't think the front panel is original at all as it is plywood whereas everything else seems to be MDF.  Oddly enough, the coin mechanism appears to have been in there for a long time judging by the sticker.

Perhaps the front panel was replaced in '83 due to damage.  Or maybe this is just a coin mech from an entirely different cabinet which was thrown in recently.  Who knows!

6367 x .25 = 1591.75 which is not a lot of money considering this thing is 30 years old

The cabinet came missing just about everything.  There is no PCB, no monitor, no side art, no control panel and no power supply.  The laminate on one side has a big chip and a seam, and the front panel has a large crack which seems to be limited only to the laminate panel.  I don't even know how that can happen. Regardless, given how common these cabinets are, and given the condition of the existing parts, I don't feel bad about converting it in to a MAME cabinet.

I'm not putting a ton of research in to where the cabinet came from as really there probably isn't much info to be gathered.  If anyone can confirm the original type of cabinet or game, or maybe provide some insight or where the cabinet could have come from, please comment!

This is after a I cleaned a bunch of black paint off of the serial plate.  '1742' is stamped in but that's about all that is legible apart from 'Serial No'

It's really hard to see but it looks like someone wrote 'Wizard' in magic marker on the back of this reinforcing plate.  I don't remember ever hearing of a 'Wizard' arcade in Ottawa, so maybe this referred to the Coin Op?

Irrespective of where the cabinet came from, it's going to be getting some TLC.  My plan is to use my existing desktop computer for the guts, a 23" LCD monitor, and a 2.1 THX stereo system.  I`ll use HyperSpin as a front end, and I`ll custom build the control panel.

My next post should focus on taking the cabinet apart for cleaning.  Hopefully I`ll find some hidden treasures to show off, but at this point I kind of doubt that I`ll find anything good.