Well here’s a nice project if you have a lot of free time and the skills to make it happen: Twitter user Guet (@Anthony70101968) has shared a video of his “pincab” (Pinball Cabinet) working with a Nintendo Switch.

In the video, Guet is seen docking his Switch at the top of a modified Pinball machine (in which he has plugged the Switch dock), and then playing pinball game Pinball FX 3 with actual pinball buttons. It’s fairly simple to grasp how this works in theory, but the result is impressive!

What’s a pincab?

I like this definition from pinscape:

Someone must have been playing around with a pinball program on their desktop PC, and wondered what it would be like to turn the monitor sideways, to make the layout more like a real pinball table’s proportions. Then they thought to lay it down flat, so they could stand over it like a real pinball playfield. And then what about switching to a big flat-panel TV that’s the same overall size as a real pinball table? The finishing touch was putting the big TV inside an old cabinet salvaged from a defunct real pinball, right where the playfield used to go, for the full life-sized experience.

At its most basic, that pretty much sums up a virtual pin cab. You take a Windows PC, install Visual Pinball and/or other pinball simulator software, attach a TV in the 40″ range as the primary monitor, and put the TV inside a pinball cabinet body where the playfield would normally go. Put another TV in the backbox to display the backglass artwork. Connect some speakers in the backbox to the PC sound card, and you have the full audio/visual simulation.

A Nintendo Switch for a pincab

So, at the core, a pincab is a computer (Windows-based, Raspberry Pi, etc…) running some pinball games, plugged into a large screen, inserted into a pinball cabinet, and connected to the cabinet’s actual buttons to simulate an old school pinball machine. Fair enough.

The novelty brought by user Guet here is he’s using a Nintendo Switch in lieu of computer. The dock allows him to easily take the Switch out as needed, which is not only cool, but also allows to reduce costs by not having to use a computer full time for the arcade. Yes, Switch-based pincabs can be found elsewhere, but they’re usually “mini” versions, and do not have the wow effect of this one.

Connecting the dock to a HDMI screen inside the machine sounds simple enough. I’d be interested of course to see the schematics for the controller. As for people mentioning he’s not using the left trigger when demo-ing the game: he explained he couldn’t properly play while holding the phone to take the video.

Guet has since his initial video posted more pictures and videos of his pincab in action. In an other video posted today, he is shown demonstrating that the joycons still work (of course) with the machine plugged in.

The screenshots don’t give this piece of work any justice. Do watch the videos to see it in action!

Je vous ai jamais montré mon pincab fait maison 😉 il fonctionne uniquement avec la Nintendo Switch , la partie en cours n’est pas à prendre en compte je ne pouvais pas filmé et joué en même temp . Tout a était réalisé par moi même à part les pied de flipper pic.twitter.com/Qf0sr1WFyL

— Guet (@Anthony70101968) October 22, 2022

Je vous partage une vidéo d’un autre plateau de jeux pic.twitter.com/bx8Yir87Ls

— Guet (@Anthony70101968) October 23, 2022

We can only hope he’ll release some details on how he did it for the people interested to replicate this. You can head over to the source for more.

source: Guet on Twitter