It’s becoming increasingly cheaper to make your own arcade machine, but if you’d rather leave it to the pros check out Dream Arcades’ latest offering, the Vision 32. The machine gets its name from its 32″ LCD display. It’s loaded with 140 classic games, but as an introductory offer Dream Machines is giving away more games and other freebies to early buyers.
The Vision 32 is based on a Windows XP computer with a 3.0GHz Pentium 4 CPU, 1GB RAM, 80GB hard drive, CD-ROM drive and Ethernet port. Its buttons and 2.25″ trackball are backlit. It also has side pinball buttons and a hidden keyboard shelf. Dream Arcades didn’t specify the resolution of the display, only that it’s high definition.
The list below ticks off some of the games pre-loaded into the Vision 32. Early buyers will also get a over two dozen casino and slots games, seven clone games – including a Donkey Kong clone, a Freeway clone and a Frogger clone – plus a DVD-ROM drive. You can also add your own games, play music and videos and go online on the machine.
Insert a coin in your browser and order the Vision 32 for $2,699 (USD) – $500 off from its regular price. The sale ends on 5/26. You can check out custom made Vision 32 units on Dream Arcades’ Facebook page.
The world is full of dangers and you have to be prepared – especially when it comes to zombies. The Zombie Apocalypse Survival Cabinet will make sure that you stay alive long after all of your best buddies are slow-walking brain eaters.
It might be best to be among the dead, but if you are brave enough, this will keep you alive. This Wolfram cabinet comes full of all the stuff that you’ll need to survive and function; everything from food to camping supplies to medical supplies to tools and weapons.
You get over 170 items in the $14,500 kit (full inventory list here). The durable double steel-walled cabinet measures 43” (W) x 65” (H) x 18” (D) and should hold up to just about anything you can throw at at.
Kill ‘em dead whenever you see them and stay alive. Where there is life, there is hope. Stay safe my friends.
This unusual bedside table was inspired by the works of Salvador Dalí and made by Oscar Tusquets, an artist in Spain. He built these drawers using taxidermied sheep. Obviously.
They specifically reference this image by Dalí seen here called “Interpretation Project for a Stable-Library.” You can see the sheep cabinet on the left side of the image. And now this dude is bringing it to life. Using dead sheep. Tusquets worked with a famous French taxidermy studio in Paris, to make 21 sheep cabinets in all. Each one has bronze feet, a tabletop and a drawer for all of your stuff that you absolutely must store in a dead sheep.
There will be 20 white sheep and one black sheep with white legs, just to keep things interesting. Each cabinet will sell for about $82,000(USD). Now that’s a lot of bah bah bucks.
I just recently had a custom arcade cabinet built for my basement. And while it’s totally awesome, mine has a classic arcade style to it. Had I known that having one built to look like an old Soviet MiG fighter jet was an option, though, I might have at least considered it.
This MiG-23 inspired arcade cabinet was recently made by Radek Michalowski. He was inspired to build it having lived just a few feet away from the gate of the 28th PLM (fighter air regiment) in Redzikowo, Poland. The cabinet is numbered 846 in tribute to the MiG-23 his friend’s father once flew.
The build is really something special, with a metal and rivet skin reminiscent of old airplanes (or some of the cooler furniture from Restoration Hardware). Radek doesn’t provide any details on the system inside the cabinet, only that it runs MAME – and it’s clear fromt the pictures that it’s got dual arcade sticks and real arcade buttons. Though it might have been even better with a pair of flight sticks.
If you’re interested in the MiG-23 arcade cabinet, head on over to Etsy, where it’s for sale for €2500 (~$3288 USD).
We’ve seen a handful of tinyarcademachines, but Tiny Arcade Machines is way better. It’s a shop owned by YouTuber dabarduba, an electronics engineer in the UK. He makes compact arcade machines that fit on your desktop or bar counter. They look like arcade cabinets with their lower halves chopped off.
As you can see, dabarduba not only knows his electronics, he’s also got a degree in Appropriately Cheesy Arcade Cabinet Design. His machines come in both 1- and 2-player configuration; they can be loaded with thousands of arcade classics or rigged to play console or PC games. Here’s one of his machines running Street Fighter x Tekken:
You can see more videos of the machines on dabarduba’s YouTube channel. He also makes even tinier – but still functioning – machines, which are perfect for playing just one game, just like a traditional arcade machine.
The arcade machines are not cheap – they cost between £399 to £950 (~$600 to $1,500 USD) – but neither are back surgeries. You can order a unit from the Tiny Arcade Machines website, which also looks like it was made two decades ago. Seriously sir, you would get way more clients if you updated your website.
It’s like beating Kong in a barrel… Wait, that’s not how the saying goes. But you can say it now. This custom-built Donkey Kong tabletop arcade machine has been put into a barrel. Why? So you can drink and game of course.
Joel Griffin Dodd wanted a fully functional game of Donkey Kong in an old barrel so that he could have beer and cocktails on top of it. How drunk can you get? You probably shouldn’t try to jump over it, though that’s better that than smashing it with a mallet, I suppose.
It looks like a fairly straightforward build. Just put together a mini arcade system and stick it inside a barrel. Then put some glass on top of course. Not that I thought of it or was able to build one myself. Nice work, Joel.
We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, then here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget inquiry is from Daniel, who needs our help to tame his home network. If you’re looking to ask one of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.
“My home network is a mess. It used to be simple, after all, you’d just need a modem to connect to your ISP and a router. Lately, however, I’ve been adding more components like a NAS, a Z-Wave bridge, a 3G microcell and a computer for telecommuting. All of these things need a wired connection, which means I’m going to need to buy an eight-port switch sooner rather than later. As consumer hardware isn’t designed to be uniform and stackable, I’m now living in a mess! What I’d like to know is how others have tidied up — did you find an off-the-shelf cabinet or do I need to start building something on my own?”
Here’s where we turn the question over to you, our loyal Engadgeteers, to help solve and spread some peace through the gadget ecosystem this Saturday night. If you’ve tamed your own out-of-control home network, share your experiences below.
If you’re not living inside some kind of Beauty and the Beast nightmare, all your furniture is mercifully inanimate, but the Walking Cabinet gets you halfway there. It won’t actually stroll across your living room, but it looks like it wants to. More »
As a video game fanatic, I really loved the movie Wreck-it-Ralph. While there were some actual arcade games in the movie, the machines at the center of the story were all imaginary. Perhaps the most iconic game in the movie is Fix It Felix Jr., and pretty soon you’ll be able to actually play the game.
What you’re looking at here is a Fix it Felix Jr. machine, made by Rick Uhlenhopp at Arcade Skin. It looks like a spot-on recreation of the machine from the movie, and even plays a PC version of the game (not Disney’s Flash version). As you can see from the video below, the machine started off as an original Nintendo cabinet, and much of the magic is done with custom made vinyl skins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O3USX–42U
Here it is playing a version of the game written by SJAAK, but there’s another version by Rick’s buddy BadBoyBills which is going to be installed on the machine before it’s complete.
While you won’t be able to find this machine in an arcade, you’ll be able to see it in person at the Midwest Gaming Classic this weekend. The show runs from tomorrow (3/23) through Sunday (3/24) at the Sheraton Milwaukee Brookfield Hotel in Brookfield, WI. I’ll be there, so I can’t wait to check it out up close and personal.
You can check out more details on the build over on the Hyperspin forums.
Now all we need is working versions of Sugar Rush and Hero’s Duty to go alongside it.
I’ve always wanted an arcade cabinet in my house so I could play all of the classic arcade games like they were meant to be played. But I keep putting off the purchase because I have more important things to do with my money, like pay for food and my mortgage. Still, if I ever have the money lying around, I’ll definitely bite the bullet and buy one. And if I hit the lottery, I know exactly which machine I’m buying.
This extraordinary arcade cabinet was built by Jack Thompson and the crew at ArcadesRFun with a massive Samsung 55-inch LED/LCD Smart TV, and full controls for up to four players. It’s also got a second 37″ LG marquee display at the top so it can display different images up there during gameplay.
It’s got every controller you can dream of, including RGB LED ball top joysticks, RGB LED buttons, an RGB LED trackball (perfect for Marble Madness, Missile Command and Golden Tee), a true 4-way stick for certain games like Q*bert, and dual spinner controls for games like Tempest and Arkanoid, which can be swapped with tiny metal steering wheels for racing games. It’s also pre-loaded with the awesome Hyperspin UI, so it’s easy to flip between games on just about any system you can imagine.
Under the hood, this beast is powered by a Dell Alienware Aurora R4 PC w/i7 3.9GHZ six core CPU (overclocked to 4.1GHz), with 16GB RAM, 2 – 2TB hard drives and a 3GB AMD Radeon 7950 Video card. It’s also got a Blu-ray player. Audio is provided by a powerful 232 Watt Corsair Gaming Series PC speaker with a “giant” subwoofer. And in case playing games on MAME, MESS and other software emulators isn’t enough for you, it’s also got a PS3, Nintendo Wii, and Xbox 360 w/Kinect pre-installed. You’ll also be able to play console games using the wireless Xbox 360 gamepads.
You can also select from other custom controls, such as a Discs of TRON style flight stick (also great for games like Zaxxon), dual light guns, and a special push-pull spinner (also needed for Discs of TRON and its pesky custom controls.)
The original one of these machines was built as a custom commission project for Monolith Games/HD FILMS founder/IGN host Jace Hall, who wanted a single gaming system which could “play every known game ever made.” While I’m not certain that you could play all of these on it, it’s got over 50,000 games covered between all of the emulators and physical game systems inside. It’s unclear exactly what the differences are between the model you can purchase and Jace’s original – its creators only say that it’s “slightly scaled down.”
Here’s a video of the original system. Jump to about 1:10 to see the machine in action:
So how much does all of this arcade and console gaming goodness cost? Well, bust out your 401Ks, because this bad boy is selling for a whopping $19,995(USD) over on eBay. If you’re serious about buying one, ArcadesRFun has a demo unit available in New Jersey. And if you can’t afford $20k, but you still want a cool arcade cabinet, be sure to check out their website, where you can get into a smaller 32-inch, 2-player system for under $3k, or an incredible virtual pinball machine, complete with force feedback, for about $8k.
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