Bartop Arcade Features Brilliant LED Marquee

If you want to build your own arcade machine, the default method is to throw a Raspbery Pi into a custom or purchased enclosure, then set it up to run RetroPie or another emulator. While having hundreds of arcade and retro games at your fingertips is amazing, entrepreneur and hacker Al Linke took things several steps further with his LED marquee-enabled bartop cabinet.

The machine itself features a vertical screen and a Raspberry Pi 3+ to play games to your heart’s content. The marquee, however, uses a PIXEL:LED board to drive an LED matrix, and interfaces with the Pi over USB. RetroPie is set up to use its “runcommand” hook to run a script to load the proper animation or still image for each game. As seen in the video below, this is a very fun effect, and the animated Pac-Man ghost almost looks like its following the joystick around.

Marquee or not, it’s a solid build, with a laser-cut cabinet that’s welded together with acrylic cement. It even includes access panels so you can get in for maintenance and changes without getting out the Dremel tool! Another great feature is that the art on the side of the cabinet is not stickers, but laser-cut inlays.