Gadgetory

when I first saw the box for this arcade thing I had two thoughts I thought this is like a cool idea but something that practically is a really bad idea I don't actually have a lot of really clear memories of being at like full-blown arcades as a kid what I do remember is being at places that would just have that solitary cabinet by the entrance arcades or something I did later a lot what I got because my college had that arcade on campus and there are a few local arcades that are really popular that's when I really started doing more like the actual full-blown arcade scene we're really when I got into like being more serious with fighting games before we actually constructed it we did the painting first because we decided we wanted to do a little bit more of unique design beyond what the stock parts would let you do we really wanted something very colorful and very switch themed so we went for we still actually had spray paint left from a previous project where we did an Ikea desk in switch colors so we still had that red and blue on hand so we started by painting all the pieces we kind of roughly sketched out which sides we wanted to be which color and we would hope that it would come together looking good like it did in our heads and thankfully it did and then as for the actual construction it was pretty straightforward and easy all the instructions are very clear about like what latches into what and having worked with the no lab oh stuff before it's basically exactly that it's all cardboard so it's mostly just folding tabs in making sure that the right shape and then locking it all together so it was pretty straight forward the only part that was a little difficult was because of the paint we used it maybe got a little bit too thick on some parts and it didn't cause any visual problems but it did certainly weaken the cardboard a tiny bit so there's a couple tabs where I had to be really careful shoving one thing into another thing because then it would just easily collapse and not go together well there's really only one part that ended up getting messed up but it's not very visible in the final product which I'm really thankful for if you look for it you can find it I can point it out but I don't want to do that so you'll never know where it is right here it didn't take me very long to put the whole thing together I mean I didn't time myself but probably only 30 minutes I think they bring it over here bring it over here she bought me quick and mixing up the different products to show filings and then my liquor bottle in general like to make a gender generalize the women that I'm sitting at Google spit on my galaxy in the morning but I like if y'all like what I like to my night is finite blur we get this started up cool you got curved pain let's cure your friends so again we really wanted to have like a theme for the cabinet we didn't just want to build it to have it be this plain cardboard looking thing like came with little stickers to customize stuff and that was kind of neat but we wanted to go a little more all-out than that so we did the paint job and wanted that to be switch colors but then we also wanted to go with a Super Smash Brothers vibe so we ordered a lot of decals that were just plain simple white ones we've done this before a lot of you designed for like car windshields they're really easy to apply so we got a couple different sizes we didn't really measure anything out we just ordered a bunch and would make do a lot of them actually weren't just decal designs but it was also a ways for people to make their own unofficial smash talk like it took the designs from the collectors edition smash stock and then just made it something you could apply to a regular doc but in our case we cut them out and put them in different places of the arcade cabinet so it took a little care to cut them the right way to not look terrible and if it's you know really up-close looks you can definitely see some uneven cuts and like not the most precision we've ever done but it actually looks really good from afar I I was surprised I was honestly a little worried in the midpoint how some of it was gonna translate but it ended working out really well what about the arcade experience is that it does two things differently I think from normally playing a game multiplayer I mean growing up you still had like you know couch co-op where you'd have couch versus I guess in this case where you know I would play a lot of Street Fighter 2 and play against friends on Super Nintendo that kind of thing but doing it an arcade did two major things one it increased the size of who you're actually fighting against it's not just like you and your friend which might happen but you know you'd have situations where you're lining up and there's all these people people you've never met before people maybe just kind of knew a little bit that are all trying to play the same game and to it added a stake like it was at a small stake it was just a quarter or whatever maybe 50 cents but now you had something that you were investing and possibly losing well you lost it no matter what but it's how many you're losing you know depending on if you win or not so it created this whole kind of fun sense of community that you wouldn't get just playing games in the house and you'd meet people that way you play matches and you would have no idea who this person is you're up against but if you're playing at the same arcade often enough and you run into this person again and again you kind of get this weird almost friendship like eventually you start talking about random stuff or you just talk about like you know oh like that was a cool thing you learned how to do they're like you shoulda do that that kind of you know there's just a it builds a rapport with people it was a way to kind of ice break conversations that you normally wouldn't do and it was really it was really fun since the community that just opened out smash has always had a really special place in my heart too because that's something that came out right when I was like really starting to get games on my own I mean the n64 was the first console that was mine I was really into like the original smash when I was a little little kid I even have vague memories of I not only played it a lot with friends but I even remember I mean you know because I was once again like a little little kid so your imaginations at like 5,000 percent of the time you're just making stuff up so everywhere even me making like little stories and just playing out fights against the cpu that played into the stories like whatever I'm playing as Fox and I pick this enemy and I've whatever the plot is for this episode I win move on to the next match it's just dumb stuff ideas a kid that I did a lot was mash yep being something that's just made entirely at a cardboard it does the it accomplishes its concepts really well giving you a way of taking the switch as it is and turning it into a little arcade setup yeah there's a couple of really cool ideas in there the cardboard is strong enough to hold everything in place they give you a little way to shove the switch in and then a smart little idea was they added a hole on the other side which at first I wasn't sure what that was for and then I realized oh it's so when you take the switch at you've a place to just kind of shove another finger in because you have to lift it a little bit otherwise it would just slide out all the time and then another cool thing that I thought was a nice added touch was the slots for the joy columns you don't just put the joy Kon in instead there's like an actual plastic shell that you put the Drakon into that show make sure that it fits in the slot really well and it adds those extra buttons so you still have access to the Eldar buttons on the joy con so yeah overall as far as just accomplishing this concept of making a little functional arcade cabinet it does the job well I still wouldn't recommend actually playing on it a lot but for accomplishing the look and like at least making it something you can try to play on yeah I think the main draw of something like this isn't because you want to build a functional thing it's because it's a conversational piece it's something where you put it together and you're like hey guys like you know normally when we're playing smash we're gonna put on the big-screen TV we're gonna use pro controllers whatever but if you just want to be like look I made a little arcade thing like it's fun and especially I think something where the switch fits really well for this I mean first off just the entire modular design of it I always talk a bunch about how it's just cool how the switch can adapt all these different ideas but the digital library in the switch has a lot of arcade titles and so being able to play those in like a little mini form there's a it's a gimmick it's a fun gimmick ultimately you know one of the things I think the circadian complices is just another great example of how the switch can do a lot of different things like I still think Nintendo hasn't fully realized what they've made like they've experimented a little bit with it with the lavvo and making some of the different joy con accessories but this entire concept of a portable screen that can hook up to a dock with controllers that has hash to the sides or separate that can be played together they can be played on their own there's so many options with how these things work that you could put them together in insanely cool ways and this isn't just another great example of how to do that you take this thing that can just be a handheld but now it's a little arcade cabinet I've had enough of this not