Designing your very own arcade machine

We don't supply off the shelf units, we want you to feel like its yours, so we want to involve you in the design. This blog post should give you an idea of the customisation you can have on one of our cocktail tables.

Colours

You might not be a designer, but our team are and they are dedicated to ensuring we design the perfect machine for you, we'll work with you whatever your designs skills are. We know that not everyone has a bar area, games room, or den, so it might not seem as easy to make one of our machines fit your existing decor, but you couldn't be more wrong.

Our tables are not limited to the retro look, although we do think the black with bold edging is the coolest look you can give one of these machines. All our tables are hand made to your specification, so all the dimensions are flexible, but we can also paint it in pretty much any colour you like and within reason, add a complementary T-mold edging strip that either matches the colour or ties it in nicely with your room colours.

Game graphics

We'd love to provide our machines with 'The Retro Lounge' plastered all over it, but choosing the game graphics for the top of the table is probably the part where most customers want to get involved. Often customers want their favourite game as the main graphics and that's great, tell us your favourite game and we'll do the rest. However, it shouldn't stop there. The glass tops on our tables are removable and so with a bit of care and a printer, you can easily change the graphics at a later date.

The natural look

But why stop at colours? We've recently been commissioned to build a cocktail table to fit in with an oak themed room, so we're rising to the challenge! The entire unit will be made from from hardboard with a natural wood veneer finish to match the customers decor. The top surface will also be the same finish, with no game graphics, just our normal toughened glass top.

Unfortunately we can't use our normal method for securing the glass top in place as this would be visible and unsightly, so an alternative method of holding the glass in place with screws will need to be done.

Size matters

As I've just said, all our dimensions are flexible, within reason, obviously the table needs to house a monitor, but we can install any size monitor from 15" up to accommodate the size. Our most popular choice is the 19" 16:9 monitor. Customers ask us about wide screen monitors, but of course games designed in the 80s (and 90s) were never designed for wide screen, so games either end up stretched or  have 2 black lines down each side.

2 player controls

Most customers ask for 2 player tables (controls either side of table) and we're generally happy to oblige. However, We strongly advise you think about this before committing, as not only are there only a few games that will work as you might expect, you actually need much more room for the table.

Consider the location of you table, if its going to be up against a wall or in a corner, then a single control unit makes much more sense as you'd need to move the table to access the 2nd control unit.

Don't forget the machine needs power, so you will need to consider where your power outlets are and the possibility of a trailing wire to the plug socket.

We advise that with an average size cocktail table, with a 2 player set up, you will require 1.9 meter (190cm) of free wall space to comfortably allow a person to sit either side. Arcade hall owners quickly realised the amount of space these tables would require and so they didn't survive very long, despite how cool they looked.

If your passion is for 2 player fighting games, then we strongly advise against a cocktail table as the 2nd player would be viewing the screen upside down, almost impossible to play, player 1 is going to win every time!! Most of the early 80s platform games operated by 2 players taking it in turns to play their game. Some games were designed with the ability to flip the screen for the 2nd players turn, Pac-man, Burger Time etc, all had this feature and whilst from initial set up, they're all in '1 player mode' (no screen flip), we'll ensure that the screen flip option is sorted for you on 2 player tables.

Although we haven't built one yet, we have plans for a 2 player fighting cocktail table, why not give us a call and discuss this set up with us?

Sound

All our tables come with custom made audio systems, consisting of a small amp and 2 speakers. The system is fairly loud and good quality. It is possible to connect your phone to the table either by 3.5mm audio load or by Bluetooth (set up required). The amps are basic, adequate, with volume, bass and treble adjustments. Whilst this standard set up is more than enough for the arcade sounds, we recommend talking to us about upgrading this if you want to use the table to play music at high volumes.

We generally mount the speakers on each side of the unit, from the perspective of the player. However, this may not fit your needs, depending on where you will place the machine. If this set up means one of the speakers would immediately facing a wall, let us know and we can mount them in a different configuration.

Safety

Of course safety is of paramount importance to us. All the electronics in the system are PAT tested before leaving our workshop. The materials we use to build the cabinets are of the highest standards, 18mm thick, which means the tables are very heavy, but very sturdy and robust. Finally, the glass top is 4mm super toughened glass, which means it will easily withstand normal use, though we wouldn't recommend sitting or standing on it.