If building an arcade cabinet is among the unrealized dreams of your younger self, you’ll be happy to know that you can still have a chance to strike it off your bucket list. And it’s going to be drastically easier this time around with the CupCade, a DIY mini-arcade kit.
Made by Adafruit, the kit contains all the parts you need to build a proper miniature cabinet with all the electronics it requires to function. Even better, it comes with a Raspberry Pi mini-PC that will run an OS image with the MAME emulator, so you can easily play all the arcade favorites of your youth like it was 1988 all over again.
The CupCade consists of a cabinet that measures 8.25 x 4.75 x 3.75 inches (h x d x w), so you can totally drop it in your Downtown Subway Backpack for endless rounds of arcade play in the coffee shop while everyone else pretends to work on their computers. It comes with a tiny 2.8-inch display, so gaming on this will be even more annoying than those tiny smartphones from 2010, but will probably be loads of fun all the same. To make sure everyone hears how much fun you’re having, it comes with a 3-inch speaker and audio amp for sounds.
Full instructions are included with the kit, but you’ll have to do the entire building process all on your own, from soldering the wires to hooking up the various parts to making sure the cabinet doesn’t fall apart. It comes with an SD card slot for loading your favorite ROMs.
Available from Thinkgeek, the CupCade retails for $159.99.