Welcome to my Pacman/Mame Project Web Site! Seeing how popular building these machines have become (and the fact that I have already been through about 90% of the process) I decided to put up a few pages on the Net about my particular project in hopes that it will help anyone else out there attempting to do the same thing.

A bit of background history: Like many other people who were around during the early 80's, one of my fondest memories of that time was playing video arcade games. Pacman quickly became my favorite, not only because it was completely different from your run-of-the-mill-shoot-em-up type of game, but also because it was the one game I became really good at (God knows how many quarters I pumped into that machine trying to learn all the different level patterns!). Now, fast forward 20 years or so, when I discovered Mame. I thought,"Wow, now I can play the 'real thing' (i.e. Pacman) and all my other arcade favorites in the comfort of my own home!" Then I found out that people were taking things a step further and actually building arcade-quality reproduction game cabinets with a PC inside running Mame for the ultimate arcade experience at home! Okay, now my interest was really piqued, however I didn't fancy the idea of having a large, bulky, piece of 'furniture' sitting smack in the middle of our living room. Then it occurred to me, "Why not build a Mame machine in a 'cocktail' configuration (you know, the small type of cabinet you typically found in your local lounge or pizza joint where you could place your drink on top of while playing)?" Now I thought I was really onto something, so I started scouring the Internet for any and all information that I could find on the subject. Lo and behold, there were already plenty of people out there who had built custom cocktail Mame machines in more colors and configurations than you can shake a stick at! Okay, so much for my 'original' idea, but I just had to jump on the bandwagon and have one of these things too, thus my 'idea' now became my new 'mission'. But here was the rub: I wanted to finish the game in time for a party I was having on October 11th, 2003! Tally Ho!