Out of all the Crazy Sega Nerds articles, this has to be one of the coolest things we have seen/shown. Long-time Sega fan, Tjerk Otten from the Netherlands, has sent us some pictures of his home-made Dreamcast arcade-style cabinet.

With arcade amusement centres closing over the last few years, Tjerk decided that he wanted to build his very own arcade system. With the Dreamcast's catalogue of high-quality arcade ports. Tjerk (quite naurally) decided that Sega's 128-bit console would be the best system to use to recreate an arcade experience.

Made entirely from wood, Tjerk's cabinet houses the Dreamcast console, Dreamcast arcade stick and a 21" CRT monitor (he was hoping to use a slimmer LCD monitor - but it was too expensive). As you can clearly see, his hard work paid off, and he now has his very own arcade cabinet in his home!

Tjerk documented the construction process by taking plenty of photos. You can find the full set of pictures on our Flickr account. And check after the break for Tjerk's full description (in his own words) of making the Dreamcast Arcade cabinet.

"Dreamcast Arcade Cabinet.

My name is Tjerk Otten and am a graphical designer from the Netherlands. First off I want to give my love to SEGA. I just love SEGA and the Dreamcast the most. Its the best console out there. I have all next gen consoles, but I still play my Dreamcast the most .

I currently own 3 Dreamcasts and one of them I used to build the arcade cabinet. I love to play in arcade amusement centers, but with the years more halls closed their doors. This is because everybody is gaming at home. Thats when the idea came to build my own arcade machine. What hardware could I use to build it?. The Dreamcast Offcourse!. The Dreamcast is a arcade machine in a nutshell. This machine is very small and could be easily build in the wooden exterior. I do had to search for a arcade controller, which was very hard to find because at that time I did not know stores like Ebay, So I searched around the internet and bought a arcade controller and that was the beginning of creating the cabinet.

I started to create a design in 3dsmax. A 3D software program I used for my normal projects. When the design was done I talked to my father. He was going to help me with this large project. My dad is very talented when it comes to making something out of wood. He told me it would be very difficult but it was doable. So we just started building the machine and I made some pictures of the progression which can be seen in this article. At some point we kept breaking wood because of the machine's design. It has so much hard curves. When I came home one day my father used snow to bend the wood better and It worked out perfect. I used a large 21 inch CRT monitor for the inside. I wanted to use a LCD monitor, but at that time those monitors were very expensive. When the LCD displays are better I want to replace it for the CRT. So It takes less space.

When the cabinet was done I was very happy and I played some of the coolest games on it and still do.

The Best thing of it all is that I can choose from so many good games .This Dreamcast Arcade machine is here to last.

Imagine playing Cosmic Smash, Ikaruga, Capcom VS SNK, Bomberman Online, Soul Calibur, Virtua Tennis, Virtua Fighter, Marvel VS Capcom 2, REZ, Crazy Taxi.... And you can go on.

Sega you stole my heart and I hope all the fans like to see this homemade arcade machine from a very big sega fan....

love..

Tjerk"

Colour me impressed - I would love to get my hands on this beautifully made cabinet. Just imagine playing all those classic arcade-style games on this, like; Virtua Tennis, Crazy Taxi, REZ, Soul Calibur, Zombie Revenge, Marvel vs Capcom, Street Fighter III... well I can go on. Let's just say I want this!

A massive thanks to Tjerk for sharing his work (well the images at least) with us all. I hope he gets a lot of good use out of that cabinet and I'm sure he'll have plenty of fun playing with it :)

Don't forget if you, or someone you know, has done something awesome, crazy or just plain stupid that is Sega-related, you can send us a link/information via email - seganerds@gmail.com - and if it's interesting/weird enough, we will happily post about it :)

Note: Tjerk has also kindly informed me that if anybody would like further information or wants to ask questions about the Dreamcast arcade cabinet they can email him directly at: info@tjerkotten.com

[Special Thanks: Tjerk, Via Email]