Here at the Game Lab we have a strong focus on developing ideas that are on the fringe of games and art. It’s typical for our projects to include custom electronics and mechanical elements. We don’t define any limits when it comes to the implementations of our ideas. And that’s why when we set out to build an arcade cabinet for showcasing student-made games, we needed to do things a little different.

The Modular Arcade Cabinet is able to support a wide variety of interface designs. It can support a video screen or any other display that mounts on our display peg system. Similarly, any control panel can be dropped in so you can go from mouse and keyboard to street fighter controls to any other random contraption. Switching out the panels are easy, the display component hangs from a simple four post system and the control panel rests on an inset bezel:

Here are some examples of different electo-mechanical games that students made:

The Modular Arcade Cabinet has already been shown in a couple of events. Here are some pictures from the International Games Day held at UCLA’s Powell Library:

Here’s Peter Lu showing his game Burn & Turn to Mr. Hiroshi Yagi, Mr. Yasuhiro Kondo, and Mr. Mori Akihiro from SEGA Japan’s R&D department: