When I looked at building an arcade cabinet many years ago, there wasn't much choice about what computer to use. It was either a PC or nothing. You don't need a very powerful computer to power the type of games I wanted to play, i.e. arcade classics from late 1970s to 1990. I had an old PC at the time and it would have been very capable. However, the community of arcade builders was quite small and all the instructions seemed overly complicated to me (and bear in mind I was an IT support engineer at the time). I eventually gave up.

Many years later and the community has expanded enormously. The whole process has been simplified and the instructions and videos from people are brilliant. Three things have helped build the community and make it so much easier to build a cabinet. I will cover the first two in another section: 1) better and easier to set up emulation software, 2) Better access to buttons, joysticks and usb compatible control boards. The third change has been the introduction of Single Board Computers (SBC) and probably the most popular with the biggest community is the Raspberry Pi.

A Single Board Computer is exactly what it says; a computer where all the components are on a single circuit board. They are not as powerful as a desktop or laptop PC but they are very adaptable and are relatively small. Unless you are pushing them to their limits, you don't need a fan to cool them and they use solid state drives rather than a hard drive with moving parts which you more commonly find in PCs and laptops.

The Raspberry Pi was designed to get a new generation of programmers and tinkerers familiar with computers in the same way the ZX Spectrum did in the 1980s in the UK. Although initially aimed at the education market, the cheap price and versatile scope meant they soon had a massive following and the community exploded which people showing more and more ingenious things they had done with their Pis.

The Raspberry Pi isn't the most powerful SBC you can buy but it is probably the biggest community at the moment and there are always people who are willing to help with problems. As such, this is why I chose the Pi and why I recommend it for beginners.

It would be unfair to ignore the fact that there are many SBCs available and, with the other improvements around software and controls, it's as easy these days to use a desktop PC or even a laptop. If you have an unused machine, it might be best to recycle it but, if not, look at SBCs. Some names to search (although this list is not exhaustive and not in any particular order) are: Banana Pi, Orange Pi, Latte Panda, Rock Pi, and Odroid XU4. There are also various models of Raspberry Pi offering different power and size.