Before I committed to doing my Track & Field build, I did a lot of research to try and figure out if it would be feasible to build a replica myself.

Cabinet

For the cabinet, I started by looking to see if there were any plans available. There are some rough plans at jakobud.com. While these are a good start, there is a lot of information missing from these plans. Filling the gaps meant watching any YouTube videos I could find on the subject a whole lotta times. Here are the videos I referenced:

• TNT Amusements Track & Field Cocktail / Hyper Sports Combo Restoration
• Scr33n Track & Field Replica Build
• Arcade Hollywood Track & Field Restoration
• Vinny Princiotta Track & Field Restoration

Hardware

I also had to figure out what I was going to do with the hardware. Unfortunately, the rarity of CRTs ruled them out. I would prefer a tube to an LCD, but I was able to get an older, but adequate 4:3 LCD for free from a coworker.

While I had never used a Raspberry Pi before, I knew from reading Lifehacker that they were popular for emulator build outs. The Raspberry Pi 3 just came out, so I was able to score one pretty cheap. As it turns out, it was fairly easy to setup and more then powerful enough to run Track & Field.

I’ll be posting more detail about my hardware choices in the future.

My Notes

I started taking a bunch of notes and screenshots and saving them in an Evernote document. In the spirit of the internet, I’ve decided to make these notes available publicly. There really isn’t much organization in these notes, but they were very helpful to me in keeping track of my thoughts, ideas and observations.

Without further ado, here is the link: Track & Field Build Notes