Steam Engine Arcade Cabinet Cheats With A Steam Link

There is no shortage of DIY arcade cabinets, many of them running off something like a Raspberry Pi or at least some older, unused PC. While interesting projects, they suffer from one thing: they are limited by the power of the computer running inside. And once built, those arcades usually aren't upgradable. That's what makes Inferno156's Steam Engine Arcade a bit ingenious. By using a Steam Link, he can have a nice looking and pretty barebones arcade cabinet, while the real work happens elsewhere in the house.

The Steam Link was built for this kind of thing. Well, almost. The little black box is basically a compromise between the Steam Machines that never really took off and the hundreds of powerful gaming PCs running Steam. You hook the Steam Link to your TV and some controllers and have your gaming rig stream the game to it. Problem solved.

To that extent, this Steam Engine Arcade almost feels like cheating, if not for the fact that it is cheating done extremely well. Inferno156 didn't skimp on the design and even added cup holders for good measure (more of an afterthought actually). And, of course, he deserves equal praise for coming up what should have been a no-brainer for DIYers in the first place.

The real pleasant surprise for the modder was that the arcade controls he bought off Amazon worked with the Steam Link without a hitch. Of course, he had to gut them in order to fit them in the cabinet. He also had to hook up a USB hub to the Link to add more ports. And the LED lights were controlled separately by an Arduino Micro Pro powered by USB.

All in all, it's a pretty impressive Steam Machine, er Engine. Of course, you're limited to playing only arcade games on it, despite Steam's wealth of other games. But, then again, this is an arcade cabinet after all.

VIA: Reddit