Someone is building a real-life Space Cadet pinball machine

YouTuber and engineer CNCDan has announced a project to build a fully functional, physical recreation of the classic Windows digital game Space Cadet Pinball. The build process is currently being documented on his YouTube channel, where he is designing and 3D printing custom mechanisms to bring the 1995 software into the real world.

The digital table is instantly recognizable to anyone who used a PC between 1995 and the release of Windows Vista. Originally developed by Cinematronics and published by Maxis as part of the retail game Full Tilt! Pinball, the Space Cadet table was bundled into Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95. It survived all the way through the Windows XP era as a built-in time killer before Microsoft dropped it due to a 64-bit collision detection bug.

Full Tilt! Pinball actually included three tables in total, alongside Skullduggery and Dragon's Keep. Space Cadet became the cultural touchstone because it was pre-installed on millions of computers. The original game was a surprisingly accurate simulation for 1995. It included complex rule sets, mission structures, and multiball modes that rivaled physical tables of the era. Now, it is escaping the monitor entirely.

Not exactly plug and play

Translating a digital physics simulation into a physical wooden box requires some creative engineering. CNCDan is aiming for a slightly smaller footprint than a standard commercial pinball cabinet. He is targeting a one-meter length and a 560-millimeter width so the machine can actually fit in a home studio.

That reduced scale creates immediate hardware problems. The pop bumpers in the digital game scale out to about 53 millimeters in diameter. Commercial pinball bumpers are about 50 millimeters larger than that, meaning off-the-shelf parts simply will not fit the board layout. To solve this, CNCDan is designing his own custom pop bumpers, drop targets, and slingshots from scratch using a 3D printer.

Hall effect switches and hobby servos

Traditional arcade pinball machines rely on heavy-duty solenoids and mechanical microswitches. Those parts are expensive and require constant calibration.

CNCDan avoided that headache entirely by switching to Hall effect sensors. By placing tiny magnets on the moving parts, the sensors can detect a trigger without any physical contact or mechanical wear. The Hall effect switch simply provides a clean on or off signal to the board.

He is also replacing the standard reset solenoids with cheap RC hobby servos. The servos provide enough torque to reset the drop targets without drawing massive amounts of power or requiring complex wiring.

The project is still in the design and prototyping phase. The initial build log focuses on getting the proof-of-concept mechanisms working reliably on a test bench. There is no timeline for when the final machine will be fully playable, but the custom hardware is already triggering and resetting just like the digital original.