Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is here!

In a highly immature move I've purchased a Street Fighter II: The World Warrior cabinet. I brought it home today after buying it on Monday and set it up in the garage. I cleaned it up a bit while my dog sat there trying to figure out what it was. After a good half hour of wiping down the cabinet, cabinet insides, and cleaning up the monitor surface, I was ready to give it a playthrough. I played through a single-player game once with Ryu (long-time favorite of the Street Fighter franchise), and it was a pretty nostalgiac half hour.

I might not be keeping the cabinet here at home, however. I will most likely be taking it to my work where it will stay in the break room. The main advantage for doing that is having competition almost every day.

The place that sold me the cabinet did offer an NFL Blitz cabinet and board for free, but it was missing the monitor. Since the cabinet was a bit smaller, I figure that would make a great project here at home. I really want to build a MAME cabinet with 4-player support, a trackball, and a spinner. I'd like to document the process of acquiring a cabinet, cleaning it up, gutting it, and converting it into a MAME cabinet.

There are tons of people interested in attempting the same thing, so I figure if I offered a nice guide with tons of color pictures that I could inspire those on the fence to go ahead and try it.

Here are a couple of pictures of the Street Fighter II cabinet. You can tell that the monitor and cabinet are in great shape. The picture quality isn't the greatest, but my garage isn't very well-suited for photography. The first picture shows the cabinet with the lights on and with flash. The second, and blurrier picture shows the it with the lights off and no flash. The last picture is to show how nice the screen is, but the movement of the fighters isn't helping the cause.