The case has two front USB ports, so it's enough to play two player games with each their own controller. in the future I might add more controllers from the back if needed. The Mobo has several outputs, Composite video, HDMI, and DVI. it has 2 3.0 USB ports and one Sata port for fast external hard drive. So what is gonna turn this into an arcade machine? I am gonna install an highly customisable emulator frontend, which combines all the emulators/media and executables on the system in to one application. Which is ofcourse pretty neat. Also it is compatible with any video/audio player, for instance, you can browse to a video folder in the frontend itself, and run them in the application you defined for that specific folder.
As I said the frontend is highly customisable, this means: custom skins, custom applications, custom intro, custom behaviour. There are plenty of default skins, but how cool would it be to make your own.
Here is a video of the default skin:
This is basically how it works, the coolest part is, you can make an intro movie for the sofware, like a real arcade machine would do. I have made a basic setup for an intro movie, I am very happy with it, the only thing I miss is animated text saying "Press start", I am not sure how to do this as an overlay for the video, but I am sure I will manage to do so. Here is the current intro:
(Music by Philip Linde)
So in the end, I will have an Arcade machine/Media center, which is pretty awesome, I COULD add keyboard and mouse support of course, that would give me the ability to go online and use IM or Firefox, but I am afraid that it would ruin the idea of the arcade machine. Altough it would be pretty neat to move the cursor with a Wii mote. I'll see. :).
