AJ's game room - latest update: A tour of the room so far!

[Markies]

Holy Crap, AJ, that looks fantastic! I wish my shelves looked that good!!

Also, I don't think Bak'laag is amused being squished under Snorlax.
Buk Buk Buk.

[alienjesus]

Another day, another update.

Yesterday we looked at games storage, but I have all sorts of other crap that needs a home too. In this post I'll be going over my solution for displaying my Amiibo. I have dozens of these little plastic figurines and in the past they've all been shoved onto shelves and haven't really been displayed at their best. Now, whilst I have said that I don't want a load of stuff on display, I kind of feel that the Amiibo should be somewhere moderately visible. What are they for if not to be displayed? So, you'll have to forgive my little foray into a more stereotypical online game room aesthetic, because today we're going to be adding LED lightstrips.



So here's one of my Amiibo being used as a sample test figurine to check height. I've got it sat on a Mosslanda shelf from Ikea, which are actually meant to be for picture frames, but they fit my purpose as they're just deep enough for what I have in mind without being really bulky. As for where in the room the shelf has been put:



I've found a use for that weird lower section of ceiling! I've carefully mounted 4 Mosslanda shelves in a line, and then again in another line above it. In this picture I still needed to mount the 5th one - the remaining space was a little shorter than the shelf so I had to borrow my father-in-laws jigsaw to cut the remaining shelves to size. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of that step! The 5th shelf wasn't perfect (we didn't cut as straight as I hoped!) but it's pretty hard to notice the slight gap unless you're looking for it.



Next up - lighting. My plan was to run a line of Amiibos along each shelf, and then run an LED lightstrip in front on each to light them up and make them visible even though they're so high above ground level. I chose the Hue lightstrips above because they're good quality, easy to trim down to size if needed, and because they benefit me for some future plans I have too, which I'll cover eventually. They are pricy, so this was me splashing out a bit.



Here you can sort of see me testing the lightstrip length along the front of the shelf. It was tough to get a good angle. I taped the strip on to the shelf at one end, ran it down the full length and trimmed off the excess, which was only a couple of inches - the 3 metre lightstrips I bought were almost perfect.



Next up, peeling off the backing so I could stick it down. Let me tell you, this was a pain. Each piece of backing was only about 10 centimetres long, and I had to peel off almost 3 metres worth, twice. I was also doing this up a ladder, so after peeling a couple and sticking the light down, I had to climb down, move the ladder and climb up to the next bit. Still, it got done eventually!

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And here's the results after one lightstrip was done. I was pretty please with how it looked, so I cracked on and did the second too.



Here's a glimpse of the setup after I added both lights and started to put the Amiibo on the shelves too. I put all the Smash Bros amiibo set up (over 90 amiibo now!) as well as a few extra ones that could fit.



And here's the end result. The shelves aren't totally perfect, but I'm really happy with how this turned out, especially as I'm not much of a DIY pro. The only downside is that there's still quite a few Amiibo I couldnt fit, even with 2 shelves. Luckily, there's a similarly lower ceiling on the opposite side of the room, so I have plans for round 2 in the future...



To finish up, a quick overview of the Hue lights I'm using. They connect to the Hue Bridge, which I can then connect to with an app to change the colours, turn them on and off etc. For the most part I think it's all a bit superfluous, but as mentioned I have some other plans to use Hue products in the room so it made sense to set up things on the same ecosystem.




On that note, I also bought bulbs for the ceiling light and lamp so I could connect those too. I made sure I got all of the stuff on Prime day sales to take the edge off of the pricing a bit. Finally, I bought a switch so my wife and I could easily control the lights without needing the app, and a mount to allow me to put this over my normal light switch.






And just to wrap up, here's all of those bulbs set up in silly colours to show off how they work. I'll probably stick mainly to white but it's a fun novelty to go multicoloured at least!


Next time I post, we'll probably take a look at controllers and my plans to store those.

[emwearz]

The Amiibo storage looks awesome! Great job!

[marurun]

Wow, that's a great trick for those Amiibo. So glad you added more shelves to those bookcases. The initial empty picture, some of the shelves didn't line up with their neighbors and my symmetry senses were tingling (in a bad way). That wall texture, though... Oof. Everything else, awesome.

[opa]

I really like that the cabinets have doors that can close off the game clutter. Gives a classier look than the "game store look-at-all-my-junk" display that most people have going on. (No offence to those that choose that lol)

Really neat shelves for amiibo. I like the "dramatic lighting" pic the most.

[marurun]

So it looks like you put the LED strips on the shelf facing up. Did you consider putting them along the inside edge of the front lip, facing toward the back of the shelf/wall?

[alienjesus]

Wow, that's a great trick for those Amiibo. So glad you added more shelves to those bookcases. The initial empty picture, some of the shelves didn't line up with their neighbors and my symmetry senses were tingling (in a bad way). That wall texture, though... Oof. Everything else, awesome.

You aren't wrong about the wall texture. Unfortunately that paper is up around the majority of the new house. I decided I didnt want the project to be slowed down by stripping wallpaper and painting etc, so I'll live with it for now. At some point I'll make a plan to do some decorating and I'll have to take all this stuff out when that happens. Oh well!

I really like that the cabinets have doors that can close off the game clutter. Gives a classier look than the "game store look-at-all-my-junk" display that most people have going on. (No offence to those that choose that lol)

Really neat shelves for amiibo. I like the "dramatic lighting" pic the most.

Me too on the cabinet doors. A lot of the pictures I've shared so far have lots of boxes and bits laying about, but now I've started to clear away some of those, the doors on everything hiding the clutter is really helping the room feel nice and spacious.

So it looks like you put the LED strips on the shelf facing up. Did you consider putting them along the inside edge of the front lip, facing toward the back of the shelf/wall?

I didn't think too deeply about it, but the main reason I went for facing up is that I wasn't sure how much of the amiibo would be visible above the lip of the shelf, and thought I might have to raise them up a bit with something underneath the base. I figured this would block more of the light if it was pointing inwards than if it was pointing upwards. Also made it easier to stick down! Ultimately I think it doesnt matter too much because the diffuser cover thing over the top spreads the light out both directions.

[alienjesus]

Now I've got games and amiibos set in their new home, the next thing on my list to tackle is controllers.



I don't have a ton of pictures of setting up this one, but it's pretty self-explantory really. I picked up a Kallax shelf from Ikea and a few of the inserts they have for it to add drawers and cupboards to the pods. I then filled each of those drawers with controllers:



The bottom set of drawers have Wii & Wii U, PS1 & PS2, 3DO & PC Engine controllers



The second set holds Gamecube, Switch, Xbox & Xbox 360 controllers



The third set up have N64 and Dreamcast



And finally, the top drawers have NES & SNES and Master System, Mega Drive and Saturn controllers, whilst the cupboard holds my neo geo controllers.



The basket above has a few odd and end controllers that dont fit elsewhere, like my Dreamcast fishing rod controller, my Virtual Boy cables and Wii wheels.



And that's it for this update. I plan to maybe get an extra cupboard and a few more baskets to store larger rhythm game controllers too, but otherwise this all did exactly what I wanted it to do.

Next time I update, probably we'll start to look at the TV cabinet situation so I can finally play some games.

[alienjesus]

So far in this thread, we've covered setting up a place to store my games, a place to store and display Amiibo, and a place to store controllers. What we havent covered though, is a way to actually plug in all of my consoles so I can actually play a game. There's a reason for that though, and that's because it's a pretty complicated thing to cover. This post will definitely be part 1, with more to follow.

TV Cabinet

So first off, we need a TV, and a TV cabinet. I am very lucky to have a 65 inch LG OLED I can use for my gaming, along with a Retrotink 5X upscaler to be able to run all of my consoles into the TV via HDMI. So we're all set on that front. Next up, we need a TV cabinet.



A lot of people use Kallax units from Ikea (the same one I'm using for my controllers) for their retro game setups, but I opted for Ikea's Besta cabinets for mine instead. There were a couple of reasons for this - first off, it has a back panel, meaning I can keep it enclosed and minimise dust. Secondly, it has the option to add doors, which helps achieve my goal of keeping things less cluttered. And finally, it's a rare cabinet where the shelves are wide enough to fit a PS5 and still keep a bit of breathing room around it for suitable airflow. A nice bonus is that it's quite customisable in terms of colours and parts, so I got to choose how I wanted it to look.

In order to be able to play all my games easily, I want to be able to plug in most of my systems simultaneously. The full list of what I want to be able to plug in currently is NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii, Wii U, Switch, SNES Mini, Master System, Mega Drive, Saturn, Dreamcast, PS2, PS3, PS4 (+ PSVR), PS5, Xbox, Xbox 360, PC Engine, Neo Geo, 3DO and Retron5. That allows me to play every game I own, but it's a lot of systems to find space for, so I opted to get 2 Besta units - one tall vertical one to stand next to the TV, and a wider horizontal one to serve as the actual TV cabinet.



And here they are in action, with the TV in place. My measurements for the room were off, as I was expecting to have about 10cm of space free along this back wall but the cabinets are basically filling the entire free space next to the kallax where the controllers are kept. Luckily, everything fits just about.



Next, I placed consoles internally on the shelves to see where I would lay them out. Note these aren't wired in currently - in fact, I literally can't yet as there's no where for the wires to come through the back. That's a future job to come in a later post. Anyway, above is the inside of the tall cabinet - I've mostly put consoles which output HDMI in here, with the lone exception of the original XBox which is here for space saving. My Dreamcast and N64 have HDMI mods. I've put consoles with wireless controllers higher up, with wire controller consoles at the bottom so they don't drop so far if a cable gets pulled. We've got (from bottom up) the N64 + Dreamcast, SNES Mini + Wii U + Switch, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4 + PSVR and PS5. The top 2 shelves have controller chargers currently, so there's room to grow when future consoles come out.




Here's the left and middle cupboard on the wide cabinet, followed by the right cupboard. Mostly this is older stuff with RGB SCART or Component cables. The left cupboard contains NES, SNES, Gamecube, Wii and Retron5, plus my HDMI switch. The centre one has PC Engine, Neo Geo and PS2, along with my SCART switch, and the right hand side has Master System, Mega Drive, Saturn and 3DO.




I did some testing to make sure I actually had room to use each system - you can see above me testing that the massive Neo Geo carts have room to be swapped in and out, and that the Gamecube disc tray has room to open. I also tested NES carts in my Retron5 and Gamecube controllers in the Wii controller ports as other space tests. Everything seems to have enough room thankfully.

Cable management prep



Now onto the back of the cabinet, where I have big plans. I still need to cut holes for the cables to run through, but there's a task I want to do before that.



And this is that task. This is an Ikea Skadis pegboard, which I'm going to mount to the back of the cabinets. The plan is to use the various pegs and hooks you can attach to this to hang or tie loops of cables to to try and keep things need. It should also make it easier to safely move the cabinet away from the wall later as all of the cables for the consoles will be attached, with only the plug extension cord going from the cabinet to the wall.



To mount the pegboard, I just drilled through the corner of the board and the corner of the cabinet with a thin drill bit and then screwed a screw through both. The other end of the board was a bit of a challenge though, as there was nothing I could really screw directly into as the back was a thin piece of chipboard stuff, and if I screwed directly to the thicker wood I wouldn't leave enough space behind the pegboard to get the hooks and pegs in.



I eventually came up with a solution that worked though. I thankfully had a lot of leftover pieces from all the Ikea furniture I've been building, including a ton of these L brackets meant to fasten furniture to walls. I used a spare one and drilled it into the top of the cabinet, and then fastened the pegboard to it using a nut and bolt to keep it secure. This gave me a good space behind the pegboard for hooks as well.



On to the tall cabinet next and I have some similar issues with how to secure the pegboard. I have to turn it sideways to fit as it's too wide to go the correct orientation, and when turned it's too narrow to be attached to the side panels of wood. I start by fastening the top of one to the top panel of the cabinet. I then used 2 more L brackets to attach the pegboard to the side of the cabinet, again using nuts and bolts.



For the lower pegboard, I used 4 L brackets. I realised at this point I'd been making it harder for myself by screwing the brackets in first and then attaching them to the pegboard, so for this last one I did it the other way and made my life way easier.



And here's a quick preview of how it might work once I get everything wired in. The HDMI cable here is attached to a peg, which I have loads of for securing cables. The XBOX power brick is secured with some elastic straps, but I'm not sure if this might get too hot. Any thoughts from racketboy people?

Continuing to be smart



Whilst I was back here, I also set up some more smart device stuff ready for the final wiring job too. These ones are nice and simple - the 4 bulky white units you can see are smartplugs. 2 of them will have plug extensions running to the back of the taller cabinet to connect consoles to, and 2 will have extensions to the wider cabinet for consoles to plug into.



The switch here is set up so each of the 4 buttons turns on and off each of the smart plugs. This means I can power on or off a whole bank of consoles without having to reach behind the TV to turn the switches off, saving power in the process. I'm going to mount this switch on the wall over by the couch so I can easily turn on and off consoles from where I will be sitting.



And finally, probably my most ridiculous extravagance for the room, this lightstrip on the back of the TV. It's connected to a Philips Hue sync box, which allows me to create a light display based on what is showing on screen. It's pointless but I think it's cool. When I'm not syncing it serves as an additional light source for the room too.




Here's a demo of it in action using my laptop and just running a Youtube video to demo.



Thats it for today, it's already a pretty long post. Next time, I'll start cutting holes in my lovely new cabinets and hope I don't destroy them. We need to tackle wiring, and also cooling options to make sure consoles don't overheat!

[Syndicate]

...everything is looking really good in your gameroom AJ.