In this video, I attempt to recreate the original Tempest Arcade Machine experience without having a full size arcade machine at home.
I purchased a Tempest mini cabaret arcade machine from an operator in the early nineties. If I remeber correctly, I paid somewhere around 300 USD for the machine at the time. Like most second hand arcade games,
It worked for a while. The PCB reported errors and the Wells-Garnder vector monitor also broke down. Unfortunately, I did not have the skills neccesary to fix it back then.
I was forced to get rid of the machine after a while, which is a decision that I deeply regret today.
Anyway,
It may seem a bit silly building a dedicated control panel for playing just one arcade game in MAME, but I think it was worth the effort. Atari Tempest is my favourite arcade game of all time and I can now recreate
the gaming experience at my desk without having to allocate space for an entire arcade machine.
The control panel was fabricated from:
* 1.5mm steel sheet
* 3D printed parts (printed on a 400x400 RatRig)
* Standard arcade T molding
* Tempest spinner replica from Oscar Controls
* Ultimarc Optipac and Ipac control interfaces
* Atari "volcano" buttons and mini cabaret overlay from www.arcadeshop.com
Github repository with detailed bill of materials and STEP/STL files for the 3D printed parts:
https://github.com/hansj66/tempest-arcade-controller(This video is not sponsored in any way)
- Contents of this video --
00:00 - Intro
00:17 - Sheet metal forming
00:49 - Applying the Control Panel Overlay
01:34 - Assembling 3D printed parts
01:58 - Button assembly
02:31 - Spinner assembly
03:39 - Applying T molding
04:11 - Mounting control interfaces
06:09 - Final result
06:25 - Game test
07:49 - Post-build rationalization