Custom mini Neo Geo

mnrocketry

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Donor 14 years: 2011-2024
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I suppose that this is less of a restoration, and more of a creation.

This cabinet is styled and sized almost identically to the Midway mini cabinets, but it actually started life as a Merit "Four Play". I acquired it (dead) out of an operator's warehouse about 8 years ago. It sat around in the back of my garage for quite a few years until I decided what to do with it.

I removed and replaced the entire front panel of the cabinet. Added a Midway coin door that I had lying around, and re-used the original lower vault door. Painted most everything, and put on new t-molding and leg levelers. The woodgrain is original.

The inside was completely gutted. The only things that I re-used were the 13" monitor and isolation transformer. I put in all new AC wiring, power supply, and a new JAMMA harness. I also enlarged the original speaker hole, put in a new 6" speaker and grille.

I designed and fabbed a new control panel. It was challenging to fit a 2-player Neo Geo setup in the space available. I also designed my own control panel and bezel artwork.

The original marquee wasn't lit, so I fabbed up a light board similar to what Midway used. (I use five LED's instead of bulbs.) I also created the custom marquee and had it printed on backlit film.

This was a fun little project. While I have a couple original Neo Geo carts, I currently have a 111-in-1 cart in it.

Alan
 

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Here's the only pic that I seem to have of what this cabinet looked like when I originally acquired it.
 

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Here's a closeup of the marquee. I'm quite happy with how it turned out.
 

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Nice work man. Good use to an otherwise useless cab.

I don't know about that. The work is high quality but asthetics are all up to opinion.

If i was going to keep the wood grain, I would theme it after a Neo Geo Gold 2 slot to make it match the SNK designs. Not my cup of tea but if I was going to do it, I'd either match the red/black designs or the gold/wood design. I would also never put the D button in that type of location. I think it's only acceptable to place move it to (bellow) if you are using a Capcom 6 drilled panel for a MVS.

Mixing the red/black with the wood is a questionable design decision to me. I don't like the "gold" design but it's the only way to make the wood grain work in a SNK theme IMHO.

MVS-2-19.jpg
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EDIT****I hope this didn't come off wrong. The work was very high quality and you did a good job with it.
 
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I don't know about that.

The cab was a junker 8-liner. He did some good effort and made a nice machine for the collection.

Doing it your way, he'd still be talking about what he's gonna do.

There's something to be said about just giving a guy a thumbs up and leave the "I woulda done this" comments for your own enjoyment when they are posting in a show & tell forum. Maybe if it were titled "What should I do?". Instead it was "look what I did".
 
Merit Four Play:
I got this cabinet for next-to-nothing out of an Operator's warehouse. When I first saw it, I thought that someone had converted a classic mini Midway cabinet. Later, I realized that wasn't the case. This is/was a dedicated game from Merit that essentially copied the size & style of the Midway cabinets. It was non-working, but I believe that it originally played poker, blackjack, and two other games. I could swear that there used to be a KLOV entry for it, but I can't find it now. The copyright on the marquee is from 1983.

Control panel layout:
I was extremely space limited. I wanted controls for two players, but only had an area 17 inches wide and 4.5 inches tall to fit them into. I spent a lot of time playing with the layout, but there was absolutely no way to make a normal Neo Geo button arrangement work. The Neo Geo fighting games are about the only ones that use the "D" button. I have zero interest in the fighting games, so I contemplated leaving out the D button entirely. I finally compromised and settled on the layout that you see. "Purists" may hate the location of the D button; I frankly don't care!

Appearance:
I kept the wood grain sides in order to maintain similarity in appearance to the many Midway mini cabinets in my collection. In hindsight, I wish that I had also covered the new front panel in woodgrain instead of painting it black. However, I then would have had to strip and recover the sides of the cabinet to match properly. The red & white pinstriping on the front panel is an experiment to break up the monotony of that black expanse. I haven't decided if I like it or not and can always pull off the pinstriping tape later.

Gold?
I was aware of the existence of wood grain / gold Neo Geo cabinets. Frankly, I don't care for them. To me, Neo Geo = red. Plus, since I was creating my own control panel artwork, I would have had to simulate gold as shades of brown. #bleah#
I like the use of red on this cabinet.

My goal with this entire project was to create my own interpretation, be inspired by "real" Neo Geo cabinets, and not to merely copy them. I also took styling cues and inspiration from actual Midway mini cabinets; Midway wasn't afraid to use bright colors & graphics on their marquees/bezels/control panels.
 
I like it. Looks like it was fun lil' project.

Probably, If I had a cabinet like that. I would turned it into a Satan's hollow or a Wizard of Wor.
 
Nice job on this cabinet. Looks like a fun one! Just curious, how is it to play with 2 people? I would assume that it would feel a bit cramped no?

Although I do agree that a Gold theme would better suit the wood grain (I would have even tried to play with some shiny gold-foil!) nevertheless you made a nice looking cabinet out of a pretty much useless one.
 
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You seriously think this looks "better" than what he created LOL

WOW................

You did an amazing job, looks better than original IMO. Great idea and great conversion/creation. Id buy it :)
 
You seriously think this looks "better" than what he created LOL

Nope. I think his cabinet looks great. But I do think Yellow goes better with Brown.
What were were talking about is the colour theory of it. Hot tones (red) doesn't work well Earthy tones (brown). For an extreme colour like Red, you can get away with using neutral colours like Black, or White.

For a comparison, I threw a quick image together in photoshop. While I hope mnrocketry doesn't take offense to this feedback, I just figured it would be interesting to just see how it looks.

Like I said, I think it looks great as is. But just the choice of colour pairing is something I would have done differently is all.
 

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Yeah, but we're talking about arcade games, not interior design. The idea is that it's flashy and pops to catch your eye. That way you go "Shit dude, it's an arcade game! Let's pump quarters into it!" Hence all the clown-like colors of most cabs. It obviously worked if we're still talking about it.

The theory of trying to color mesh with wood grain completely falls out with all generic cabs such as Midway cocktails anyway. They are all a 'one-each' cab that is a basic design to compliment any game and it's ad. Does the Ms. pacman pink and yellow go with wood grain? I think the yellow example does flow like you say, but it's also way less exciting. I'd pick the red in a line-up.
 
I don't wanna troll too much, so this'll be my last reply, but yeah I get what you're saying. Though in my opinion, Gold is flashier than Red. But as mnrocketry has said, he wanted it to be his interpretation, and that he wouldn't have been able to pull of the Gold colour without it looking to brown. That's why I was thinking it would have been a fun experiment to play with gold foil. :)

Anyways, it was just an image to see how it'd look.

..and Red is more associated with Neo Geo, so...
 
Amazing Job !!!

I love wood grain sides . How much did it cost to make the CP , just the metal panel ?
 
Great job! makes me want to make one with a poker cab I can get pretty easily. I think ill make my CP a slightly offset 1 player and a port on the front for P2 controller
oh and wheres your pause button*a MUST for any Neo*
 
*In my mind, red is so iconic for Neo Geo cabinets, that I never considered using anything other than red for the dominant color.
Keep in mind...
When you're standing in front of the cab, you can't see the woodgrain sides. When you're playing it, you can't see the woodgrain. When this cab is sandwiched between two others, you can't really see the woodgrain regardless of where you stand...

*I didn't know that you could wire a pause button into a Neo Geo system!

*I made the control panel from plywood. I created the controls layout, drilled all the holes, cut the t-molding slot across the front, filled-primed-painted it. Then, I created the control panel artwork, laser printed it onto decal film, applied it, and then clear-coated over it. Standard microswitch pushbuttons and Happ joysticks.

I cut the bezel from a piece of red posterboard, added some custom labels & instructions, and some pinstriping tape.

I created the marquee artwork, had gameongrafix print it onto backlit film for me, and then sandwiched it between two pieces of plexi.
 
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