I found an old Arcade Cabinet by the side of the road(Some lame game I had never heard of) and decided to make something cool out of it. The end goal was a dedicated Arcade cabinet but I didn't want to spend alot of money. I have seen numerous projects where people have built MAME (computer arcade emulator) into arcade cabinets, but these tend to be costly and complex (however they can include 1000's of games). My simpler solution was to hard wire one of those plug and play TV games into the cabinet with arcade quality controls.
With this in mind picked up one of those plug and play TV games that has Ms Pacman, Galaga, Pole Position, Mappy, and Xevious. I then proceeded to order some arcade controls, a few buttons, a joystick, and some player 1/player 2 buttons.
After gutting and cleaning out the old arcade cabinet I repainted it and mounted a 19" TV inside.
The control panel came next, using 3/4 " MDF board I drilled out and installed the controls and wired in hookup wire to connect to the game board. 
I dismantled the TV game and removed the original control leads to replace them with my new controls. Thankfully the manufacturer labeled the PCB so soldering the new controls was a snap. I also replaced the battery power source with a hardwired power source.
The end result is a cool arcade cabinet (now in my sons bedroom, he is the luckiest 4 year old ever). As you can tell it could still needs some finishing work (bezel to cover the monitor harness, fancy marquee on top etc...)
It was a fun project and we still play it regularly. I of course maintain the high score in Galaga, while my wife cleans up in Ms Pac-man.
--Dan
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