3.5 out of 5

It’s here again. My annual visit to MAME / Arcade cabinets. I have this deep, deep desire to have a nice arcade machine in my living room. This guy’s design is quite beautiful. He makes a very good point in that the design is part of a progression. I really like it.  Lean, clean, minimalism, and Galaga.

http://www.retrospace.nl/index.html

The stages of arcade cabinet hankering:

1. Authenticity: one wishes to own either a working cabinet, or an emulator residing within one.

2. Dissatisfaction: The crappy authentic cabinet you can actually afford is as big as a fridge, weighs 300 pounds and is generally a great ugly pile of chipboard. One game is not enough, and gutting it to slap in a computer just makes it nastier.

3. No way am I paying $3,000 for a nice custom one or $500 for the flimsy little junk “cabinet” that Target sold for a while.

4. Dreaming of something wonderful and different, like Martjin Koch’s Retro Space. – BoingBoing

Of course I need to mention http://www.xgaming.com/ and throw it in the mix.