Konami TMNT Cabinet Project

[blakeb8111]

This is a cabinet I got for my Father’s Day gift that I finally got to work on and finished a few weeks ago. Obviously a project that needed a lot of work. I’ve been on the lookout for a 4 player and I enjoy a challenge. First things first, I had to remove the old decals and paint. What was left of the side art was painted over black, but when I took it off with a heat gun you could see the TMNT graphics at the bottom(I forgot to take a picture of that part). The control panel has start buttons, which TMNT doesnt have. When I peeled the painted over CPO, you can see a Spider-Man CPO in the residue of the glue. The control panel had Wico micro switch joysticks which were in good shape so I was able to clean and rebuild them. I found Wico replacement joystick handles and parts in the turtles colors online at arcadeshop.com. Only problem is they were 3.5” and the original were 4”, so I had to use a router attachment on my dremel to make them a better fit in the control panel. Next was repairing all of the damaged wood at the bottom of the cabinet. A lot of bondo and sanding later, the cabinet was ready to prime and paint.

 

[blakeb8111]

I used a kilz sealer/primer to prep the cabinet. The plan was to make a multi 3/4 player cabinet, and my kids and I voted with Turtles in Time for the cabinet design. I had to make brackets to hold the marquee with aluminum I bought at a local Ace hardware, ordered a tempered, light smoke tinted glass from onedayglass.com and I found a guy on ebay who had acrylic covers for the CPO. I got the CPO from ebay as well and the marquee from escapepodonline. I used a piece of plaskolite ceiling light panel from lowes to make a bezel for the monitor. Added a third button to the control panel. ipac4, IL buttons and an older i7 windows pc which i already had laying around finish up the build. The only real project left is to finish rebuilding the coin doors. The doors are the same brand but slightly different from each other. I cleaned them up and painted them, but i only had enough parts to make one functioning coin slot. I’ve seen some cabs where they have coin reject buttons to match the joysticks which would look awesome, but they’re hard to come by for coin control doors.

Current game list running on Hyperspin: TMNT, Turtles in Time, X-Men, NBA JAM, NBA JAM TE, NBA Maximum Hangtime, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, The Simpsons, WWF Wrestlefest, Battletoads, Moonwalker, Alien vs Predator, Sunset Riders, Captain Commando, Golden Axe RODA, Rampage and Rampage World Tour. The NBA JAM TE has the rewind hack, so you can play as Michael Jordan, added Shaq back to the game to play with Penny Hardaway and a bunch of other additions to the game. It’s by far the most played game on the cab.

 

[Tarma]

Great work... that thing really was a basket case to start with!