The Ingredients - the cabinet

I don't exactly remember the point when I decided that I was going to build an arcade cabinet but I can remember the first "ingredient" that I found that got me really enthused about the whole thing. It was a pre-cut, pre-drilled mdf flat pack that I found on ebay.co.uk from this chap:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/richsbartoparcades

The actual cabinet I got in the end was one like the following listing:

I have the tools to make this myself, but I figured that I would save myself a lot of effort and at that price, I wouldn't be saving myself much money doing it myself.

I went for a bartop-sized cabinet for two reasons. Firstly, it was a lot cheaper than the full height version or even a used cabinet (and I was only meant to be spending my birthday money). Secondly, I'd have more chance convincing "the boss" that we could fit a bartop cabinet in our house rather than anything bigger.

I went for a 2 player version as I have two kids and I didn't want to be the source of any more "it's my turn, no it's my turn"-type arguments. I did a bit of investigation beforehand to find out that this cabinet would easily fit a 19" square(-ish) monitor e.g. 4:3 or 5:4.

A few days after ordering, the flat pack arrived in fine condition. This particular flat pack is a two player cabinet that can accommodate 2 joysticks and 6 buttons for each player. The 28mm holes for the buttons and joysticks have been very neatly pre-drilled. As the seller described, it came with no fixings, which does allow for some flexibility in the construction.