Working on My first DIY Arcade and Need Advice

[Legendizzy]

Hi everyone!  I'm working on my first DIY arcade with my son and would like a bit of advice on the buttons and layout.  We decided on a 4/6/6/4 layout for our buttons, a trackball, and USB ports on the sides for our Sinden light guns.  However, I'm seeing lots of arcades with different admin type buttons at the top (start, menu, etc.)  Of these buttons, which do I actually need? I saw this layout by Phantom Arcades that might be cool to mimic, but the buttons up top may not all be necessary.  Any guess on why each set of controllers needs two buttons above it, and the three in the middle?

[JoeHd1031]

It depends on what you’re going to play. I just finished up a wall cab and it has 4 admin buttons. Pause in BigBox, also mapped in mame. ESC to next all games, the other two, I mapped for mame only as quick Save and quick load 

[Legendizzy]

15 hours ago, JoeHd1031 said:

It depends on what you’re going to play. I just finished up a wall cab and it has 4 admin buttons. Pause in BigBox, also mapped in mame. ESC to next all games, the other two, I mapped for mame only as quick Save and quick load 

That makes a lot of sense.  I was thinking of doing something similar.  I'm thinking of mapping one to esc so that I can escape so that I can leave games, one to go to the tab button so that I can bring up the Mame menu (if needed), and one mapped to a shift key so that I can map future commands when I stumble on the ones that I'll need.  Also, that wall cab is awesome!  It looks super sleek.

[JoeHd1031]

ESC is NECESSARY. Pause works well in either BigBox or in mame itself. I had considered using Tab as one key is a GREAT idea, but I have a usb dongle permanently installed on the pc motherboard so my Logitech is stored in the cab so I can get to mames menu quickly. 
Thanks for the compliment man! I really like your full cab! I want to make one once k have a dedicated game/theater room when we buy a new house. One thing I’d suggest for your build… the ultimarc flight stick. It is RIDICULOUSLY fun to use on standard shooters in mame but man, Star Wars battle pod and Mach storm on Teknoparrot are AMAZING!

[crislucrio]

  

On 7/21/2026 at 8:11 AM, Legendizzy said:

Hi everyone!  I'm working on my first DIY arcade with my son and would like a bit of advice on the buttons and layout.  We decided on a 4/6/6/4 layout for our buttons, a trackball, and USB ports on the sides for our Sinden light guns.  However, I'm seeing lots of arcades with different admin type buttons at the top (start, menu, etc.)  Of these buttons, which do I actually need? I saw this layout by Phantom Arcades that might be cool to mimic, but the buttons up top may not all be necessary.  Any guess on why each set of controllers needs two buttons above it, and the three in the middle?

  friday night funkin

 

Those two buttons above each player set are typically dedicated Coin and Start buttons for players 1 through 4. For the three center buttons, a common setup is Escape, Pause, and Tab to easily navigate BigBox and MAME menus. If you want to keep the control panel clean, you can map button combinations using a shift key instead of drilling extra physical holes.

 

Edited 2 hours ago by crislucrio

[housefightbox]

Nice work on the cabinet! I’m building one with my son as well, cool project. BigBox has awesome exit and pause systems in place so I would use those for sure. For me the native BigBox exit function is much cleaner than ESC.  The picture pretty much shows what I have mapped. I use the mouse L and R buttons more often than you would think with the trackball. Select I cloned the pause function and had it instead pause and display a control card. The is way a new user can see what buttons actually map to xinput. At the top left I added a 12 key admin type panel with a Spotify button and media controls, plus BigBox exit and cabinet shutdown.  I put in a pretty decent sound system with base shaker, a sub, and some amps so my son often uses it for a Spotify jukebox. Have fun, awesome project!