Building A Zelda-Themed Arcade Cabinet from Scratch – An Interview with Anthony Perez

Many of us have lofty aspirations of building a monument to the video games we love, or bringing a system from our childhood to life, but to be able to actually do it is an accomplishment few can claim. Anthony Perez made that dream come true recently and built a custom arcade cabinet themed after the Legend of Zelda series! The cabinet is truly spectacular and captured my attention from the moment I saw it, and I believe you, the reader, will feel the same way.

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Perez to talk about this amazing project so our readers could learn more about it. We discussed the project itself, as well as favorite Zelda titles, collections, and future projects.

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What is your favorite Zelda title?

“It’ll actually have to be A Link to the Past; a lot of memories are tied into that.”

 

How did you first get into The Legend of Zelda?

“Well when I was younger actually, I didn’t know anything about video games until my cousin had purchased a Super Nintendo for me, and the first game [I had] was A Link to the Past. I never got to play it. I had an older brother who liked to hog the controller a lot, so I had to watch him most of the time. Watching him play, I ended up becoming fascinated with it because I saw so much that you could do in that game, it seemed like it was so much fun. I would wait until he was out of the room so I could play it, and eventually I started getting good at it, and that’s how it all started.”

 

So getting into the arcade cabinet, how long did it take to build?

“This ended up being an on-and-off project to work on between life and personal things going on. It was really a labor of love, and ended up taking the better part of a month, mainly because I had such few hours to work with it. At night time I was cutting wood in the dark, and I would try to allocate some time on the weekends to get the major part of the arcade built and running, which is the coding and making sure the programs are recognizing the buttons being pressed and all that.”

 

That’s somewhat surprising! I expected something like that taking a lot longer!

“Honestly, me too! The hardest part was definitely programming it; building it ended up being the easy part. It was surprising; I actually got it built up in about an hour and a half.”

 

And you mentioned the actual body of the cabinet is made of wood?

“Yeah, I would say 90% of it is MDF [Medium Density Fibreboard], and the rest is two-by-fours that have been pressurized and treated. The side and rear panels are MDF, as well as the faceplate where the buttons are installed. The front panel where the speakers and power button are mounted and installed, as well as the two smaller speakers up top are pressure treated two-by-four.”

 

That also leads into my next question; does this cabinet run on a classic circuit board like an old arcade machine, is it a more modern chip, or does it have a board inside at all?

“It actually runs on a modern system, a Raspberry Pi P4 model B running Recall Box, if I’m not mistaken. I had a couple choices on trying to get this thing to run specifics, but running Recall on the Raspberry Pi seemed like it worked much better than going old school and trying to recreate the entire mechanism of some of the old-school arcades. Surprising enough, it’s hard to find these things nowadays.”

 

I can imagine! I used to look into cabinet restoration, and seeing those huge circuit boards was always a really surprising part.

“Before I started this project, I was looking up videos on restoration tips and tricks, and one of the options was actually getting a hold of an old defunct arcade cabinet and completely gutting it out and replacing the components. Unfortunately, that would have been a lot more expensive and, again, components for those old arcade machines are kind of hard to come by, including the coin slots.”

 

What game(s) does your arcade cabinet run?

“I have my old SNES cartridge for A Link to the Past from when I first got it, and this project was mainly to display that game, so that was the basis for me to start this project, along with some other things.”

 

So this cabinet can play multiple games, or does it just display A Link to the Past?

“It can play multiple games, yes. It has the ability to play several different systems and games. Pretty much anything you can think of, it can run it; anything short of the PS1. Mainly it’s emulating arcade games.”

 

The Legend of Zelda wasn’t really a game series that saw an arcade life; what inspired you to make the cabinet Zelda themed as opposed to something like Duck Hunt or Mortal Kombat themed?

“Well, I have to say I am completely infatuated with the series. Again, started when I was a child up until now; I’m an adult and I’m still completely enthralled with the series from NES all the way up to the Switch, and even beyond. I still feel like a child when I hear anything about the new games that are coming out, any news whatsoever, my heart is racing and I want to see what’s going on. Tying that in with something like building this arcade machine — I’ve always wanted to build one — and I thought it would be a really cool idea to make it completely Zelda themed, mainly because I made it to be a display case for all the Zelda-themed items I have in my possession.”

 

I’m a collector myself! Would you tell me a bit more about your collection?

“I have a couple Master Swords, a Triforce light, a mug with the stained glass from Wind Waker, a leather Zelda journal, Majora’s Mask pens, my old SNES Link to the Past cartridge, Zelda Uno playing deck, Zelda Monopoly, and one of the coolest things I have on me, that my brother’s fiancee (now wife) made for me; she knows how much I love Zelda, and she actually hand-stitched a 16-bit Link to the Past Link pillow. It’s insane how high quality it is, she sat there for the better part of three weeks cutting fabric into little squares, patching everything together, and creating a little Link pillow, which I have displayed on top of the cabinet. I also have many Zelda puzzles, which I’ve completed, sealed, and mounted on the walls. I have maps, including the old Twilight Princess treasure location map, the Ocarina of Time map; one whole side of my office/game room is completely dedicated to Zelda.”

 

Have you done any similar projects in the past, besides the restoration we talked about earlier?

“As far as things on this scale go, no. This was my first time creating something as big as this; I mean, this thing is 6’2″, and I’m 6’1, so this thing is huge! I’ve done small projects here and there, but those mainly revolved around either building computers or drawing or things like that, but nothing like this. I think I’ve definitely got an itch for projects like this; I kind of want to keep building now!”

 

Do you have any projects you’re working on currently, or any future projects planned?

“Well, there is one little side project I have planned for my family. In my family I’m the one that’s considered the ‘cool gaming uncle’, so I’m constantly thinking of ideas for fun things for my nieces and nephews, especially as far as interactions with gaming. Currently I’m working on creating a tournament for them that’s going to be Mario themed; I’m making a championship belt and items from Mario and everything. It’s gonna be huge, I’m building everything from the ground up, including a stage where the games will be displayed.”

 

Wow! I’m sure they’ll have a great time with that!

“Oh yeah, they’re already excited! After I explained the whole thing and how the tournament would run, they were already excited; they keep coming back to me asking if I’m done building it yet. So I have to be like, ‘I just got done doing my [arcade] project. Give me a couple of days!'”

 

Last question, is there anything on social media you’d like to promote or share? Is there any place you’d like our readers to follow you so they can find other projects you’ve done and are working on?

“Honestly, I don’t have any place where I display anything that I do; most of the time I keep things to myself. This was one of the only things that I was super, super proud of, mainly because of my fandom and all that, and I kind of wanted everyone to know, and it sort of blew up. I was looking at the social page, and it’s almost up to 1,000 reactions, and I’m just thinking, ‘Wow, this really took off!’, so that really caught me by surprise. At this time though, I don’t have any kind of page that I share my projects on.”

 

I definitely understand that. Those were all the questions I had, is there anything else you’d like to say before we go?

“I did want to share a picture of the pillow that my brother’s wife made for me; I’d love to give her a shout-out. The pillow she made is amazing and I’d love for people to see it. She thinks her skills are inferior, but it’s really something special. She really outdid herself; when I saw it, I almost did a backflip. It’s probably my favorite piece of the entire collection.

“It’s kind of amazing, this has been such a great turning point for me, realizing I could build something like this. It was a great way to test the waters and start to work towards bigger projects. I was a little timid at first, to be honest, but this project ended up being kind of a dream come true. My brother and I used to always want an arcade machine growing up. We would take a piece of plywood, drill a hole in it, feed our Genesis controllers through it, and take a black Sharpie and write ‘P1’ and ‘P2’ on it. Now as an adult I was thinking, ‘You know what? I think I can go ahead and build it.’, so I did.”

 

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We hope you enjoyed learning more about this amazing project! Let us know in the comments what you found most interesting, other projects you think would be cool, and what kind of arcade machine you would like to build! Also be sure to show some love to Mr. Perez’s sister-in-law for the Link pillow!

Hannah can be found on Twitter @bananeyfish, and streaming games at twitch.tv/bananeyfish like Fallout: New Vegas and L.A. Noire!