Sunday, 8 July 2012

Lateral thinking – finally a solution


As the old proverb goes- If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain. In other words - If things do not change the way you want them to, you must adjust to the way they are.
Faced with no good and obvious solutions for making the Vectrex screen larger I have decided to use the Vectrex with its built in display in the cabinet.  Of course this looks a bit silly, so to reduce the silliness I will arrange to reduce the width of the cabinet. I have stated in previous posts that my goal is to make an arcade cabinet that would not look out of place in an 80’s amusement arcade. Well, maybe I have to compromise on that goal and say that my cabinet should not look out of place in a mid 70’s amusement arcade. The early games from then did use small displays. Take Pong from 1972. This was an upright arcade cabinet with a 13” B&W TV. So, true retro means small screens - at least that will be my argument.

I’m having new work tops in my kitchen fitted at the moment. I’ve had a word with the carpenter and he’s agreed to disassemble the cabinet and take a few inches off each side with his jig saw to reduce the cabinet width. With a narrower cabinet, there won’t be enough space for dual controls, and I will need a new control panel catering for just one player. He's agreed to cut the control panel too, and make a new bezel to put the Vectrex behind. Can't wait....

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