The problem with wood that is MDF, is that this type of wood suck a lot water so painting it suck the paint; for this you should use some kind of "before-paint" that make the wood suck less the paint. A very good thing about MDF wood is that it is easy to cut and carve into. Brief it is a good wood to mold as wanted.
For painting i suggest more plywood but "uniform", not the one that have a lot of pieces of wood into one wood panel. Because when you cut it there is quite possible that some pieces of wood deform and want to get out of the panel.
Did you know that the correct size for the "true arcade buttons", is some circle holes of the size of 1&1/8 inch. I know because in the past i have created an arcade cab with real arcade buttons. Here is a youtube video of my old mame arcade fully fonctionnal with coin mechanism at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPhasuyFxysI have put 4 speakers, since my audio card was dolby surround. Two speakers at the top corners of the screen, and two speakers that also changed color depending of the sound it play's. An old mouse between the color speakers that acted as a trackball for some games that need a trackball, like some bowling game and others.
The menu was made with the software "Mamewah" i have made the design and the programming of it. Also made a zone that list the games, and when the user is on some list it first show the image for 3 seconds of the game; followed by a video showing a preview of the selected game. You can also use the software to create interface for playing FP games.
I have created a free guide with the permissions and authorizations of the guy that created the software Mamewah, because of copyrights and to respect the author. Here is the direct link (since these day's the server where my webpages are is down), you can find the Mamewah guide for Futurepinball at:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ewY7stZtLzJBMn_iJ-Z3ngVhvDOZMGfuI suggest also to you that you try to find and have the "I-Pac 4" or "I-Pac 2" that is from (Ultimarc), wich is some circuit that you can connect arcade buttons to. It can be used for many games. Its a circuit that can communicate with your computer, telling wich button has been pressed. Like when you play some game that you can say, press for button "A", press for button "B", press for "Left Direction", "Right Direction (Joystick) and so on.