I recently became interested in retro games, and wanted to build some sort of emulation station to play them. Initially, I thought I would use my personal computer to run them, but later realized that a lot of the joy of old arcade games was playing them with real arcade controllers. I set off on my next project: Building an old-school arcade cabinet. I planned to run the emulation off a Raspberry Pi 2, connected to an old 4:3 computer monitor, then use a Makey Makey connected to various arcade buttons to send keyboard inputs for movement, etc. However, I discovered that many arcade button sets come with their own USB controller, so that simplified the design substantially. Afterwards I loaded up the Raspberry Pi with RetroPie emulation software, and a large selection of ROMs, enabling it to run virtually any old game. I am now working to cut out a wooden case into which I will mount the buttons and electronics.
