Oh my, this does look nice. Frederic Sebton has taken an old PowerBook and an IKEA side table (Ramvik is the model) and turned it into an arcade cabinet.

Sebton has basically taken a PowerBook apart and mounted the screen and computer guts back-to-back, with the screen showing up through a hole cut in the top of the table. He then used a piece of black cardboard and a piece of glass as the top-most layer, mounted an arcade style joystick in the cabinet’s drawer, and ka-boom: a nice arcade cabinet running Mame software on a PowerBook.

Seems simple enough, definitely a no-brainer if you’ve got an old laptop that you’re not using – it wouldn’t need to be a PowerBook, either. Any old laptop that can run emulation software should be able to work just fine.

Here are a couple more photos from the project’s page.

Frederic Sebton Mamebook Cocktail Table [via LifeHacker]

I’ll tinker with my X-Arcade once a week, but certainly not as much as I thought I would. I like playing Golden Tee, but setting it up on my TV is a pain. If only my coffee table had Pac Man readily available. Eric certainly knows what I’m talking about and his Ikea MAME table is fantastic. It plays Ms. Pac Man, but that’s besides the point. It’s even better because it doubles as a dinner table or what have you. Pull the leaves apart and the MAME is revealed. It has a 15-inch LCD and Happ Controls wired to an Ultimate I-Pac. Pretty sweet, huh?

Flickr [via BB]

Maybe I should get one of those shady payday advances for this. “This” being the Gamerator, a full-sized MAME cabinet that just so happens to have a built-in refrigerator. And what else would you store in the refrigerator other than beer? Well, food, yeah, but that’s boring. There’s a small tap in the front whence beer flows into your might ROM chalice.

I mention payday advances because the Gamerator is eBay right now for $2,000. Should you place the winning bid, you’ll get the machine proper as well as 187 “licensed” games. Real games, too, like Street Fighter and not its cheap, east-of-the-Iron-Curtain knockoff Street Fighter/Spirit Crusher.

Gamerator Auction [eBay via Boing Boing Gadgets]

There was a time in college that I wanted to buy a Golden Tee arcade machine because…well…it’s just about the coolest game ever. I also hated going to Clodfelters and paying up to $20 to play the damn thing when I was getting crunk. So my roommates and I had it all planned out. We were going to get one off of eBay and to recoup our costs we’d hold tournaments and leave it coin-operated for everyone to use. It was a brilliant plan, but no one wanted to front the money for it. We were, after all, poor college students who spent money on booze, bud, and boobies. But don’t get me wrong. I enjoy playing other arcade games like Mortal Kombat and Pac Man, but Golden Tee was the bomb and something I was good at.

So you can imagine the tingling sensation I felt in my pants when the X-Arcade Tankstick arrived at my doorstep. I knew exactly what I wanted to play the moment I unboxed it. Even now I won’t play anything other than Golden Tee. Even though I can purchase adapters for use on any game console, I still haven’t done so, but maybe you will. In case you didn’t know X-Arcade is a gawd among retro-arcade enthusiasts. The level of accuracy the sticks and trackball provide are phenomenal. Not to mention the fact that combo moves are way easier on an arcade machine than any game console controller. But the fact that I can play thousands of classic arcade games has me tickled pink. There are also four pinball flipper buttons in case you’re into that sort of thing.

The Tankstick is one big, badass, mofo. It weighs 20lbs and 30-inches across for two players. It’s made from stripped parts off of old arcade machines, which is a cool bonus. I’ve never had a product that was built so tough. It has a lifetime warranty and X-Arcade boasts that the Tankstick is indestructible, but I’m not even going to attempt to prove them wrong. I like my video games too much to risk having to wait for a repair or parts.

Setup was a breeze and I plugged the Tankstick into my MacBook via USB and everything was good to go. No drivers. To hook up to your PC just plug in via USB and PS/2 and you’re ready to rumble. It may take some time to configure the eight button clusters to your specs depending on the game you want to play, but it’s easy to do thanks to the instruction manual included. The Tankstick includes four built-in memory slots and three can be programmed for whatever games you enjoy playing the most. X-Arcade was kind enough to include 18 full version arcade games, 12 Atari classics for the PC and six full versions of Midway titles like Gauntlet, Rampage and Joust. Don’t worry, Mac fans. Just get MAME and you’ll be fondling those sticks and buttons all night long.

What are you waiting for? Buy one now!

I’ll update this post tomorrow with more pics. My landlord hasn’t come by to replace the overhead lights so the lighting is horrible for pictures right now.

The MAME guys cracked Capcom’s CPS III encryption about a week ago and have made a startling amount of progress since then. (In fact, I just grabbed a bunch of CPS III dumps from Usenet in preparation for the moment when a Mac OS X port is released.) CPS III was the hardware that all 600 versions of Street Fighter III ran on but wasn’t compatible with the MAME emulator until last week. You’ll find no ROM links here, but when the CPS III-compatible MAME hits, you can bet I’ll be taking a sick day. Sorry, John.

And who knows, maybe someone will resurrect the Xbox 1 MAME port now.

Keep Your Eyes Here [Speksnk.org via Xbox-Scene]