Bubble Bobble dedicated cab - DONE!

[muddymusic]

Bubble Bobble is and always has been my favourite game. It was the first pcb I bought when I got in to this hobby, and after a fair bit of reading up I was amazed to find it never had a dedicated cab!

I thought then I'd like to make one, but I didn't have any knowledge and would have been completely out of my depth back then taking on a project like this. A couple of years ago I thought I'd go for it....and after 2 failed attempts with different cabinets earlier this year I finally got the right cab for the job. A Taito/Taitel T-83.

I started with this:

And mocked up some graphics like this:

But never finished it, and subsequently sold the cab.

I did a load more work on the graphics and settled on a more solid design before getting this:

Which turned out to be too tidy and nice to mess about with.

Then last month I decided this would be the perfect cab:

Mamed with a 20" vga in there, no psu or loom etc. so a perfect candidate.

I set about stripping it down and giving it the complete works....

 

[muddymusic]

Whole cab is to be wrapped in this 'Bub' blue vinyl.

Started with the front panel.

All the edges folded over nice and tight and that's one side done and ready for t-moulding.

Finished the right side:

Cash door done complete with lock fitted.

Coin door freshly powercoated and fitted:

Time to fit the t-moulding. It wasn't a particularly easy job due to the previous owner (we'll call
him 'Vort Vec' to avoid embarrassment) using grip fill to fix the
previous t-moulding in. So a bit of hammer & chisel action with some
help from the glue gun was needed.

Right side done:

Left side:

Took delivery of a brand new control panel made by Vic (redemption for his earlier 'work'), I just supplied him with the printed artwork, he did the rest, and a fine job he made of it.
New timber and metal plate, all drilled out, topped with perspex and ready to put the sticks in.

Extrusion moulding applied to tidy up the edge.

On to the wiring.

Started with all the mains stuff, wanted to try and keep it neat.

All the power, video and speaker connection are done.

Metered
the voltages for the monitor and switcher and all looked good for a
first time power up. Stuck in my new test pcb of 'Golfing Greats' and
switched it on

Yes!

The Bubble Bobble pcb gets fitted to the cab at last

I
wired the cab to jamma so I can stick Rainbow Islands or the Taito
multiboard in here too - at some point I'll do a 'conversion kit' for
the cab with RI artwork.

Front wiring, I've put in service and test connections and will stick a panel in there when I find one.
Coin
door is all wired up with +12v for the bulbs and the mechs work, I also
added in a credit button on one of the spare buttons on the front of
the cab, the other button will be used as the select button on the Taito multiboard I will be running in there sometimes.
All unused connections were removed, however I did keep all 4
inputs from the sticks even though BB uses 2, again for the Taito
multiboard.

Side
art applied, I redid this recently from my first design and I'm glad I did as the
rounded white edge looks great with the white t-moulding.

muddymusic2013-09-30 12:22:22

 

[muddymusic]

So here she is all done. It's been something like 2 years in the making
but got there in the end - and with the right choice of cab I think. I
wanted it to look like something Taito might actually have put together
had they actually made a dedicated Bubble Bobble cab, hopefully I
achieved that.

Thanks to Virtvic for the work on the control
panel (oh and for selling me the cab!) - I'd have been stuck without his
skills, and it really makes a huge difference to the cab having a
decent control panel.

The artwork turned out very well I think,
many of the changes were made due to you guys suggesting things,
uberpixel deserves a special mention for pointing out the colour changes
needed which completely changed the look of the art!

I can't
take all the credit for all the artwork, most of it was taken from
vectors made by Ravage, and some scans to which I made some
modifications and alterations. The most work I did was on the control
panel, with more than a little inspiration from Donkey Kong.

Lots of pics now, I hope you like it.

 

[Alpha1]

Dude I have seen the thread before on J+ but yeah, nice work

Maybe I should just send a load of cabs that need restoration to your place?

 

[Fuzzy]

'Awesome' doesn't even come close!

 

[strykr]

As above, but its so minty I thought it needed two thumbs up

Oll if I send you a load of wood buttons and sticks can you knock me up a US Galaga cab please

 

[Sciddleybop]

Great work, looks incredible. Very jealous indeed

 

[Dex-Jay]

Like I said over J+, very cool!

Side Art on it too since I last saw pics! (I was going to ask if any were going on!)

 

[muddymusic]

Forgot to mention - for those of you that don't know there was a new version of Bubble Bobble made called 'lost cave' which was 100 official levels taken from various different computer & console versions of the game and put together to run on mame released last year.

I volunteered to be the first to test these new roms on an original pcb (the results are on my youtube page) and after a few dud chips were switched out I had it fully playable on a cab. That's what is running on my cab in these pics.

Here's the official website http://lostcave.wordpress.com/

 

[grobda]

great work!

 

[bbz149]

Awesome dude