Building a Retro Arcade Cabinet: Is It Worth It?

I’m a child of the 1990s, so I have an unhealthy love of retro arcade cabinets. When I was a boy I remember trundling down to the mall, a pocketful of quarters jingling in my pocket, just so I could play Street Fighter 2. Of course, arcades have come and gone, and come again. However, there is something about having a cabinet in your own home that inspires me.

So, that got me thinking: what is the best way to do an arcade cabinet at home? There are two very distinct approaches, both with their appeal.

Modern Convenience

I stumbled upon a blog post by Sir Hare when I was shopping around for some beard grooming stuff. I know, I’ll never beat the hipster allegations. However, something caught my eye when looking at the blog post. This wasn’t anything related to beard care at all. Instead, it was a full-built retro arcade cabinet.

Well, saying it is an arcade cabinet is a stretch. However, it has the buttons, it has the games, it’s just missing the coin slot.

This was done with common components you can order from somewhere like Amazon. The heart of the setup is a Raspberry Pi 4. We aren’t talking cutting edge, but compared to the CPUs of the old Capcom and Namco cabinets, it is lightyears ahead. Further, the more intriguing thing to me was the hand-wired control setup.

Eons ago, I used to play Street Fighter competitively. I know good switches and controls when I see them. The level of care Sir Hare took in creating this control setup seriously got my mind working. All said you could get into this sort of setup for a couple of hundred dollars.

You do run into some legally dubious areas. Possessing the files needed to run these old arcade games requires ROM dumps from arcade boards you own. Moving past that, it seems like a great way to bring retro aesthetics into the modern era.

Retro Arcade Cabinet Authenticity

As I started digging through my search, I came across another blog post by Michael Spellacy. I don’t know much about the man, but he restores authentic arcade cabinets. Part of the journey he chronicled was the refurbishing of an authentic Super Pac-Man cabinet.

Now, at first blush, this seems positively archaic. Pac-Man turned 44 recently, and just about anything under the sun can run the game. Looking over the images on his sight had me wondering who would invest time into restoring something so fickle.

That isn’t to mention the danger posed by dealing with older electronics. You’ve got stuff leaky capacitors to keep track of, after all. The results were stunning, however.

Replica bezels were ordered and placed, and the restoration looks like it walked straight out of an arcade from the 1980s. But, it left me wanting. There are far too many arcade games for my nostalgia to handle, and this could be an expensive hobby building and restoring these old games.

Compromises, Compromises

My primary gaming device is a Steam Deck, which serves me well. Rather than diving into building a dedicated RetroPIE setup or building my retro arcade cabinet, I could do something with what I already had.

The Steam Deck has more horsepower than the Raspberry Pi 4, so it handles older games with ease. I purchased the Pac-Man Collection on Steam on sale for some criminally low amount and ordered an arcade stick on Amazon.

Sure, plugging up to play a 40-year-old arcade game on a 4K TV seems a bit silly. But, I guess I answered my question. The best way to do an arcade cabinet at home was just going for something that suited my needs and my lifestyle.

I’ve got three small kids running around, I don’t need them dinging up an arcade cabinet that I treated like a project car.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©iStock.com/gcammino.