80 licensed games!

So this Christmas (2011) I decided a new cabinet was in order. I’d been looking at a dedicated gauntlet machine or perhaps a 48-in-1 jamma but happened to stumble on this Global VR Arcade Classics cab for sale locally. It has 80 licensed games, although many of them are quite obscure. The good ones are here though – Space Invaders and SI Deluxe, Asteroids, Paperboy, Marble Madness (the cab has a trackball as you can see), Crystal Castles, Joust, Defender, Battlezone, Lunar Lander, Missile Command, Golden Tee golf as well as Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace – and many more. Stereo sound and a huge CRT monitor grace the cabinet.

The cab has a nice front end GUI to choose the game you want and where applicable it saves local high scores if the game allows – including games like Asteroids which normally requires a CPU bridge. It needed a little work; the menu EXIT button was stuck down permanently and so needed a new microswitch and the marquee was broken. I quickly fixed the EXIT button and completely replaced the marquee light and wiring and now the cabinet is 100% which just a tiny couple of scratches from transport. If you can find one then this is a great way of getting licensed games that are identical to how you remember them.

Give em hell!

Around 2010 I added Stern’s great Starship Troopers pinball machine. Great pin!

Amazing stuff

Also note the new rope light added as a surround. An inexpensive rope light like this one on Amazon can add so much to your area for so little cost.

Let's put that post to good use!

Rather than just build a frame and add a pre-hung door, Kelly’s Garage added a huge sliding door and painted it crimson red. It’s a striking reminder that you’re in a man cave… made by men! To get a feel of size compare the 58″ cues to the left.

Massive door. What lies beyond?

Paint!

…and the concrete floor were painted.

Looks comfy - time for a nap!

Have a seat - stay a while

Plus no one wants to see a sub panel full of breakers. Kelly’s Garage neatly tucked away the electrical spaghetti which powers everything behind this nice custom closet -

What lies beyond? Breaker boxes.

We have wood! And windows!

The french doors on the other side

French doors. Allows for FGF entrance.

Let's put that post to good use!

After clearing out all of the garage elements such as garage doors, openers etc Kelly’s garage started with a nice side bar by the bulkhead. This made use of the existing post and also split the area into to two – one for the pool table and one for the snug bar area.

Things are coming along nicely

You may notice directly on the left a smallish neon-esque picture frame casting a lot of cyan light. That’s a project I made and close up it looks like this – it’s a lot bigger in person.

In case of zombies...!

I had a few hours spare so I made this out of a Nerf Maverick gun found on Amazon for around $20.

I disassembled  it and painted it using some silver and grey paint and added accents using one of those silver felt pens that look metallic then aged the paint using a dabbing technique. I took out the working parts as I would never need it to work again and then splattered it with ‘blood’ which was really red paint. I experimented with various ways of getting the blood to look right including flicking it off a brush, dabbing and so on but found that holding the paint up on the end of an artist’s brush and ‘firing’ it onto it the gun using a can of compressed air was the best. Here’s some close up pics of the job.

Ooh it's been used!

Yup definitely seen some action

'Blood' close up

So I then built a box. This was easy as I took a picture frame of approximate size and built a simple wooden surround to fit it and added some ‘bullets’ (which were actually the tops of small dollar store flag poles) then began the wiring for the lighting.

For the lighting I used two cold cathode ‘neons’ which don’t get hot so there’s no worry of combustion. These look like this -

Cold cathode lights

Now cold cathodes run off AC but you can’t just plug them into  110v. They use about 60 milliamps and this is where things get a little techie and if you’re unsure about what to do here then you should seek a turnkey lighting solution such as LED light strips available on amazon. In my case I got an old AC DC adapter I just had lying around, you know those black power blocks that come with a lot of electrical stuff. I did some basic calcs and used a 12v .5amp adapter, then ran that into an inverter which converted the DC to AC then ran that to the lights. The upshot was I had a complete unit delivering the right juice safely. I also added a switch since the cold cathodes were so bright a lot of the detail was lost. Finally I added the “In case of Zombies… Break Glass” just using some glossy print outs from an inkjet printer.

This is what it looks like switched off

Lights out - see the blood!

Now you don’t have to use the Maverick or indeed follow my lead – but it’s really nice to add an element to your mancave that you didn’t just buy off ebay or online. Play around – be creative!