DIY two-player arcade machine

Apparently, playing retro games with a normal controller was not unnecessarily complicated enough.

The problem

Old arcade games are great. Playing them on a laptop keyboard is not.

The solution

I built a full-size, two-player arcade machine from wood, an old Samsung screen, a Raspberry Pi, two joysticks, and a suspicious number of illuminated buttons.

What I did

• Built and painted the wooden cabinet.
• Installed the screen, joysticks, buttons, and control electronics.
• Soldered and wired everything to an input encoder.
• Set up the Raspberry Pi with emulators and configured the controls for two players.
• Spent several hours testing Street Fighter II, for purely technical reasons.

The result

One homemade arcade cabinet capable of running games from multiple retro consoles. Not particularly necessary, not especially compact, but significantly better than playing Mario Kart on a keyboard.