Small, roughly 3:4 scale LCD cabinet

[borked]

Inspired by this thread about a 3:4 scale Astro, and years of not managing to get anything done myself, share my small cab idea with the community and see if anyone else has enough interest. I have to confess, I have zero personal ability to make this thing happen on the CAD/manufacturing side of things, but I can provide funding. Maybe if enough other people are interested we can get the master @hursit to get involved. The upside of something "new" is that we don't have to worry about asking for permission.

One of the first cabs I owned was a Neo25 and I really liked that form factor, but there's no real modern equivalent. My original concept was to take design elements from some of my favorite cabs, smash them together and scale the whole thing down to a cab that's around 24 inches wide and deep and utilize monitors between 23 and 27 inches. These dimensions kind of make it a 3:4 scale of the current crop of LCD cabs. For me, having a monitor rotation mechanism that's easy to operate is important, so I took a lot of inspiration there from my favorite cabinet, the RS New Delta 32. Additionally, you can see the Vewlix and Lindbergh inspiration (shameless copying more like it) in the base and control panel.

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Here's my poor man's "if it were made of wood" sketchup mock up:

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I realize someone could say "chinese clone cab 100%" here so mock up aside, I'm not completely married to any single design element. I do, however, think it would be important to hit a few key features:

1. Some assembly required - Maybe not exactly flat pack, but should be able to be broken down into small enough components to be shipped in a box or boxes rather than a crate
2. Rotation mech - Personal one for me...can't let it go
3. Swappable control panels/art - Would be nice to be able to choose between traditional control panels with laminated art and the more customizable printed art under plexi that you find with most custom arcade sticks

I've knocked a bunch of ideas around, but I'm a failure on the execution side of things. Hoping that opening things up will help push the concept along.

Thanks for reading. Feedback appreciated.

 

[borked]

Guessing the lack of response is a big fat NOT INTERESTED, but just in case I added a poll to gauge interest.

 

[Aurich]

I have zero interest in some mini 16:9 cab tbh. And I don't mean this in a rude way, just ... why?

I can pick from a whole assortment of LCD cabs already. Or just ... use an LCD.

The appeal of a "mini Astro" is no such thing exists. There is no little 4:3 cab that's not a crappy 1Up. But once you made it a 16:9 I'll just get a Vewlix or use a normal PC monitor or whatever else.

Anyways, just my 2 cents since you weren't getting any replies and that felt sad, not trying to be down on your idea.

 

[werejag]

id be interested but what is the price?

 

[nem]

I can see the appeal. Personally, I find the 32" screen too large for most games. It's the same with CRTs. I prefer 25" over the standard 29".

 

[jermz1]

I saw something like a smaller noir, but the proportions aren't to scale.

 

[borked]

@nem hit the nail on the head. I like my 32" lcd cabs, but still prefer something smaller. I had a Neo25 back in the day and loved the size of that thing.

@Aurich I appreciate the feedback. As for counterpoints, I think there are plenty of reasons as to why someone might want this, and some of those reasons are directly tied to the smaller size:

Smaller cab should be cheaper to make, cheaper to ship, and just plain easier to move around. Plus you can fit more in the same space because who doesn't love seeing a row of cabinets?​

Who else is making new sit-down cabs? Right now if you want a cab you have to buy used from japan or a clone from china...Why not buy into something new spawned from the community?​

​

Also, being a new product, there's opportunity to design in customization elements. I am a big fan of arcade stick customization...no reason it couldn't extend here. Customization has been a huge thing for the custom arcade cabinet scene for ages.​

As for 16:9...I just don't see 4:3 ever coming back into fashion. And I don't want to be the guy having to buy 100,000 lcd panels to get a reasonable cost. Nor do modern games use 4:3. For me, the primary use case is playing modern games, at modern resolutions with modern refresh rates...not completely hanging onto nostalgia. I suppose that the idea of cabinets in the first place are probably a nostalgia trip, but I like to think that people would choose a cabinet over just a fightstick, but maybe not.

@werejag Any talk about pricing right now is wild speculation. That said, I was expecting upwards of $10k for design and prototyping should things even progress to that stage. I do understand that pricing is fairly critical. What people are paying for arcade 1ups though...l do wonder where the tipping point might be.

@jermz1 I also saw this. Had it bookmarked and whatnot. Uses a 22" lcd I believe. I don't think with any "shrunken" cab, you can maintain perfect proprtions because otherwise you don't have enough room inside the cabinet to hold a computer/pcb and can have tipping issues. The same is true for what I mocked up. The depth is only a little shorter than a 32" cab.

I appreciate the pity responses everyone. Lollol. Part of the point this thread was not to gauge interest in an already designed product, but to gauge general interest in the concept and hopefully spark conversation about what features/design elements were necessary should it be created while presenting my initial concept.

Thanks again

 

[Franco23444]

I saw something like a smaller noir, but the proportions aren't to scale.

That little noir clone looks awesome dude! Where did you find it? I might build something similar to this!

 

[jermz1]

@Franco23444 from the noir fb group. Theres also similar ones on alibaba.

 

[Franco23444]

@Franco23444 from the noir fb group. Theres also similar ones on alibaba.

Cool! I’ll check it out! Definitely peaks my interest!

 

[hoagtech]

Inspired by this thread about a 3:4 scale Astro, and years of not managing to get anything done myself, share my small cab idea with the community and see if anyone else has enough interest. I have to confess, I have zero personal ability to make this thing happen on the CAD/manufacturing side of things, but I can provide funding. Maybe if enough other people are interested we can get the master @hursit to get involved. The upside of something "new" is that we don't have to worry about asking for permission.

One of the first cabs I owned was a Neo25 and I really liked that form factor, but there's no real modern equivalent. My original concept was to take design elements from some of my favorite cabs, smash them together and scale the whole thing down to a cab that's around 24 inches wide and deep and utilize monitors between 23 and 27 inches. These dimensions kind of make it a 3:4 scale of the current crop of LCD cabs. For me, having a monitor rotation mechanism that's easy to operate is important, so I took a lot of inspiration there from my favorite cabinet, the RS New Delta 32. Additionally, you can see the Vewlix and Lindbergh inspiration (shameless copying more like it) in the base and control panel.

---

Here's my poor man's "if it were made of wood" sketchup mock up:

---

I realize someone could say "chinese clone cab 100%" here so mock up aside, I'm not completely married to any single design element. I do, however, think it would be important to hit a few key features:

1. Some assembly required - Maybe not exactly flat pack, but should be able to be broken down into small enough components to be shipped in a box or boxes rather than a crate
2. Rotation mech - Personal one for me...can't let it go
3. Swappable control panels/art - Would be nice to be able to choose between traditional control panels with laminated art and the more customizable printed art under plexi that you find with most custom arcade sticks

I've knocked a bunch of ideas around, but I'm a failure on the execution side of things. Hoping that opening things up will help push the concept along.

Thanks for reading. Feedback appreciated.

I love the idea of having a rotation mech but feel the lack of branding would make that cab feel generic.

What I would like to see is someone engineer rotation mechs into existing branded lcd cabs.

How cool would it be to extend the top up on a Lindbergh and just rotate the screen?

Play an EXA session and switch back to Street Fighter on the fly..

 

[borked]

Nice to see LG announcing a 27" monitor that would work great with this size cab:
https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-27gr95qe-b

Still a little rich for my blood, but still, the cost will come down.

I also like the idea of adding rotation mechs to existing cabs. In fact, I need to do the same for my Korea spec New Delta 32 cabs. That said, the whole point of building something new is to not rely on the import cab game and just being able to buy a new cab that already has the features you want. But it certainly sounds like most folks are more interested in owning a piece of history, rather than just having a cabinet for the sake of playing on a cabinet. At least that's my read on the situation from the responses thus far.

 

[jermz1]

Korea spec new delta 32? Where you from? My buddie bought one recently here in korea, it already had the rotation mech. You might be able to just buy the part.

 

[pandafresh]

I guess it would depend on the quality of the screen and controls for me (and the price too obviously). modern cabs don't quite have the charm of older candy cabs and while the form factor is still interesting, in a home setting I dunno if its different enough from just having a gaming monitor and arcade stick plugged into my PC.

so I'm not really a yes or no, more of a "maybe?"

 

[borked]

Korea spec new delta 32? Where you from? My buddie bought one recently here in korea, it already had the rotation mech. You might be able to just buy the part.

I'm in the US. I could go into more detail about expectations vs reality here, but I thought I was getting the nice rotate mech and all that goodness, but no, mine are missing a ton of the "upgrades" that the RS versions have.

The New Delta 32's OEM is company called YooYoung Amusement Industries in Korea. They may be defunct now. I'm assuming your friend was HanYolo. I saw all his twitter posts about his monitor repair and whatnot.

Original new delta for korean market looked like this:


No rotate mech, cheaper speaker grills, no movelist cutout/glass, coin mech in the coin mech door vs using internal coin slot chute dealio, taller feet on the legs.

I'm assuming this was an early run or domestic-only run which was later modified to the version people are more familiar with. I'm assuming this change happened AFTER RS got involved in bringing them to Japan since the RS prototypes played with a different speaker shroud. In the end they seemed to have settled for the same shroud but redesigned the grills so that they sat flush and had no exposed screws.

Here's a flyer from the manufacturer:


Maybe I should just make an appreciation thread for this cab. But almost nobody has one, and I don't even have the version everyone wants...lol.

 

[borked]

I guess it would depend on the quality of the screen and controls for me (and the price too obviously). modern cabs don't quite have the charm of older candy cabs and while the form factor is still interesting, in a home setting I dunno if its different enough from just having a gaming monitor and arcade stick plugged into my PC.

so I'm not really a yes or no, more of a "maybe?"

I have modern LCD cabs. The truth is it's really NOT that much different than sitting in front of a monitor with a fightstick. Technically it's less convenient. But I still prefer the cabinet experience. I just want something smaller than the current crop of import options...even if I also still wants some of those too...lol. Plus I want something new. And with all honesty, I really want @hursit to partner with me on this and be the BRAND. He just has to want to do it and take my money...lol.

I don't want to sell you a screen. Honestly my intention was to just have a vesa mount for any vesa compatible monitor and rock it raw. Let the end user buy the screen of their choice. The only downside to that is the power and display cable is exposed. But my thinking was that this is a cabinet meant for home, for playing on, not for putting in an actual arcade to make money where you have to worry about vandalism. Hiding the wires requires a more complex (read expensive) monitor mounting and rotation mechanism. Happy to hear ideas on solving that problem inexpensively.

Same with controls. Buttons, Sticks, controller pcbs, I'd prefer to simply not include those and let people buy from local vendors of those components. Here in the US we have Arcade Shock, Focus Attack, and Paradise Arcade Shop. No reason to include those things when you can choose the parts you like best and buy them from reputable places at any time. The control panel would obviously need to be included, so there could be variations there, such as different button layouts, support for full collar Korean levers, etc.

Hell, I'm not even sure I'd want to include ANY wiring for JAMMA, JVS or anything really. Maybe a nice power entry module with some internal power receptacles like the Vewlix. But I guess that depends on what other folks want. For me, I just want to be able to chuck a pc inside and have a way to plug it in and power the whole mess on externally without fiddling with internal power switches and whatnot.

Just in case people are thinking 3/4 means all dimensions, I should mention that I use that in reference to the monitor size. Since 24" monitors are 3/4" the size of 32" monitors and the original idea was for a 24" monitor. But when I started playing around I found that I couldn't shrink the depth much below 24" before it seemed like there would be stability problems that only large clown shoes could fix, and so I just increased with width to about 26" so that I could support any 27" and below monitor. Control panel height is meant to be standard candy height. Maybe I should have called it medium sized or something.

Also, I want to reiterate, if the problem is people don't like my mockup, that's fine, I'm not 100% against other designs. I'd also really like a shrunken PRAS3 that was standard candy height.

 

[jermz1]

Yea it was hanyolo.
I do wish the Pras3 was shorter.
Ive seen these other custom lindbergh vs cab and xtension arcade cab.
Maybe these can help expand the ideas.