A working Star Wars arcade cabinet
April 26, 2012 12:19 PM   Subscribe

A working Star Wars arcade cabinet that's the same height as a bottle of wine. (SLYT)
posted by GallonOfAlan (31 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Pretty cool, but my hands were cramping up just watching him use the tiny controller. ouch!
posted by NoMich at 12:25 PM on April 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


GDamn I played that game a lot.
posted by humboldt32 at 12:26 PM on April 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


I'm with NoMich. Seems borderline masochistic.
posted by RolandOfEld at 12:44 PM on April 26, 2012


Man, that's such a realistic model that not only do the coin slots light up, but the control yoke is about as accurate and responsive as a ham sandwich, just like the arcade!
posted by loquacious at 12:47 PM on April 26, 2012 [5 favorites]


@loquacious

Ha yes ... 'steers like a cow - they nailed that part' was my thought on seeing it.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:49 PM on April 26, 2012


Wowza, that's gotta be one huge bottle of wine!

This answers that question: posted by GallonOfAlan
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:55 PM on April 26, 2012


That game always drove me nuts at the more difficult stages because the controls to move the ship and the controls to aim your lasers were the same controls. So basically, whenever you needed the ship to go up but also needed to fire at something attacking you from below (or vice versa) you were just screwed and there was nothing you could do.

Of course this didn't stop me from pumping tons of money into the thing, I mean...STAR WARS.
posted by trackofalljades at 1:11 PM on April 26, 2012


Those coin slot lights are blinding in the video. I wonder if they are emitting some IR that is caught by the camera and aren't so bad in real life - hard to imagine going through all the effort to make the thing and flub such a distracting detail.
posted by exogenous at 1:12 PM on April 26, 2012


That guy has terrible taste in drapes.
posted by Pecinpah at 1:13 PM on April 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


Perfect for your tiny house.
posted by 3.2.3 at 1:14 PM on April 26, 2012


Phht. Wake me when he build the sit down cabinet.

(actually: DAMN THAT IS COOL!)
posted by dirtdirt at 1:15 PM on April 26, 2012 [3 favorites]


Is Vector Thursday going to replace Flash Friday?
posted by Trurl at 1:30 PM on April 26, 2012 [4 favorites]


Loved that game. Probably my all time favorite.
posted by Ironmouth at 1:38 PM on April 26, 2012


Related.
posted by mazola at 1:45 PM on April 26, 2012


Yes, fantastic game! I can hear the game's music, the sound effects, in my head at will. "Great shot, kid! That was one in a million!" Comforting sounds. Lonely sounds.
posted by jabberjaw at 1:46 PM on April 26, 2012 [2 favorites]


Isn't it a pain for him to pump in quarters that are the size of the head of a pin?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:52 PM on April 26, 2012


Those coin slot lights are blinding in the video. I wonder if they are emitting some IR that is caught by the camera and aren't so bad in real life - hard to imagine going through all the effort to make the thing and flub such a distracting detail.

Nothing so complicated most likely, it's just being shot on a camcorder that's confused about exposure. In real life, neither the coin slots nor the marquee at the top probably look like that. Shooting arcade cabinets, of any size, is a pretty complex affair especially in the dimly lit interiors where they're usually found.
posted by trackofalljades at 2:01 PM on April 26, 2012


Not as much of a pain it is for him to make them. Which is technically tiny counterfeiting. He should expect a visit from tiny agents of the Tiny Department of the Treasury.
posted by JHarris at 2:02 PM on April 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


STAR WARS SCROLL...SOO EXCITING...oh some dudes kitchen table with a bottle...TINY STAR WARS ARCADE....SOOO EXCITING.
posted by hot_monster at 2:02 PM on April 26, 2012


"Great shot, kid! That was one in a million!"

I've always liked how you can hear an orchestral swell in the background at that point, because the sample is straight from the movie soundtrack and they got some collateral John Williams.
posted by phl at 2:05 PM on April 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


He should expect a visit from tiny agents of the Tiny Department of the Treasury.

He's not going to be very comfortable in that jail cell.
posted by exogenous at 2:21 PM on April 26, 2012 [1 favorite]


So does this copyright infringement go to small claims court?
posted by George Lucas at 2:31 PM on April 26, 2012 [6 favorites]


I played that game so, so, much when I was a kid. Reminds me of Ocean City arcades like Marty's Playland. That game and Crystal Castles.
posted by empath at 2:33 PM on April 26, 2012


That's no arcade...
posted by Fizz at 2:38 PM on April 26, 2012


the same height as a bottle of wine

Now that's a unit of measurement I can get behind.
posted by brundlefly at 3:05 PM on April 26, 2012


Rip out the electronics and stuff a bag of wine in there. Flight yoke == dispenser.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:15 PM on April 26, 2012


Look at the size of that thing!
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 3:20 PM on April 26, 2012 [5 favorites]


A little short for a Star Wars arcade cabinet.

Then again, size matters not.
posted by jabberjaw at 3:36 PM on April 26, 2012 [3 favorites]


I dunno why I immediately thought this was gonna be the sit-down cabinet, and then thought about how impossible it would be to play.

Pretty cool that he was able to make his own flight yoke at such a small scale. From spending some time among the MAME cabinet-building community, the Star Wars flight yoke is one of the more difficult pieces to include on any cabinet. Pretty cool that the Caanoo (or whatever extra logic board he added to it) is capable of receiving input from plain old analog potentiometers. (though the Caanoo has an analog stick, so I'm guessing that could just be adapted to a yoke formation)

A quick google search for "Caanoo analog stick" led me right to this post where the designer announces his completed build to the community. There are some great close-ups of the cabinet as well.
posted by ShutterBun at 6:00 PM on April 26, 2012


That game always drove me nuts at the more difficult stages because the controls to move the ship and the controls to aim your lasers were the same controls.

And, see, for me, the moment when they started letting you move in one direction and aim in another was the moment I realized I was too uncoordinated to play video games anymore.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:33 PM on April 26, 2012


Am I the only one bummed out that he used an LCD screen and didn't, like, modify some tiny oscilloscope vector CRT and use that?

I mean, I guess those tubes are usually more than a few inches deep. I once had a tiny marine television with a 1.5" black and white screen, but the electron gun was set back more than six inches from the face of the screen. Anyway, I don't think anyone ever manufactured a penetron tube that small (was that a penetron CRT in the Star Wars cabinet? Is there any other way to do color vector stuff without resorting to using static overlays?) ...

Anyway, still pretty great.
posted by drumcorpse at 12:15 PM on April 27, 2012


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