Game Room Move (sort of)
Uncategorized January 14th, 2007Wow…it’s been 2 weeks since I posted. I’ve been busy rearranging our game room a bit. Before, we had everything on a small wall in our basement:
I have Pac-Man and Moon Patrol in the garage, and will need room for those. I also needed room for another game that we just picked up the other day – Demolition Derby. So…I wired 3 new circuits, and put them all on switches. The games are now on the long wall to the left of the door in the pic above. Here is what it looks like now:
Side view:
House Rules sign from Brian at Oleszak Creative:
For the switches, I didn’t want to just use regular household light switches. Someone would surely flip one right while you are approaching a new high score and shut off the games. I wanted something a bit harder to flip. Linda suggested a big throw switch like in Frankenstein, but that would be a bit too dangerous…that gave us the idea of making it look dangerous though, as dangerous obviously equals fun! The more dangerous something is, the more fun it should be…showering is boring…showering with a radio and hair dryer is very exciting!
We bought some cool looking switches from Home Depot that were designed for outdoor use. We painted them red, mounted them on a piece of diamond plate (also from Home Depot), added a High Voltage sign (from Ace Hardware), and framed it off with some plastic trim. Here is the result:
I’d like to somehow rig the first switch so when you throw it something behind the wall plays an extremely loud sound of high voltage, like you’d hear in Frankenstein or when someone is being electrocuted…basically a big scary zapp. Something like some of the sounds listed here would be good:
http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/archive/Electronics/Electricity/Electrical-explosion-4/190964
I don’t know exactly how to do that, so if anyone does feel free to comment.
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January 16th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Wow, I go a few days without checking your site and I miss all this cool stuff
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I like the switches you made, very fun, I think it looks great. You could do the sound effects thing with a micro controller, but that could be spendy and time consuming if you don’t know the programming language the specific microcontroller would use (if you’re interested in getting into this, I would suggest PIC for your microcontroller, they have a wide variety of chips available and much cheaper than something like Basic Stamp. You’re looking at ~$5/PIC chip vs. ~$50/Basic Stamp chip, but the programmer will be a fairly sizable up front cost on that).
Anyway, let us know if you decide to work this out and what route you go with it.
Also, the game room looks great, I think it’s much better with the re-arrange. You could probably fit another arcade on that one wall if you really pack them in tight, but then you don’t get to see the fun side art (tough call
)
We just recently got our CNC machine up and running again, and I’ve been thinking about making some fun arcade inspired signs. Maybe when I have some free time, I’ll throw some ideas together, but no time for that now, we just cut out our first cocktail cabinet, and I’m anxious to get it all assembled and finished…
January 16th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Hey Mark – glad you like the switches. Thanks for the tip on doing the sound effects. I may look into it at some point, but it might be a little beyond me at the moment.
When I finish Pac-Man and Moon Patrol, I’m going to make a row where Demolition Derby is. At some point, I’ll probably need to rearrange them and pack them more tightly to fit them all if I keep this up.
I don’t know anything about CNC machines beyond what I just read on Wikipedia…sounds very cool.
December 23rd, 2010 at 9:16 pm
There is a person on YouTube (blkdog7) that has the same switches and sign. Maybe he copied you
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December 28th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Yup, he did.