Arcade Control Panel Design: Part 1

The control panel was probably the most fun part of the design process. I had decided on a four player layout so before even starting the drawing I looked up the parts available (buttons, joysticks). Once I figured out what parts I wanted to use I created scale models and started moving them around in my design.

Prototype: My Original design included a trackball for games like golf, bowling, etc and it would also double as a mouse. I decided on six buttons for first and second players for games like Street Fighter... during my research I never found any four player games that used more than four buttons. MAME uses special buttons for navigating through menus and pausing that needed to be incorporated.

Final: I got rid of the trackball because I decided on keeping the whole project under $1000 and it was over $100 by itself. I've never played any games with a trackball so I figured I could do without... plus it's easy to add later. I printed out the 1-player section to scale to see how it felt in terms of button distance and decided not only could the buttons be closer but staggering them like I did made them feel much more ergonomic and comfortable. The menu buttons were moved to the center and I took a look through MAME and my front-end (more on this later) to figure out what buttons/functions would be convenient to have on the control panel without being cluttered.

There were several iterations in between these two designs (about 30) but these two showed the most progression.