Hi, I'm Lionus Sebastian. There's no
greater source of joy in this world than a personal computer. But every day,
elderly devices like this one find
themselves without a home, discarded,
abandoned, forgotten.
So, I'm here today to ask you not for a
donation, but just for a moment of your time to listen as we show you a path to
a future where you and your slightly obsolete gaming PC can pone together
once more. This is your chance to say,
"I won't sit by while a computer suffers.
EK Water Blocks's all aluminum fluid gaming lineup offers great water cooling
performance for an affordable price. Learn more at the link in the video
description. So, when Taran first came to me and proposed building a custom
arcade box, I immediately demanded he
get back to work and stop wasting company time. A short while later,
coincidentally, I independently came up with a brilliant idea. Why don't we
build our own custom arcade box? So,
first then, we set out to construct the
computer that we would build the arcade box around. This is Linus Tech Tips. So,
we could have easily strapped SLI Titans
and an 8K monitor to a piece of plywood and called it a day. But the hardware
demands of emulating ancient software are actually very light. And besides,
silly intro bit aside, we wanted the
focus of this video to be on showing how you can get a little more mileage out of
your components that are nearing the end of their useful life. So, it was
important to us that every part of our computer was something that would be
coming up on replacement age and readily available secondhand. In the end, for a
really reasonable price, we were able to put together what would have been a
respectable mid-range gaming PC, Circa
2011, with just one unusual requirement.
We wanted a video card with an Svideo output because we are totally going to
rock a CRT in our finished build for authenticity.
Once all of the hardware was in place, we were ready to set up our front end,
the program that wraps everything together in order to use MAMEim, the
go-to but notoriously command lineon
arcade emulator that's been around since the mid90s. The front end allows us to
peruse our vast collection of legally obtained software and then run it in the
emulator. Our first pick was RetroArchch, a front end that handles a
number of different emulators and uh has an infamously innovative menu design.
While it took a little internet archaeology to assemble all the files we
needed, we were actually able to get it up and running, just not quite to our
satisfaction without endless tinkering.
It messed with MAME's control layouts too much to try to conform them to its
own, and a lot of our legally obtained software couldn't be detected. So, we
had a conundrum on our hands. We wanted to stick with open-source software, but
most of the purpose-built arcade frontends that met our standards, well,
they're proprietary. So, we dug deeper into the depths of the internet and
discovered a relatively new front end called Attract Mode. With a healthy
community making skins and plugins, attract mode gave us the perfect storm
of form and function. It even supports scripting, which will be important later
on in our project. Well, that's all fine and good, but at this point, all you
got, Lionus, is a geriatric PC running
emulation software. That's a far cry
from the full-on arcade experience that uh I was expecting. I mean, look at this
thing. So yeah, you're right. We needed joysticks, buttons, light guns, and a
big, beautiful monitor to show it off on. So I tasked my staff with scouring
Craigslist and eBay for some previously loved accessories that we could dust off
and put to use again. We were able to find multiple sources for everything we
needed. This was actually the smoothest experience we've ever had buying guns
off Craigslist. When it came to buttons and joysticks though, we found the
secondary market to be basically non-existent. You can order one of the
pre-built arcade decks that are out there, but we really wanted to customize
our own. So, we did. After some research, we reached out to Andy over at
Ultimark in the UK, which is one of the better known arcade part suppliers for
enthusiasts. And after a couple minutes
of browsing their website, found exactly
what we wanted. RGB. Yes. So, we asked for 30 of their
classic RGB buttons with seven Ultralux
Chrome buttons for special functions. And yep, that's right. They even have
RGB sticks, too. So, the two servo
sticks we went with have interchangeable handles. And with some clever software,
they can automatically change from 8-way to four-way, which is great when you're
switching between your completely legitimate copy of PacMister to
something like Street Conflict. But what
about games that use analog controls? Haha. Well, that's where the Ultra Stick
360 comes in. It uses a hall effect
sensor in order to determine where the stick is, making it incredibly accurate
and durable. Add in their RGB track ball
and a spinner, and we are covered for all of our button and stick games. But
what would an arcade box be without
slick shooting games? Your House of the
Recently deceased or time conundrum. Well, we plugged in those
light guns that we bought, expecting to be immediately putting zombies back in
the ground, and that's where we hit a major setback. Who could have guessed?
While the GunCon twos that we obtained were technically functional, the drivers
they require are ancient, and in order to install them successfully, we would
have had to use composite video. not
good enough for us from a retro purist standpoint. And the other set we picked
up was a used pair of ACTL Labs uh USB
light guns, but we ended up running into another problem with them. They were
designed specifically for PC main cabinets. So, we would have ended up
using janky USB to game port adapters,
and frankly, they just felt kind of crummy anyway. So, we ended up reaching
out to Ultimark. Hey, it's us again. And
they sent us these bad boys. These Aim
Track IR light guns worked perfectly with our system. And they even fire
sideways, batches. Which brings us then
to finding the right TV. If you want to
use traditional light guns, you will need a CRT. You can learn more about why
that is here. So, these ones we got
locally work and the prices were definitely right, but Svideo ended up
being pretty disappointing and scaling games from different eras was
problematic. So, back to eBay we went
and there we managed to procure a Toshiba Pure Flat CRT out of a Namco
machine that takes both retro RGB and
VGA. That's important because this thing
can take signals that range from the chunky dots that pack gentleman eats all
the way up to the super fresh sprites in Street Conflict 3 and display them as
they were originally intended. Okay then. So, we have our hardware together.
We have all the software set up. Now, we
just need something to put it all into.
Now, our original plan was to either
find a decommissioned arcade cabinet or just build one ourselves out of scrap
plywood. But while both of those are valid options for sure, we wanted to
make the final product as cool as possible to show you guys just how far
you can go. So, we reached out to Scott over at North Coast Custom Arcades, and
this this is actually how it went down. basically begged him to let us use one
of his Ultimate Arcade 2 cabinet kits.
He was happy to oblige and actually for good measure even threw in the classic
control panel kit and all the mounts we'd need to get our display in place. A
major potential issue for these large and heavy CRT monitors. And the end
result goes without saying is absolutely
breathtaking. I mean, you don't need to
go all out like we did. And with high-end CRTs no longer in production,
some parts of the experience are going to get harder and harder to recreate as
time goes on, even if you did want to go all out. But we're really glad that we
took on this project. With a home arcade box, you can play your favorite games
with your friends, just like you might have as a kid way back in the 80s, 90s,
or 2000s. With the buttons and joysticks
feeling exactly how you remember them,
the screen and emulators surprising authenticity help drive that home. And
with our custom cabinet, the whole thing just exudes quality like we just put
together a kit from Sega or Namco themselves for our bowling alley quarter
muncher. Not that it needs to munch quarters anymore. That's the real reason
people invest hundreds and hundreds of dollars in these things. You just have a
button to continue.
Woo. But even more than that, the real
reason we built it is that a custom cabinet like this adds a touch of retro
gaming class to any room. No
exceptions at all. Ting is the mobile
carrier that's focused on customer service and customer
satisfaction. I know, what a concept.
When you call Ting to talk to customer support, you actually get put through
directly to a person. And you're not
paying extra for that level of TLC. The
average TING bill is just 23 bucks a month per device. And if you're stuck in
a contract and switch to TING, they'll even cover 25% of your cancellation fee
up to 75 bucks. They have lower mobile
data rates. Data is now just $10 a gig beyond the first gig. And every single
TING customer gets the benefits of any
rate changes that they make. So head over to Linus.ting.com. We've got that
linked below and try their savings calculator to find out if you'll save
money on TING. When you sign up at our link, you'll also get 25 bucks in
service credit or towards a shiny new
device. So thanks for watching, guys, and coming along on this journey of
resurrecting retro hardware. If you disliked it, you can hit that button.
But if you liked it, hit the like button. Get subscribed. Maybe consider
checking out where to buy the stuff we featured. Well, most of it's views, but whatever. At the link in the video
description. Also down there, you'll find our merch store, which has cool
shirts like this one, as well as our community forum, which you should
totally join.