My Scratch Built Renegade

During the mid 80's, I would take my nephew to the old Lakeland mall arcade.  That arcade is long gone, and the mall is now a church!  Anyway, our favorite pastime there was Renegade.  It was the first "beat'em up" game I can remember playing.  If I were to ever own a stand-up, full size arcade game, it would have to be Renegade.  So that is how I got started in this hobby.

Renegade was never sold as a dedicated machine.  Story has it that in the waning years of the video arcade boom of the early 80's, game developers began providing conversion kits.  Operators were then able to convert an older game, something that was no longer earning them money, into a new and hopefully profitable game.  And convert they did.  Most cabinets were painted black to conceal their previous identity.  The conversion kit would come with a few pieces of art, usually a new marquee and control panel overlay.  It was around this time that game rooms began to look, well, shabby to say the least.

After researching this, and learning that poor Renegade was never actually sold as a "dedicated" cabinet, I decided to build one from scratch.  I located a working circuit board (PCB) for Renegade on Ebay and after several more months, located a few pieces of original art from the conversion kit. 

Having already bored you to tears with the "why", I'll spare you  the "how".  Just know that if you plan to ever "scratch build" an arcade game, that it will be a slightly costly and time-consuming endeavor.  Three tools that were very helpful were a "biscuit joiner", a router, and large clamps.  Without those tools, I cant see how I would've created a square cabinet.  The entire cabinet is held together with biscuit joints and wood glue.  It is extremely solid, no worries there.  I used only basic hand tools, and I'm quite happy with the final results.