Cowboy Arcade Project

In March of 2009 I started building a Tempest inspired MAME cabinet. The documentation of that build is in the post history here, so I won’t go back over all that. However, what is important is the way design works. You always start with constraints and work from there. In my case, I wanted it all. Two player controls, an “extra” 4-way joystick, a trackball, an original Tempest spinner, admin buttons, a working coin door (from an original Tempest machine, a large CRT monitor, all in a cabinet that was a scaled model of a Tempest cab. I got all that and more, and it is huge (29″ wide, 38″ deep, and 78″ tall). By comparison, an actual Tempest cab is 25″ wide, 32″ deep, and 69″ tall.

Fast forward to today. My son wants to build a cab. He is a minimalist and likes old school. As we worked on the design, including dismantling the non-working TAITO cab, he decided he wants simple and original to be his contraints. He decided to use the original 5″ paper cone speaker and a small mono amp for sound. He only wanted a joystick, 6 buttons, and a spinner. We made a marquee from cut vinyl that is black backed by orange, simple, two color. The list goes on.

I start thinking, maybe I want less too. I certainly want cleaner and simpler, and smaller would be a plus. So the Cowboy Arcade Redux was born. This time it will be an accurate replica of a Tempest cab with single player controls (orginal Tempest spinner included of course.) While I loved my graphics, I decide to go old school there too. I kept the halftoned original art in the background, but this time I’m going with bold, orange, white, and black solid graphics overlaid on the old art.

We will need to finish the PETE’S Arcade first, but I am ready to start working on this one too.