Arcade Machine
Arcade Cabinet
For my final project in MPI601 I have chosen to fabricate an arcade machine, complete with traditional joysticks and buttons to help simulate the “old-school” feel and appeal that these older arcades have. Designed in Sketch Up, it is built from maple plywood and has a 19” VGA screen running off a windows computer. The buttons are hooked up to an Arduino controller providing keyboard input.
This device can play any windows game, including emulators so that it may play older arcade and console based games. However, it is built primarily for my first semester project, Project Hachiman.
Project Hachiman was built using 8-bit graphics, again in reference to a simpler time, therefor embodying it within an old-style arcade seems to fit it perfectly in a thematic sense. This work stands to embody, or bring my first term digital work into a physical realm. Although a crude, rough, ply-wood built representation of a traditional arcade system, the arcade stands to be much more. In a contemporary context, this reference to past is somewhat of a spectacle, presenting the game on a wooden pillar that is almost as tall as the player, sizing the viewer up in a size and determining a hierarchy saying that this game is “worth” playing as it seems to stand on a similar height as the viewer.
Entering into the physical realm allows you to acknowledge the viewer as more than a pair of eyes (and in this case, an input device). This became very apparent with fabrication of the machine. Originally this was to be made with 6’ long sheets of melamine, therefor the height of the entire piece was to be under 6’. When building, it was soon realized that melamine would not be suitable and something much stronger must be used. The maple chosen came in 8’ sheets, and as mentioned before how the machine plays this act of sizing up the player, I made a decision to add another foot to the bottom. When standing next to the machine, it not only towered over me, but also made the game seem unplayable. The acknowledgement of the viewer not only by their sensory perception, but also by their interactions must be taken into consideration. Making the game the right proportions is important, but also giving tactile and satisfying feedback to their actions in both a physical sense (buttons that feel good to press) but also in the digital content created (a good sound or animation) for the viewer to simply be engaged with this action, and then the full game as content in general.
Overall this project was a great example of the concept “Building to think” in the sense that there is a lot to learn about ideas once they are fabricated. The large, traditional arcade box feels satisfying and interactions with the digital realm through this physical mediation also seemed successful. Many people were in awe simply by its presence, and it was encouraging to see people approach the machine without any prompt, other than their own intuition that this is an arcade machine and these are built to be played. A very interesting personal project, causing me to learn new skills and pull out old ones that had not been used in quite some time.
