Wow... Thanks for the kind words. I'll answer the q's in the order rec'd.
I'd love to do this for a living, but because of the cost of custom machines it's not a large enough industry. Not to mention the cost of shipping one of these fuckers easily adds on $200. They typically weight in at about 200lbs.
Badass is one word.
Yes, I painted it myself. The cabinet is constructed mostly out of Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF) and coated with a few layers of primer and black acrylic semi-gloss enamel. Works out pretty well.
As far as the bezel cost, all I had to pay was for the plexiglass. I do all the printing for free at work on our $10k plotter. A sheet of plexi about 4x2' costs $25 at Lowes. The printing I've done would easily cost $100 + at Kinkos.
The PC I'm using is a 500Mhz PII with 256MB Ram, a 2GB HD and a 4MB graphics card on Win98SE. Nothing sexy. Since this is mainly used to play the classic games (Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Golden Axe, Double Dragon, etc) it doesn't need much power. And because the only games it will be running are older, I figured that 3 buttons would be enough. The other 3 buttons are admin used in conjunction with the encoder.
I've got a bunch of arcade pics from my various projects on my site:
http://www.flampoo.com/images/mcmame
I would easily charge $1000 for this system. That's complete with PC, monitor, controls, cab, etc. Most of that cost is labor. After all is said and done it will have taken me a month to finish this beast. The cost of parts were only about $400.
That being said, I only charged $500 because it was made for a friend. And I enjoy do it. In hindsight I should have raised the price a couple hundred.
There's a huge community of people who do this kind of thing and they have a wealth of knowledge on the message boards.
http://www.arcadecontrols.com