MAME cabinets can be lots of fun. Check out this one by Stuart, the creative use of some old computer joysticks allow him to interface the authentic buttons and joystick to the computer with ease. You can purchase new arcade housings that are made just for MAME systems but Stuart decided to dig into an older system and bring it back to life with some elbow grease.

"I put this machine together years ago now - its only got an Athlon 1700+ PC in it with XP Home ed. But this spec is good enough to run MAME! The cabinet was a generic one hosting a real Rygar game board and other gubbins, ALL ripped out, including the very old cathode ray screen, one that looked like it might have given me cancer, and replaced with a 17" iiyama. (I still have the very old game board). The cabinet was in a bad state when I got it. Needed a re-spray, and the whole front control panel was rebuilt from Pinewood as the old one was rotting. Some lengths of CAT5 cable link up two USB joypads with the authentic arcade joystick and buttons, lots of hot glue seal it all up so it doesn’t come loose easily. See the photoset for more info. Recently I even added some WiiMote interfacing software and a homebuilt sensorbar - use it as a gun for the ‘Point Blank’ game - a classic! It works reasonably well but for some reason you have to move the WiiMote left and right a lot more than you should need to to move the cursor. The WiiMote isn’t very good as a light-gun imho."