I grew up in a relatively small town in Kentucky and as anyone who has ever lived in a small town knows, there just isn't much to do. When I was about 12 in 1980, I came across my first Space Invaders arcade game at the local pizza joint. I remember my parents taking me and my sister every so often. The restaurant was divided into 2 sections. The dining room and the game room. My parents would give my sister and me a couple of dollars to play video games. We would have a blast, and now that I am a parent, I understand how cheap it was for my parents to get us out of there hair and have some piece and quite. Needless to say, I have always loved video games and probably always will. Back in those days, it was all about the big cabinets. The old Atari 2600 was by no way even close to an arcade cabinet. Even though I walk through Best Buy and see the new Playstation 2 and the XBox (which just friggen' amazes me when I think back) they don't give the same game experience that I remembered in the early to mid 80s. As anyone who was around during this time period can attest to, walking into a dark arcade with all the sounds and lights was magical. I haven't seen anything come close (accept for maybe the Dave & Buster's in Atlanta).

I hadn't thought much about those days accept on occasion when I would stroll through a bowling alley and see an older arcade cabinet tucked away in the corner until the later part of 1998. Me and a friend/co-worker of mine had to go on a business trip to Hawaii (Damn the bad luck). We live in Charleston SC, so a trip to Hawaii is a long one. Anyway, he asked me if I had ever heard of MAME. Of course I had not, so he showed me. I downloaded the program and we played the classics from Charleston to Hawaii and back. I thought I was going to ruin my laptop smashing the run and jump buttons on Track & Field. We must have looked pretty funny sitting in first class playing games that require a large amount of button smashing. Just as a note, We did not play while in Hawaii, we may be geeks, but we are not stupid!

I played MAME off and on for the next couple of years until the fall of 2001. I started seeing things on the net about smart folks building actual arcade cabinets and running MAME as the engine to make this work. I knew immediately, that this is what I wanted to do, but I also know by looking at others who have taken on this endeavor, it would not be cheap. I convinced my wife that I wanted to do it and that I would not dip into our normal funds to accomplish this. Basically this meant saving my per diem dollars on my various business trips. I have cheated here and there, but for the most part have stuck with this mentality. So, with that said I decided to build The B-Box and away I went.

I decided that I would document my progress and post my lessons learned to help others out there who decide to take this on. It is not always easy and there are a large number of smart people out there who have already accomplished this. As of 3/3/2002, I still have a ways to go, but I have bought roughly everything I need and just need to finish the assembly. Hopefully these pages will help you out. Feel free to email me with any questions you may have. I don't profess to know all the answers, but I do know quite a few smart people and have done quite a bit of research on this project.