Guy's Christmas Shopping: Arcade cabinet

By Guy Cocker on 07 December 2005, 12:11pm

For us, this Christmas is going to be all about excesses -- drinking port all day and playing Xbox 360 online in the nude are just two of the things that we're looking forward to. But the real event will have nothing on our pre-Christmas spending spree -- we've been thrown a £5,000 (virtual) budget by the suits in charge to recommend the perfect Christmas presents for you, our dear Crave reader.

We were just going to head out and buy an elephant, but 'the man' said it had to be loosely related to technology. This unfortunately led my colleagues into recommending the most boring things on earth -- a Mac and a PC? I'd rather have socks and a sack of satsumas than those boring hunks of crap. I reckon if you're going to have a good Christmas, you need some retro cool. That's why I've opted for an old-school arcade cabinet, hollowed out and filled to the brim with classic 20p-guzzlers.

There are two ways of getting this arcade perfection in your home. You could go to some enterprising young cabinet maker, who'll put their MDF skills to good use by emptying out the innards of a classic arcade machine and filling it with a high-spec PC. It's likely to feature the MAME emulator and a selection of all the best arcade games ever made, meaning you can select all your favourite games and feel the nostalgic memories flooding back bit by bit. We're talking Street Fighter 2, Final Fight and Operation Wolf here, all available in one machine.

We've found one guy in the West Midlands selling old cocktail cabinets for £850 -- it could be used as a coffee table, which might help you sell the idea to other members of your household. The only problem with a MAME arcade cabinet is that it was created as a not-for-profit experiment, and the implication of owning games you haven't paid for is a legal grey area. Still, all the best things in life all involve some sort of dubious legality, don't they?

If you prefer the safer, corporate route, online retailer BoysStuff is selling a similar setup, albeit with fewer arcade gems held inside. Also, the cabinet itself won't appeal to the sort of people who seek beer-stained, cigarette-burned authenticity, but it does include Paper Boy, Street Fighter and Double Dragon. Actually, the first Street Fighter was rubbish, so you'll just have to play Asteroids or Mario Bros instead. The £1,600 price tag is the only thing that puts us off, but as it's the only 'official' way of getting a fully loaded cabinet in your home, it's the one we'll have to recommend. Just don't expect some sweaty man to come over and empty the 20 pences out every Friday.

If you haven't got the £1,600 lying around in your bank this Christmas (in which case you really should have pre-ordered two Xbox 360s and sold them on eBay), you could always follow this guide to source your own cabinet and set up a MAME-based PC inside. Just think, instead of stuffing the turkey this Christmas, you could be in the shed taking a hacksaw to a modern antique. -Guy Cocker

Guy has already bought these items:
Arcade Mania 150-in-1 Games Cabinet

He has £3,401 to spend before Christmas Day.
Click here to find out more about Crave's Christmas shopping spree.