MAMEWorld Forums - Hardware - Early planning of a MAME Cabinet

Early next year, depending on how my bonus looks, I may be looking into getting/building a MAME cabinet.

I did some looking around and there are just so many options that it's hard to tell what's good and what isn't.

What are things I should be looking at (or not looking at?)

I'd like it to be as classic looking as possible with 2 players (I don't see the need for a 4-player system, I don't have that many friends

) It would mostly be played as a single-player unit I would imagine.

For cost-savings sake, would like to go LCD vs. trying to go with a CRT that would have an unknown lifespan and harder to replace. So the cabinet should be able to mount an LCD well enough.

And the buttons/joystick should feel like a joystick and buttons, but that's probably normal for this sort of thing. I know there are a few competing technologies on how these are made, but don't know which is which or which is "better".

And for the main computer running everything, I've never owned a mini-computer (RaspberryPi, etc.) so would like some suggestions on if something like that would be good or if I should find a $300 refurb from MicroCenter?

And finally, what do you expect a budget for a project like this may cost total (including cabinet, controllers, CPU, monitor, etc.)

Thanks for any help. I've been a MAME fan for over 20 years and been keeping the old a.b.e.mame newsgroup alive, so I figured it's finally time to have something built to be more authentic than gaming on my PC.