# XBOX ONE in Your ARCADE1UP or ARCADE CABINET!

**Source:** RetroRalph  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2020-02-19  
**Duration:** 10m 3s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcLLUQXMRpM

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## Analysis

Retro Ralph provides a detailed technical tutorial on wiring an Xbox One to arcade cabinet controls using X-Arcade adapters and a USB encoder board. The video covers hardware requirements, micro switch wiring, joystick configuration (including Sanwa JLF modification), and Xbox One connectivity. The guide emphasizes low-lag performance and offers flexibility for various arcade cabinet types and console configurations.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] The X-Arcade Xbox One adapter with PS2 cables retails for $89.99 — _Direct product reference with specific pricing mentioned in tutorial_
- [MEDIUM] D44X Cherry micro switches are among the best micro switches available with responsive depression and nice click feedback — _Retro Ralph's personal opinion about micro switch quality during hardware selection segment_
- [MEDIUM] Sanwa JLF joysticks are easier to use in Arcade1Up cabinets than Happ competition sticks despite personal preference for Happ — _Retro Ralph's comparative assessment based on modification requirements_
- [HIGH] The left pinball button (connected to J2 purple wire) combined with start button returns to Xbox home menu — _Explicit technical instruction repeated and clarified in video_
- [HIGH] FX3 virtual pinball software does not support left and right flipper button mapping to the configured arcade buttons — _Retro Ralph explicitly corrects earlier statement, stating 'You cannot use that button for left flipper and right flipper, at least not for FX3'_

### Notable Quotes

> "No one wants lag. So we're going to dive right into it."
> — **Retro Ralph**, Early in tutorial
> _Establishes key motivation for the hardware solution approach_

> "This is only one method. There are many methods... Yes, I know. There are many different options, but in this particular one, I'm going to show you it this way."
> — **Retro Ralph**, Introduction
> _Acknowledges multiple valid approaches while framing the tutorial's specific methodology_

> "I prefer the Happ competition sticks over the Sanwa myself for this I just decided to use the Sanwa"
> — **Retro Ralph**, Joystick configuration segment
> _Demonstrates personal preference while showing alternative configuration for viewer flexibility_

> "So you're just looking for a master controlled power strip. That way, when this fires up, everything else will turn on."
> — **Retro Ralph**, Final steps section
> _Practical tip for integrated cabinet power management_

> "I find this just really interesting and unique and different, right? Everyone's doing kind of the same mods. Why not be a little different and build a more modern cabinet that you can do some retro games and some modern games too?"
> — **Retro Ralph**, Closing remarks
> _Articulates the appeal of hybrid retro/modern gaming approach_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Retro Ralph | person | Video creator and tutorial host; pinball and arcade content creator |
| X-Arcade | company | Hardware manufacturer producing Xbox One adapters and arcade control solutions |
| Xbox One | product | Gaming console being integrated with arcade cabinet controls |
| Arcade1Up | product | Pre-built arcade cabinet brand that can be modified with this Xbox One integration |
| Cherry | company | Manufacturer of D44X micro switches used in arcade controls |
| Sanwa JLF | product | Joystick model discussed as alternative to Happ-style sticks for arcade cabinet integration |
| Happ Competition Stick | product | Alternative joystick option compatible with X-Arcade harness; Retro Ralph's personal preference |
| FX3 | product | Virtual pinball software that does not support flipper button mapping configuration discussed |
| Mortal Kombat 11 | product | Referenced as example game where analog stick with keystroke configuration is applicable |
| Forza | product | Racing game referenced as playable with analog stick configuration on arcade cabinet |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Xbox One to arcade cabinet integration, Hardware wiring and encoder configuration, Arcade control customization and joystick modification
- **Secondary:** Virtual pinball software compatibility, Arcade cabinet DIY modifications
- **Mentioned:** Console adapter technology

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.85) — Retro Ralph expresses enthusiasm for the mod as 'interesting and unique,' encourages viewers to 'be a little different,' and frames the integration as enabling both retro and modern gaming. Tone is educational, encouraging, and optimistic throughout.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Retro Ralph providing detailed educational content and open documentation (Dropbox diagrams, show notes) to enable community DIY arcade cabinet modifications (confidence: high) — I have all the instructions in there for you... that diagram, I'll have that posted somewhere on Dropbox so you can use that to go through the process yourself
- **[design_philosophy]** Community interest in hybrid retro/modern arcade cabinet builds that support both classic emulation and contemporary console gaming (confidence: medium) — Everyone's doing kind of the same mods... Why not be a little different and build a more modern cabinet that you can do some retro games and some modern games too?
- **[technology_signal]** Growing accessibility of Xbox One consoles at low secondary market prices as next-gen consoles arrive, enabling broader arcade cabinet integration projects (confidence: medium) — You can probably get them for a really good price... with the next-gen consoles coming out soon, you're going to probably see these things drop off

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## Transcript

All right guys, in this video I am going to show you how to wire your Xbox One to your arcade cabinet. Now I totally spaced and didn't show you guys how to do it in this video right here that you're watching, but that's why we're going to do it now. So we're going to show you how to wire up your Xbox One to your arcade controls and I'm going to show you what you need to do this. This is only one method. There are many methods. There are going to be people that are going to tell me that, oh, you could do it this way, you could do it that way. Yes, I know. There are many different options, but in this particular one, I'm going to show you it this way. Is it the best way? I find it's the best way for a hardware solution that's really reliable and gives you near zero lag, and that's what you want. No one wants lag. So we're going to dive right into it. I'm going to give you the pieces parts needed, and then we're going to wiring it up, and then I'll give you my final thoughts. Let's go. Okay, what are we going to need to get started? You're going to want to go over to X-Arcade, and you're going to first need this X-Arcade Xbox One adapter. So if you scroll down here, you'll see there's one that says Xbox One 2 players and it includes the required PS2 adapters. That's the one you're going to want. It retails for $89.99. Then you're going to go over and you're going to need the additional piece of hardware here. This is actually the USB encoder. Quick correction here, this is actually the right encoder but the wrong kit because you need the kit to have all of the wiring. This only has probably 80% of what you need. So I did correct it in the show notes. So if you're planning on going down this path, check the show notes and I have all the instructions in there for you. Sorry about that. Obviously, you need an Xbox One. So if you don't have one, obviously, you can get one. But for this, I'm assuming you already have one and you want to leverage that or you can find them used now pretty cheap. And the other thing that's kind of cool is with the next-gen consoles coming out soon, you're going to probably see these things drop off and you're going to see more people selling them. So there will be more accessibility of these consoles out there. So you can probably get them for a really good price. So that's all the hardware that you need. Obviously, you need like the joysticks and the buttons and all that stuff, but I'm assuming you already know that. So we're going to go on to the next step which is wiring this thing up and how do we connect it all. Okay so let's start with the micro switches. I love these micro switches. These are the D44X Cherry micro switches. These are awesome. They just depress really easily. They have a nice click to them. They're probably some of the best micro switches I've ever used. So we're going to start with our first part of our wire harness here. This is actually going to be J2, which is going to have a purple and a blue wire. The purple is going to go to our start and the blue is going to go to our left pinball button and I explain that in a minute what that for Make sure you put in your subsequent ground wire it connected to each one and that actually that left pinball button We're going to set that aside for now but we're going to need that later on. Now we're going to go to the next wire harness which is J6. So make sure you plug J6 into the subsequent port in that encoder board and we're going to start just going down the line here. We're going to match up the colors with where they belong on the actual button. So we'll go one by one as we go through here. Now keep in mind, feel free to pause this video if you were doing this live and you need help or assistance. And also that diagram, I'll have that posted somewhere on Dropbox so you can use that to go through the process yourself. Now keep in mind, every single action button wire has a subsequent ground loop. Make sure you connect the ground loop. How that works on the micro switch is the ground always goes to the top most point on that switch and then the one closest to it is the action button the one below that you won't be using for anything for this particular process alright so we're just gonna keep going on here and which if you feel free you can actually fast forward through this but this was actually here so that you could do this all on your own I did notice that actually I'd swapped around some of the control options because you're actually looking at the board upside down and I'm looking at it right side up in my diagram so just keep in mind when you're actually wiring this yourself that you actually have to make sure you're looking at it from the right direction but this should get you started and get you going and get you right where you need to be in order to do this yourself now i'm only showing you player one you're kind of on your own for player two i'm gonna fast forward through the rest of this process and then we'll do some final steps okay so now we're getting to the point where we're at j8 so this is actually for your joystick now this is set for a hap style joystick so if you use the included harness this is going to be expecting a hap style joystick now if you don't have a hap style joystick and you decide you want to use like a Sanwa JLF or something like that then you're gonna need to actually modify the harness so I'll show you how to do that here because I decided to go with a Sanwa JLF with an octagonal gate so what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you that right now so that's actually the wires and I actually spliced them into the harness that comes with the JLF so if you look below that how you would map the wires red to green orange to yellow green to red yellow to orange brown to black So if you do that you can actually create your own harness and then connect that right in. So what you're going to do is really you splice the end of the supplied X-Arcade harness and then you just splice it into the wires that I showed on that diagram. Now if you just have a HAP style, like a HAP competition stick, you can just plug those right in and you'll have no problems but I wanted to show you this just in case you want to do this it is easier to use Sanwa JLFs in an arcade one-up because you do have to kind of modify the HAP competition sticks although I prefer the HAP competition sticks over the Sanwa myself for this I just decided to use the Sanwa so there you go pretty straightforward and then that goes right back into the encoder board and you can refer back to my diagram if you need to know what port it goes in and all that so that is that so finally I want to go back to j2 because that left pinball button is required for you to get back to your home screen so basically what you do is you hit start and you hit that left pinball button and you can go back to the home menu on your Xbox okay so you're all wired up and you're wondering what are my next steps so I'm gonna walk you through step one two and three of the next part of this so first of all you're going to grab your breakout box right here and you're going to connect it via this sort of serial looking cable right here. Done. Your next step is you're going to take the PS2 style cables that go to the end of this and you're going to plug them into your Xbox One adapters. So step two is now complete. Step three is you're going to connect these via USB to the back of your Xbox One and then you're going to fire up your Xbox One. It's that simple. So one tidbit of information, a little tip I would say is I would keep an Xbox One controller by your cabinet. If you have it, you can then use the Xbox One controller to turn on and off your console. If you put it on like a master controlled power strip, you can have it so that when this thing fires up, the rest of your cabinet goes live. That's something I've done on previous other mods. So you're just looking for a master controlled power strip. That way, when this fires up, everything else will turn on. So that's actually something you could do. So while this is Booting up the other thing I'll let you know about is X arcade sells other adapters We can support other consoles so you can have a dreamcast you could have an Xbox one and a Gamecube all connected to the same set of arcade controls so that really cool if you someone that really into retro consoles and You want that original experience You don want to do emulation You want to do things the legit way and also the best way you possibly can present those games So that really cool I also think in the sea of Pi and Pandora's boxes and all these other things, there's just everyone is doing that. So this is a rather unique mod and it allows you to play more modern games and then everything else that's in the Xbox library that either you already own or things that you can buy. Now, before this thing gets started here, I do want to mention something else. This left pinball button that we wired up, there'll be a right one when you do player two as well. This will get you back to your home screen. So you hit start and you hit that button and it gets you back to your home menu. That's what that's for. But here's the other cool thing. You could use this to play FX3 games. Okay, so I'm actually wrong here. You cannot use that button for left flipper and right flipper, at least not for FX3. So you might be able to in other virtual pinball software, but not FX3. So Sorry about that. So if you wanna do virtual pinball on here, what I was thinking is maybe extending these wires and mounting it on the side of your cabinet. And keep in mind, everything I told you about is for any arcade cabinet, right? You can do this in a DIY kit, you could do this in an arcade one-up, whatever it is. It doesn't really matter as long as you have the space to contain the components, you can do this type of a thing. But I love that idea of putting the left flipper button and the right flipper button on the sides, and then you can do your virtual pinball, which is pretty cool. So that's kinda it, guys. I mean, from here on out, you can play all games that would make sense for these mappings. The one other thing that you can do, and if you refer back to my MK11 video, is you can actually make this an analog stick with a keystroke. And when you do that, you could play games like Forza if you wanted to on this type of a cabinet. So I find this just really interesting and unique and different, right? Everyone's doing kind of the same mods. Why not be a little different and build a more modern cabinet that you can do some retro games and some modern games too? I find it really cool and I'm excited about you know showing you guys things like this So that's it for now if you guys enjoyed it, please give us a thumb up thumbs up Put your comments below on know what you think of this and then if you did enjoy this content Please consider subscribing to the channel and then also turn on notifications so you can be a form of future videos And that's it for now guys. We will see you on the next one you

_(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 8de50060-252f-4116-95b4-e4b76a87ce1f*