When I became a member here over 3 years ago, one of the first things that drew my attention was the Multicade in the lounge but the experience of interacting with it was somewhat lackluster. I restore pinball machines and arcade machines as a hobby and as time went on, the experience of the Multicade and it’s lack of allure began to nag at me.
About 2 months ago I began making significant upgrades to the machine and those are now complete except for some final aesthetic work that needs to be done. It’s perfect timing too because I start taking some college courses in a couple of weeks and my time will become much more limited.
The main thing that bothered me about the machine was that operating it wasn’t very intuitive. You had to open the door on the front and push the power button on the computer tower inside to get it to come on. Also, the volume controls were hot glued to the back of the cabinet. Once the machine was started, the menu of games was large but was riddled with multiple versions of the same game and there wasn’t even the slightest hint of what the games might be because it was essentially just a list of game names.
I have added a power button to the control panel next to the joystick and play buttons. There is no need to open the cabinet now to turn the machine on or off. I removed the volume controls from the back of the cab and 3D printed circuit board slide mounts to install the amplifier circuit board behind the control panel to allow the volume potentiometer to be parallel to the panel. I also 3D printed a knob to press fit onto the volume potentiometer. The UI of the games list has been completely changed. I curated the game list so that only one version of close to 1200 games is displayed. Also, rather than just a long list of names, the games are now displayed in tile format with a video preview of each game when it is highlighted.
I’ll go into more details of the new computer operating system at the end of this post by instead prioritizing physical upgrades first.
The marquee at top was backlit with soft white LEDs that were washed out by the soft white overhead lights in the lounge. I have replaced those 3 strips with one strip of bright white LEDs.
The marquee said “Multicade” and while the artwork was kinda cool, the paper had originally been glued to the back of some plexiglass using what appears to be Elmer’s stick glue. The glue had discolored the plexiglass over time and the paper had also separated from it and was sagging. Both the Multicade paper and plexiglass were unsalvageable for use as a display piece. I bought a new marquee that’s printed on more sturdy material and cut new plexiglass to go over the top of it. The new marquee theme is POLYBIUS which is a fictional game based off of a creepypasta or urban legend from years ago.
The Polybius arcade was supposedly a machine designed by the CIA in the early 80s that was installed in arcades in Washington state. It was visited weekly by men in black suits and was said to be using electronic warfare to manipulate the teens who were dumping quarters into it.
I also redesigned the CRT monitor and control panel mounting system. The CRT was at an odd angle to where a bezel should be. The bezel is a removable screen that’s mounted in channels and seperates the CRT from the user. I corrected the angle. Also the control panel had originally been wood screwed to the CRT mounts. One of those screws had split the CRT mount where the control panel connected to it. I redesigned this so now instead of wood screws the control panel is secured with sturdy pan head machine bolts that run into permanent T-nuts.
The back of the CRT was hanging nearly 2 inches out of the back of the arcade machine, not only did I want to see the back of the machine enclosed but also with the plastic housing of what was once a Dell computer monitor removed, the metal housing of the CRT is now a minor shock hazard when powered up. It needs to be separate from the average user and enclosed inside the machine. I was able to get the CRT fully inside the back of the machine and then enclosed that area.
There were many wires hanging out of the back of the machine. Those are all completely inside of the machine now except for the power cord and an Ethernet jack which I also installed so that the machine could be easily connected to the Internet for updates (the 2008 Dell Inspiron tower is not equipped with Wi-Fi connectivity) imagine my dismay that there is no Ethernet connection available inside the lounge. Until this is corrected updates or leaderboards will not be possible.
I replaced the surge protector power strip inside of the machine because the original one had a 4 foot cord. The new one has an 8 foot cord so placement of the machine in proximity to a wall outlet is less critical. The surge protector cord is reinforced from being pulled loose from inside of the machine by a support clamp.
I installed three 12 volt jacks in the back of the computer tower. Rather than the marquee lights, the audio amplifier, and coin door buttons being individually supplied by plug in power adapters, they all now plug into the back of the tower and will all come on simultaneously when the power button is pressed like an actual arcade machine at power up. The audio amp power required an in line noise filter once plugged into the tower.
The door on the front originally had beautiful artwork of space with planets (artist unknown). I left it alone because it was well executed and fit with the aesthetic that I was working toward. The lock on that door was keyed but there was no key so it was unable to be latched to prevent it from just swinging open. I replaced it with a thumb lock.
The hinge that the door is mounted on was white and I didn’t think it looked good next to the black space artwork. I removed it and painted it black.
The door wasn’t perpendicular to the cabinet body and it was terribly obvious, I reengineered the place where the thumb lock latches. The door still isn’t perfectly perpendicular but it’s better. It’s one thing that still bothers me but I’m not gonna fight that battle any longer. It would be a lot of work to correct the 1/16" that’s bothering me. Don’t look at it! Lol
Speaking of things that bother me. Due to the construction style of the cabinet, there seems to be inadequate bracing in the front of the machine to prevent some minor sway of the cabinet during intense gameplay. I had thought it might have something to do with the older style leg levelers that were being used (which were rusted anyway) so I replaced them. It didn’t help. I also tried cross bracing at the back of the inside of the cab. It also didn’t help. I think it needs additional bracing to the inside front of the cab but I have not yet attempted it. Feel free to work on this if you specialize in cabinet construction or it’s your jam. Keep in mind that the outside-sides of the machine have zero fasteners ran through them for anything else that’s internal. Anyone attempting this bracing should try to maintain that aesthetic imo.
The original “coin door” was a piece of 1/8" thick acrylic that had a couple of coin shaped holes in it for donations. One problem with the controls of the machine was that when playing arcade games, it was only ever possible to play a one player game despite there being controls for 2 players and there being one player and two player start buttons. The reason for this was that there were no buttons available to use as coin buttons, so the original designer had simply assigned one player start as coin and two player start as player one start.
I bought 1/4" thick acrylic (which is too thick in hindsight eh) and cut a new coin door. The new coin door has both a lit “coin 1” and “coin 2” button. Now this frees the one player start and two player start buttons to be used as they were intended. Two player versus and coop games can now be played. (FYI - due to the original programming of some early arcade games, two player games where each player takes turns are still played with only the player one controls)
This brings us back to the heart of the physical set up - the control panel. Like I said, the machine now powers on via the new power button. All 12 of the player action buttons have been replaced with Ultimarc gold leaf high performance push buttons. These buttons feature “no hysteresis. This is the difference in button depression for the contact close and open points. On these buttons the position is the same, resulting in maximum repeated actuation performance. On micro-switch buttons” (the kind that were originally installed) “this “dead” distance can be up to 1.5 mm”. That means that these new buttons are optimized for responsiveness during competitive play.
The original joysticks were Ultimarc 4 way sticks. The problem with this is that while early arcade games (like Pac-Man) utilized 4 way joysticks, as time went on more modern games (like Mortal Kombat) began using 8 way joysticks so that game sprites could travel diagonally and fighting games could utilize diagonal attacks. 8 way games can perform erratically with 4 way sticks and vice versa. For this reason I installed two Ultimarc Servostik joysticks and uploaded a program to control them. On game start up, the program cross references the game name against a file to determine if it is either 4 or 8 way which then drives a servo motor connected to each joystick which rotates a disc that changes it to the appropriate 4 or 8 way configuration for that game.
I also completely rewired the control panel because grounds were daisy chained causing potential continuity issues with the signals. Each button or joystick direction now has its own ground which ties into a common terminal block.
Finally, the operating system (technically Linux). The original system was Linux RetroArch which was password locked and despite reaching out to several people that had worked on the original iteration of this machine, no one could remember the PW. I found some learning curves while working this whole thing and picked up some new skills both mechanical and technical (WHICH WAS GREAT!). This OS was the biggest learning curve. Turns out that there were two SSD’s inside the tower. One was running RetroArch and the other is where all of the ROMs were stored. During my troubleshooting, the one where the ROMs were stored just appeared to be corrupted so I wiped it. That was a bummer.
I bought a new SSD which was unnecessary. I still have it. I may donate it. I ended up replacing RetroArch with a more modern operating system that has a customizable UI. It’s Linux Batocera V42 for future reference. I downloaded and curated ROMs for MAME2003-PLUS. But MAME alone does not emulate all arcade games. FBNEO is needed for other board sets for developers such as NEO GEO and Capcom among others. So, there is a fully curated set of FBNEO games as well and they’re all funneled into one alphabetically sorted “Arcade” list. Both emulators map the buttons differently so I had to figure that out and honestly, it wasn’t user friendly.
Most games are from the 70s through the 90s.
All games should work when opened. If you find a game that doesn’t, let me know and I will look into it. The menu where you select what game you’re going to play has specific buttons that it uses and they weren’t immediately obvious so I designed and cut decals that are affixed to the control panel to help with basic navigation which should now be straightforward. The only thing that isn’t identified is how to enter the top level menu (which honestly won’t be necessary for the majority of users to know how to do) If that’s something you want to tinker with though, hit the “two player start” button.
My original intention of making this thing user friendly should now be realized and I hope it’s fun. Let me know what you think. I honestly want the feedback.
If you want to look at the file manager underneath of the Batocera UI and add ROMs or something, hit the back button until you’re at the top most menu and press F1 on the keyboard. To go back to the game overview where you started hit alt+F4.
Oh, I almost forgot, the keyboard, mouse and speakers were just laying inside of the cab. I mounted the speakers at head level permanently behind the CRT and I installed a keyboard/mouse shelf that slides in and out on tracks. This is all inside of the cabinet.
I also cut a piece of bezel plexiglass to sit in front of the CRT. Once it was in its mounting channels though it was hell to get back out so I designed and 3D printed a little black piece that the plexi sits in that has a place to grab to help get the plexi back out.
Okay, after saying ALL OF THAT - here are some things that I would still like to do:
-buy and mount Ultimarc brand light guns with 3d printed holsters to the side of the cab.
-cover the sides of the cabinet with a printed vinyl overlay that has some sort of design on it.
-once the sides are finalized, install the new purple T-molding.
-install cabinet cross bracing on the inside but closer to the front.
-design and cut a vinyl decal for the volume knob.
-design and have a decal reverse printed so that it can be attached using its adhesive to the back side of the bezel plexiglass to obscure the CRT guts and only show the screen.
-cut sound holes in the bezel without effecting the bezel design. This would allow sound from the speakers to pass to the player unmuffled.
-while modifying the door I had to remove the box that caught donations that were dropped through the coin holes. Because of the new coin button configuration that box will no longer work. Design and install a donation collection box.
The last thing I would like to say is that we could use this machine to run tournaments now! The winner would have bragging rights and the entry fee could be taken as donations to MakeICT! I’m considering doing this and if you’ve gotten this far into the read, let me know your thoughts on this too.
Have fun and thanks for playing!!!
