Dedicated Bubble Bobble cab project

[muddymusic]

Bubble Bobble is and always has been my favourite game. It was the first pcb I bought when I got in to this hobby, and after a fair bit of reading up I was amazed to find it never had a dedicated cab!

I thought then I'd like to make one, but I didn't have any knowledge and would have been completely out of my depth back then taking on a project like this. A couple of years ago I thought I'd go for it....and after 2 failed attempts with different cabinets earlier this year I finally got the right cab for the job. A Taito/Taitel T-83.

I started with this:


And mocked up some graphics like this:


But never finished it, and subsequently sold the cab.

I did a load more work on the graphics and settled on a more solid design before getting this:


Which turned out to be too tidy and nice to mess about with.

Then last month I decided this would be the perfect cab:


Mamed with a 20" vga in there, no psu or loom etc. so a perfect candidate.

I set about stripping it down and giving it the complete works....

[muddymusic]

Whole cab is to be wrapped in this 'Bub' blue vinyl.


Started with the front panel.


Left side


Finished the right side:


Cash door done complete with lock fitted.


Coin door freshly powercoated and fitted:


Time to fit the t-moulding. It wasn't a particularly easy job due to the previous owner using grip fill to fix the previous t-moulding in. So a bit of hammer & chisel action with some help from the glue gun was needed.

Right side done:


Left side:


Took delivery of a brand new control panel made by my friend Vic (redemption for his earlier 'work'), I just supplied him with the printed artwork, he did the rest, and a fine job he made of it.
New timber and metal plate, all drilled out, topped with perspex and ready to put the sticks in.



Extrusion moulding applied to tidy up the front edge.


On to the wiring.

Started with all the mains stuff, wanted to try and keep it neat.


All the power, video and speaker connection are done.


Metered the voltages for the monitor and switcher and all looked good for a first time power up. Stuck in my new test pcb of 'Golfing Greats' and switched it on 


Yes!

The Bubble Bobble pcb gets fitted to the cab at last 


I wired the cab to jamma so I can stick Rainbow Islands or my Taito multiboard in here too - at some point I'll do a 'conversion kit' for the cab with RI artwork.


Front wiring, I've put in service and test connections and will stick a panel in there when I find one.
Coin door is all wired up with +12v for the bulbs and the mechs work, I also added in a credit button on one of the spare buttons on the front of the cab, the other button will be used as the select button on the Taito multiboard I will be running in there sometimes.
All unused connections were removed, however I did keep all 4 inputs from the sticks even though BB uses 2, again for the Taito multiboard.




Side art applied, I redid this recently from my first design and I'm glad I did as the rounded white edge looks great with the white t-moulding.

[muddymusic]

So here she is all done. It's been something like 2 years in the making but got there in the end - and with the right choice of cab I think. I wanted it to look like something Taito might actually have put together had they actually made a dedicated Bubble Bobble cab, hopefully I achieved that.

Thanks to Virtvic for the work on the control panel (oh and for selling me the cab!) - I'd have been stuck without his skills, and it really makes a huge difference to the cab having a decent control panel.

I can't take all the credit for all the artwork, most of it was taken from vectors made by Ravage, and some scans to which I made some modifications and alterations. The most work I did was on the control panel, with more than a little inspiration from Donkey Kong.

Lots of pics now, I hope you like it.

















Regards the pcb running in the pics - for those of you that don't know there was a new version of Bubble Bobble made called 'lost cave' which was 100 official levels taken from various different computer & console versions of the game and put together to run on mame released last year.

I volunteered to be the first to test these new roms on an original pcb (the results are on my youtube page) and after a few dud chips were switched out I had it fully playable on a cab. That's what is running on my cab in these pics.

Here's the official website http://lostcave.wordpress.com/

[gyruss]

Wow, looks very nice!

[JamesSS]

Good work. Well done.

[anunaki]

look really great

[Belike]

Congrats Olly, BB is a fun game and a dedicated cab is quite rare these days.
I also like the cp and the vinyl job.
Never heard of this new version, but it sounds like a good development.

[vernimark]

Great! 

[johnsarcade]

Wow! I LOVE THAT!! I would love to build one of those. That is a cool game for sure. Wonderful job!

[level42]

Totally awesome !!! BB deserved a dedicated cab and you've come as close as possible !

[Etienne MacGyver]

Yep, very very nice ! 

[Wurstkopp]

She's a real beaut! 

[DarthNuno]

Really cute! Great job 

[ckong]

Wow, this ´dedicated´ Bubble Bobble cab is sooooooooo nice.  

A real piece of art, makes me want to build one myself (I do have an obsolete cab). I hardly dare to ask, but ar the art files available somewhere?  

[muddymusic]

Thank you for all the nice comments, I'm really pleased with how it turned out 

I have PDFs of each part of the artwork you're welcome to use if you like ckong.
Much of the art was from arcade art library that I modified, the most important change was the colour correction.