Modder transforms shoe rack into an arcade fans dream

Inspired by YouTube, one modder has transformed a basic shoe rack and broken-down laptop into a fully working arcade cabinet.

Fans of retro hardware will be all too familiar with the woes of trying to make room for your tech. Brands like Arcade1Up and Evercade are on the scene, creating scaled-down and bar-top-friendly cabinets. However, not everyone still has the space, or willingness to turn their house into a modern arcade.

One modder decided to create their own solution, by modifying a shoe rack and transforming it into an arcade cabinet.

Posting to r/PCMasterRace, user dragonborn000 shared their incredible project in all its retro glory. At first, it looks like any typical shoe rack you’d find online. However, once opened up, its bright and crisp display and full ledge of light-up custom arcade buttons are a sight to behold.

I turned the shoe rack into an arcade cabinet
byu/dragonborn000 inpcmasterrace

In a blog post, modder Furkan provides ample detail in how they put together the stealth arcade cabinet. A basic shoe rack was picked up online after similar projects by YouTuber Daniele Tartaglia inspired Furkan.

With already having some experience with running RetroPie on a Rasberry Pi, Furkan went ahead with the build, sourcing out arcade buttons from Aliexpress. The modder also utilized the display, hard drive, motherboard, and WiFi module of an old broken laptop for the cabinet.

ozden.in

From then on, the modder painstakingly put all the pieces of the project together. A wooden case was created from scratch to encase the arcade buttons while hiding their cables and wiring. Meanwhile, every hole for the arcade buttons was drilled by hand, using a ready-made arcade button layout found online.

The end result is a retro gaming fan’s dream. The finished shoe rack arcade cabinet features its own speaker system, which Furkan set up to play “keygen music” in the background for an extra retro feel.

However, no matter how impressive the cabinet is, Furkan still has plans to improve upon the design. As the stands the GPU and CPU of the old laptop aren’t powerful enough to emulate Dreamcast or PS2-era games, and the modder has plans to add handles around the cabinet for portability. We can’t wait to see how the modder improves on the already incredible shoe rack cabinet.