Guide

There’s nothing quite like the satisfying spin of a quality arcade spinner when you’re deep in a game of Tempest or Arkanoid. After testing dozens of arcade spinners over the past year, our team found that the right spinner can transform your retro gaming experience from frustrating to authentic. The best arcade spinners deliver that … Read more

Building your own arcade control panel is one of the most rewarding DIY projects out there, but none of those buttons and joysticks mean anything until they can talk to your computer. That is exactly what a USB encoder does. It is a small circuit board that translates the raw switch signals from your buttons … Read more

I built my first arcade cabinet seven years ago, and the single piece that made or broke the whole experience was the encoder. A zero delay encoder translates every button press and joystick direction into USB input that your computer recognizes instantly. When I started researching my build, I assumed any cheap USB controller board … Read more

Nothing ruins a heated two-player session of Street Fighter II faster than a control board that drops the diagonal input you just pressed. I learned that the hard way on my first bartop build, where a cheap interface board turned every fireball into a coin flip. That project sent me down a rabbit hole of … Read more

I have spent more weekends than I care to admit routing slots and snapping trim into old arcade cabinets, and the single biggest upgrade that makes a build look finished is the T-Molding. It covers raw plywood edges, protects corners from joystick bumps, and gives the whole cabinet that polished arcade feel. After 12 builds … Read more

There’s nothing quite like the sound of a quarter dropping cleanly through a coin mechanism and triggering a vend cycle. I learned to appreciate that sound the hard way — after spending one entire summer fixing jammed coin mechs across a small route of gumball machines, pool tables, and a couple of arcade cabinets I’d … Read more

I’ve spent years building fightsticks and competing in fighting game tournaments, so I know how much of a difference the right lever makes. Short throw Seimitsu levers deliver tighter, faster inputs than standard arcade joysticks. They cut the dead zone down to almost nothing and let your inputs register exactly when you intend them to. … Read more

When I built my first bartop arcade cabinet years ago, I dropped the cheapest joystick I could find into the control panel and immediately regretted it. The lever floated with zero resistance, diagonals were a guessing game, and every quarter-circle felt like a coin flip. Swapping in a real Sanwa joystick changed everything. Inputs snapped … Read more

The cabinet was perfect. A 1994 Neo Geo with original art, clean controls, and a CRT that had finally given up after thirty years of service. That dead tube is exactly why most people start shopping for a video converter board for arcade cabinet upgrades in the first place, and it is why I ended … Read more

Nothing ends a cabinet restoration faster than a dead CRT. When the screen goes dark and you hear clicking, hissing, or arcing from the back of the tube, the flyback transformer is the first part I pull the chassis out to inspect. Tracking down the best flyback transformers for arcade monitors in is harder than … Read more