The Lost Childhood Project

     This will serve as the consolidated repository of all information, effort, ideas, and angst associated with manufacturing my personal arcade cabinet.  The 'Lost Childhood' project will ideally take place in three separate phases that I have labeled: Planning, Construction, and Refinement.  However, it's likely that these phases will include sub tasks such as: reality discovery, troubleshooting, re-planning, resource development, whining, begging, haggling, material loss, injury recovery, compromise, testing, frustration management, legal consultation, marriage counseling, resolution, and finally realization.  Despite my foreknowledge of successful planning practices, I have not set a time schedule for the project's production process.  I have instead decided to strictly adhere to a couple proverbs I imagined my father meant to impart on me, such as:

"Anything worthwhile is worth waiting for"

"Nothing good is ever easy"

"A good plan saves half the cost and effort"

These aren't exact quotes obviously, but:

"Wisdom is never original anyway"

Exact quote: Me

     The project in design is a classic upright-style a arcade cabinet... with a few tricked out components, additional bells, whistles, and otherwise super-high-speed-laser-guided enhancements.

• Firstly it will support a variety of console-style games (Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Gameboy {Color}, Gameboy Advance, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Turbo Graphics 16, and Sony Playstation), and PC games.  It will achieve this variety of platforms using an emulator frontend to database, cache, and load rom sets (emulation terminology for digital video game files).
• It will also require a semi-unique control interface to support the vast variety of input types to play classic arcade games, nine separate game consoles, PC style games, and light-gun games (hopefully - I still haven't decided whether or not this aspect of gaming is worth the effort).  To meet this requirement, I have designed a four paneled control box mechanism, which the user will manually rotate to accommodate the gamer's preferred interface.  Inspiration for this design was take from the famous (at least within the cabinet designers' community) 1-UP's Pacmamea cabinet.  I truly hope that reference is the original owner of the concept, because I prefer not to give credit to others when mentioning such a clever design solution.
• The design also calls for a significant amount of LED lighting.  This lighting will effect (but not be limited to) the microswitch pushbuttons, trackball, joysticks, and external case components.  My imagination doesn't budget well, so I leave room for expansion.  Regardless, this will require an enormous amount of electrical work.  However, much like carpentry, I am completely unqualified to attempt this myself.  Happily, my father-in-law has volunteered his services.  I still wonder if he's doing so because I married and fathered a child with his daughter, or if he truly loves and is intrigued by wood projects enough to put up with my subject matter ignorance throughout the duration of the endeavor.  Time will tell...