The clever among you may have noticed a significant difference in the side panel art between the Flame design and the Cowboy arcade design. If you are not clever, goo back and look now and then come back……ok, see what we are talking about? Good.

When this project all began BFG’s offer was good on either an original Tempest machine or on a MAME box. That first choice was an easy one, MAME. You get a stable machine that plays Tempest PLUS about 2000 additional games. Not even a question.

So the search for options started. It did not take long to find MAMERoom. At first I thought a 4 player cp (control panel) prewired by MAMERoom and their Ultimate Arcade II cabinet were just the ticket. Of course, if men had their way they would live in caves full of toys, so of course the wife checked in and vetoed the size of the frankenpanel and cabinet that was being considered.

The boys stepped back to a 2 player controller and started to plan when the thought occurred that a “one-size-fits-all” cab must be bigger to allow for all possible options. A custom box could be designed to fit the required components A…N…D….it could look like a Tempest cab.

Back to the drawing board and some new decisions: design and build our own custom cab, patterned off the classic shape of the Tempest cab. Design and wire our own 2-player cp. Design all graphics. Go full custom. This is going to be fun!