The owners have some friends who made an arcade cabinet. However; it's run on a full windows desktop computer and the bartenders have to click into the game application using a mouse and keyboard after logging in. This happens daily due to opening up the bar and due to some game breaking bugs in their cabinet. I don't think that's a good experience because the bartenders would prefer to treat it like a kitchen appliance like all the other arcade cabinets (plug it in, it's on... Unplug it and it's off).
Assuming I'm want to use linux as the base OS, what options do I have to create that kitchen appliance experience?
Current research notes - Redhat distos have a "kiosk mode" intended to start up a single app - There might be a way using systemd and disabling the login screen to get the desired behavior - There's always the option of creating my own linux fork to jettison the parts of the OS that I don't need, similar in concept to what valve did for their steam deck product. - (constraint relaxation) I could achieve a similar experience as the windows desktop by using Ubuntu and having a "user manual" explaining how to restart the cabinet/application
P.S. In terms of hardware I may hook a graphics card up to a raspberry pi or do more research to find a chip that's reasonably capable of running a 3D game at a reasonable price.
Since you're creating the game, I would add an option to launch it in 'kiosk' mode, where any menu option to 'quit' is removed.
You can get more fancy of course, but I'm assuming you want to focus on developing your game rather than configuring Linux ; )
edit: Forgot to add that I'm pretty sure the Pi shortage is still ongoing. I bought a 4GB Pi 4 kit in 2019 for $100 and it's like $200 now.
There are a lot of hits for "arcade cabinet raspberry pi."