This afternoon I’ve been working on the coin mechanism for my Mame arcade machine.
On my Phoenix cabinet, the coin mechanism is all mechanical. As the coin travels through the mechanism, it rolls past and pushes a metal bar which in turn is connected to switch that registers a credit. As the switch is nothing more than a standard microswitch, it was really easy to simply connect this to the coin terminals on my ipac to allow for it to work in Mame.
However, moving over to this second cabinet, the coin mechanism is an all electronic affair and at fIrst, I didn’t think I could do anything with it…other that fabricate the same sort of metal bar/switch setup at the exit of the coin chute.
As always, the Internet is full of useful tips and after finding videos and documentation for this type of coin door, I thought I’d have a go at wiring this to my PC.
Mars MS coin mech….I’m not sure if this is a model 111 or 102 though.
The control board requires a 12v feed therefore i’ll supply this via my PC’s 12v line taken from one of the spare Molex HDD power sockets. To make it easy when disconnect the coin mech, say for example If I need to bring the PC into the house, I’m going to use a spare 4-pin molex to SATA extension cable I have in my spares.
The SATA end won’t be needed though, so this gets the snip.
I’ve taken the the 12v and ground feed from the coin mech and attached it to the PC cable via a simple termination block.
I’ve also taken the two wires from the credit terminals and wired the positive to the ‘coin’ input on my IPAC and the other to the IPAC ground wiring loom. Originally I had the coin button wired to the Player Two Start button on the Control Panel, but I’ve now returned it to it’s proper function – Two Player Start.
Should I need to bypass the coin door, in the event of being caught short of coins, I’ve found a handy IPAC shortcut sequence in Mame to simulate a coin insert – Basically you hold down one player start button & press fire button number 1….man, you’ve gotta love the shift key functions on these IPAC’s!
All good to go for testing and so I thought I’d make a quick video as I went along.
I’m quite pleased with how it turned out and will have to experiment more with the DIP switches to see what they other settings do. Certain coins that are shiny new don’t seem to work as well as older coins, maybe the reflection messes around with the coin validator?
Next I want to remove both of the doors, disconnect the mechanism, chute and locks, give them a rub down to get rid of the flaking paint and apply a fresh coat of Hammerite Black paint to make them look all new again.
That’s about all I got done this afternoon as I called my older brother and nephew on the phone to see if they fancied popping around to give my cab a play test. My nephew is a modern COD, Xbox PS3, sorta player but he was getting quite into Metal Slug and it was so cool to be playing side by side with my older brother once again, just like we back in the old days with some 2-up classics like Salamander, Double Dragon and Bubble Bobble.
With all the shenanigans of converting the Jamma arcade machine to a Mame cab just lately, coin-op games have been the staple of this week retro gaming and two classic shooters i’ve re-re-revisiting time and again are in –
Phoenix – Centuri (1980)
Pure nostalgia this one – When I think back to early arcade gaming the first game that springs to mind is Phoenix. Back in the day, it was pretty common to see an upright or cocktail cab in the corners of cafes, student clubs and chip shops. The one I remember the most was in a greasy spoon cafe not too far away from the school yard. It was an upright Centuri cab complete with that terrible faux wood paneling, but despite is looking awful, was incredibly popular during lunch (and unofficial) break.
Being the only game in the cafe, the unspoken rule was one credit if there was a queue behind you and owner of the cafe would jot down the scores and would offer free lunch to the highest monthly score.
I’ve only got to hear ‘Romance de Amor’ and I can picture the starfield scrolling down ready for the first wave of attacking birds and then onto the button bashing finale as you punch a hole through the orange defence shield of momma bird – surely a good test of a new arcade build. I play Pheonix and I’m transported back to that cafe on a Friday lunchtime happy in knowledge that the weekend was just around the corner. Bacon sandwich anyone?
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Here’s the second classic shooter i’ve been playing a lot of this week, and another that I used to drop so many pocket money coins into.
Moon Cresta – Nitchibutsu (1980)
As with Phoenix, the aim is to blast away at everything whilst trying not to get hit yourself. There’s no boss stage with Moon Cresta but after clearing a few stages, you get the chance to upgrade your ships single laser gun by docking with another craft. Sadly the trade off is that your ship is now much bigger therefore so watch that incoming fire!
I may have lost ship one, but two and three docked together makes for one mighty ship.
Moon Cresta is also one handful of games that I could recognise straight away by just one sound effect, the laser fire FX is so memorable!
Incidentally, if you fancy looking at some of home computer conversions, the ZX Spectrum version is almost arcade perfect in gameplay. Sadly the sound effects are a bit feeble.
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Setting up my emulation PC for the Mame cabinet meant transferring a hefty amount of data from my NAS and so to pass the time, I’d got my Commodore Plus/4 setup on the geek desk for a spot of gaming whist I waited. Here’s two games I keep returning too, the first being a conversion of a classic coin-op
Moon Buggy – Anirog (1985)
Moon Buggy was ported to many systems including countless clones and I’ve probably played more versions of this game than I can remember – Some are great and many are really poor. The Plus/4 – Commodore 16 version by Anirog is extremely playable though and a faithful conversion of the arcade classic. The difficulty curve, I think, is just right, starting off nice n easy and then gently increasing and rewards those who dare jump early or late.
The aim off the game is to patrol the the surface of the moon and destroy all invaders you encounter. You moon buggy is equipped with forward facing and surface to air guns as well as jump jets to propel yourself over the many craters and rocks you’ll encounter along the way.
Timing your shots, speed and jump jets is critical to completing a stage as well as keeping an eye on the ground and in the air….yep, lots to do!
Graphically it looks rather nice too with just a hint of parallax scrolling on the background and although your buggy is a simply drawn, this version does have the signature wheel explosions if you happen to fall foul of any lunar obstacles.
I think the only critisim i have is the high pitched sound FX of the enemy can sometimes become tiresome but apart from that, top notch 1/6th gravity fun.
Anirog have produced some great game covers, Moon Buggy is certainly one of them.
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Another Plus/4 game I’ve been playing is one that was only released a few years ago..you’ve gotta love the retro gaming community!
Adventures in time – Psytronic (2010)
It’s one of those games that you’re either going to love or loath due to its necessity on the pixel perfect jump…or leap into the unknown.
Give it time though and once you start to learn the layout of a few screens and the enemy patterns Adventures in Time certainly starts to grow on you and for a Plus/4 game, it looks incredible good too and has some of the best music i’ve heard coming from the TED.
I was first introduced to this last year at a Retro Event in Derby by Chris http://www.commodore16.com/ Snowdon (here’s hoping there’s going to be another one) and have been meaning to sit down with this again whenever I had the Plus/4 setup again.
A great game which all C16/plus4 owners should try.
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On to another game that’s starting to grow on me despite a fustrating start.
Gem Chaser – ZX Spectrum (2013)
There’s been a raft of new games released over at World of Spectrum and this one from a few weeks ago. It’s a remake of an indie Xbox game and all you have to do is run/jump your block around the level collecting the coloured blocks before the timer runs out. Sounds easy right?
Well, you can only collect a coloured block that matches your own colour. Failure to do so will result in a time penalty and as time is very short, you don’t want to be doing that very often.
To change your blocks colour, you need to pass through one of portals dotted around the screen. The trick to completing the level is to figure out the least timing consuming route and not to spend too much time running around haphazard.
Try not to destroy your vintage ZX Spectrum after the frustration this game will bring
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I was reading a review of a this particular game in this months edition of Retro Gamingtimes Monthly and thought i’d revisit on a the system I’d first played it on.
Pooyan – Konami (1982)
Pooyan is one of those games that i’ve heard about for many years but have not actually played it. Last year I was at one of the the Retro Computer Museum events and sat down to a system likewise that really didn’t know too much about either. Said system was the Sord M5 and it so happened to have a Pooyan cartridge loaded.
Suffice to say, I really enjoyed it and have since sourced a copy for my NES…..no chance of owning a Sord M5 myself though as they appear to be quite the collectable and demand a hefty price.
Momma Bear in basket, fires arrows at balloonist wolves……huh?
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….,and finally, after the sad announcement and closure of Lucasarts annouced a few weeks ago, I’ve been looking back at some of their classic adventures on PC and Amiga. This week it’s the four disk Amiga version of ‘Threepwood’s island of Monkey secrets’….or something to that effect
Looking back through some very old gaming magazines, I notice that most of the screen shots for those early arcade games often look kinda blurred – I’m guessing because screen capture was all about some bloke with a camera standing in front of an arcade cabinet and shooting at high speed to reduce the amount of blur? It got me thinking, what if I went the opposite way shot with a loooong exposure?
I set my camera up this evening, manually focused on my Netbook running a selection of arcade games, set the iso to 100, exposure to 30 seconds and with joypad in one hand, remote release in the other, I switched the lights off.
We’ve been planning a drive out to the coast for a few months now but with one thing and another we didn’t quite seem to make it. Yesterday evening all plans converged on making the trip out early today so up at stupid o’clock this morning with flasks of hot stuff, sausage buttie’s, winter wear and boots….huskies, rope, icepick etc etc
It’s about a two hour drive and at this time of morning we had pretty much the roads to ourselves. When the sun did wake, darkened skies turned to cool blues with hardly a cloud in the sky…absolutely perfect.
Well, that was until a few miles out from the coast when we noticed that many of the roof tops, gardens and parked cars were covered with a heavy dusting of snow. When we arrived the blue skies were gone, the icy wind blowing off the sea had intensified and the sleet and snow began.
We sat and waited…
It got worse…
We sat and waited…
It got worse…
We sat and, as if a switch had been flicked, we were back to blue skies, sunshine and the snow clouds heading away and further inland.
Cool shapes on the sand left after the tide.
Making the most of it in the event that the snow decided to do a u-turn, we our took our stroll along the beach…and after a while, time to win a bet I had with a couple of my friends at work.
I win Rob, boy was it nippy!
Back on dry land, with warm soup and sandwichs we headed into town to see if anything was open. Pretty much everywhere was shut up for the winter months but we did spot a couple of the larger amusement arcades that were open for business. Remembering our visit from last year, I wondered if the Mirage Arcade still had….?
Woot woot, yay it does – time for a spot of retro gaming.
I’ve blogged about this multi-cade before so feel free to click on the link below for more details – If you ever spot one out in the wild, you’ve got to check them out.
I tried out the trackball on the cabinet again on games like Liberator, Golden Tee and Missile Command and it works really well although I found it to be a little too sensitive for spinner games like Arkanoid and Breakout.
I also had a blast on Robotron and actually lasted into a few more waves this time around – maybe all that research is paying off! I finished off with a game I’ve been playing a lot of this past week on the 2600 – Gravitar. I must get this booted on MAME at some point over the weekend , such a great game.
Our fun and games over and we headed back home…..although fun and games was about to begin again! Five miles out from the coast, clunk, bang, growwwwwl, instantly my little Peugeot was transformed into something that sounded like a hot-rod Hemi Cuda. You see, my exhaust pipe had fallen off :-O
We called our breakdown cover and (thankfully) didn’t have a long wait until emergency repairs were completed and we was on our merry way again. All crappy boy racer cars on the road just couldn’t compete : -) Hear me Roar!
If you’re frustrated by the lack of Mame port for the iPhone Arcadie, check out the iCade Jr which is currently on sale for just $9.99 at ThinkGeek. If its anything like its bigger brother then it’ll be a great bit of kit and the Jnr gives you twice the number of buttons compared to the Arcadie and uses the entire iPhone/iPod screen including portrait and landscape modes.
Very tempting at this price considering that they’re usually $49.99.
It might be cold, grey and damp out there today but inside it warm and full of the joys of summer with clear blue skies, big fluffly white clouds and three tropical soundtracks. Yup, Outrun is back and and this time, thanks to coder DJYT, a new game engine has been released called ‘Cannonball’. Using the original roms Cannaball has many enhancements and improvements over the original and can also used to run Outrun at a very impressive 60 frames per second
I had issues getting it to run at first but then noticed that Cannonball calls for an Outrun Rom file called ‘epr-10381a.132′ which is not in the revision B Rom set. Either rename the file to epr-10381b.132 or copy the rom file from Revision A set.
Game Controls are as follow -
Cursors: Steering
Z: Accelerate
X: Brake
Space: Gear Change
5: Insert Coin
1: Start
F1: Pause
F2: Advance a frame when paused
F3: Toggle/Freeze timer
At first I thought, yeah it looks pretty impressive and smooth at 60 fps but it wasn’t until I switched back to the original 30 fps did I notice that how MUCH of a difference the enhanced version looks. Play, for example the first (left) path to get to the area with the overhead stone structures…it looks flippin awesome, you won’t go back to Mame again for your Outrun fix
Woot woot, party time!
Still shots won’t show how smooth this looks at 60fps but I highly recommend running two version of Cannonball configured at both 30 and 60 fps. Pause both (F1) and run them together.
My desktop – 60fps on the left, 30fps on the right….or it it the other way around
At the moment there’s isn’t a frontend menu system for the game so for example, if you wish to change the graphics properties and other game options you will need to do this by editing the games config file with notepad or similar.
I’ve found that if you select the fullscreen toggle, the audio is effected slightly, therefore I prefer to run Cannonball in Windowed mode but set the scaler mode to either 3 or 4.
Here’s what my config looks like – <Widescreen, Windowed, Scale 4, Normal difficulty, Normal traffic, Auto gears.
<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<!–
Video Settings
–>
<video>
<!– FPS
0 = 30 FPS. Optimized Mode (Slow computers)
1 = 30/60 FPS. Original Game Mode. (The original experience)
2 = 60 FPS. Smooth Mode. (Full 60fps)
–>
<fps>2</fps>
<!– Set Screen Mode: 0 is windowed, 1 is full-screen –>
<mode>0</mode>
<!–
Windowed Mode Settings
Scale: Scale or zoom factor for window mode. 1 is original size.
–>
<window>
<scale>4</scale>
</window>
<!–
Fullscreen Mode Settings
Stretch: Set to 1 to stretch the screen and remove borders.
–>
<fullscreen>
<stretch>0</stretch>
</fullscreen>
</video>
<!–
Game Engine Settings
–>
<engine>
<!– Game Time:
0 = Easy (80 seconds)
1 = Normal (75 seconds)
2 = Hard (72 seconds)
3 = Very Hard (70 seconds)
1= Infinite Time
–>
<time>4</time>
<!– Traffic Difficulty:
0 = Easy,
1 = Normal,
2 = Hard,
3 = Very Hard
1 = No Traffic
–>
<traffic>0</traffic>
<!– Advertise Sound In Attract Mode –>
<advertise>1</advertise>
<!– Gears:
0 = Manual (Click to shift, for normal play)
1 = Manual (Hold to shift, for cabinet play)
2 = Automatic
–>
<gear>2</gear>
</engine>
Many thanks to DJYT for the awesome-ness release. For more info, visit the project page -
<roar> ‘For God and Castles’ <more roar….and a bit of echo for dramatic effect>.
Yep, that’s what you’ll be saying after completing a level of Maldita Castilla…during gameplay it’ll be something like ‘Dammit’, ‘For flip sake’, ‘Noooo’, ‘Die you mother flappy things’ etc etc
Locomalito is back with yet another retro-tastic freeware game and this time around it’s a arcade platformer which takes inspiration from Ghost n Goblins, Gryzor, Karnov, Castlevania and many more. Suck at Super Ghouls and Ghosts on the SNES? <I do>, play Maldita Castilla instead, its a little more forgiven and bags of fun.
Here’s the trailer -
Like Verminist and Hydorah, the thing that i really like about Locomalitio’s releases are the the little extras that have gone into each production. For example, ingame simulated scan lines, arcade ROM board inspired game startup and the host of additional media available free for download with each game.
A page from the beautifully produced game manual.
Behold, the carriage of the chosen one.
You can even download and print your own DVD wallet and disc cover.
One of ten posters depicting scenes and end of level bosses. This one, the child of Jabba the Hutt and General Grevious?
Man-up brave Knight, fore your quest begins – Six levels of 80′s pixel platform fun awaits and demons beckon o’ yonder. Smite away my lord – For God and Castles!
Today’s installation of the PC, monitor and controls went really well. Jim was already at the Retro Computer Museum with the cabinet outside as he wanted to strip the marquee retaining clips for repainting and to respray the monitor bezel.
Touch dry after an hour, Andy brought it back indoors whilst I made a start on on finishing the Mame frontend.
Set up and testing with my new rotating TFT…thanks again Savi, it’s really comes in handy!
Jim and I got the iPac connected to the buttons, joystick and coin door (we thought it would be cool to have Mame register a real coin inserted – this is pretty straight forward, just have the coin door microswitch wired to whatever button you configure in Mame as the ’coin’ button.
Th Ipac is simply a keyboard encoder designed to emulate a standard PC keyboard, accept instead of using keys, you wire arcade buttons to it instead. With MS Notepad open on the PC, we tested each button and joystick movement in turn to ensure that we’d wired the micro switches correctly and a keystoke was recognised and displayed.
All appeared o.k apart from the contact for ‘right’ on the joystick. This was simply a loose connection on the switch terminal and was soon put right. With the resulkts of our test written down I configured both the frontend navigation and MAME controls to use the Joystick, 3 fire buttons, coin, start and exit buttons.
The PC now placed into the back of the cabinet and connected to a set of test PC speakers (Later on, Jim wired the PC to use the original cabinets speaker). We just need to tidy up some of the wiring in there but for now, we left it as is in case of issues whilst testing.
Will it boot, or burst into flames? – Well, you never know with Windows!
As you can see, there’s a bit of cleanup work to do around the buttons where age has eaten the CP. The rough bit at the bottom will be hidden as there’s a strip of metal that goes here. We’ve removed it so it can be re-chromed.
MALA Frontend loaded and ready for testing….who’s got the 10p pieces?
Stu was straight in there!
Apart from a minor tweak on the coin mechanism, all was working perfectly. Game on!
As homage to the cabinets original arcade game board – Taito Space Chaser, I thought that this would be the first game I loaded.
We’ve still got a bit of work to do on the cabinet such as alterations to our custom Retro Computer Museum marque, amendments to the cabinet T-Molding and little touch up jobs here and there. I also want to strip out some of the duplicates roms I’d previously missed and make the frontend layout graphics much better. All in all though, a great project and a great afternoon.
Left to Right – Myself, And and Jim….Stu behind the camera and probably hoarding all of the 10p coins
One of the highlights for me was seeing and getting chance to play on Dave Brown’s miniature replica arcade machines. The Star Wars upright forms part of Dave’s collection which also includes Donkey Kong and Defender bartop machines as well as a twin joystick emulation centre control type thingie which was connected to a projector and was bags of fun…so much so that I’m seriously thinking about building my own.
However, back to the Star Wars cab. This thing is truly awesome and is completely scratch built by Dave to resemble the original Atari upright cabinet albeit in about half scale.
A a thing of beauty!
The workmanship on the molding around the screen is fantastic and perfectly detailed just like the original. You can see that a lot of work has gone into this.
Inside the mini cabinet houses a PC which is running Mame to play both Star Wars and Empire Strikes roms back on to the 7″ screen.
The decision to include a full size reproduction yoke control was a good move as it ensures that both games play really well. I think I got a few laughs whilst playing this at the weekend as I was wearing my X-Wing Rogue Squadron T-Shirt at the time
Lock S-Foils into attack position, StiGGy Five standing by…etc etc.
Here’s a quick video of someone playing it on Saturday and then me having a go one handed whilst I filmed and played Empire Strikes back.
If anyone has any more details on Dave’s cabinets and any build photographs I’d love to hear from you.
It’s a shame that there’s only two issues available but these digital editions of Video and Arcade Games magazine are such great reading for retro gamers especially as they were written at a time when some of the best classic coin-op games were hitting the arcades.
I always like to browse through these old magazines especially articles that preview games that we all know today have become legendary titles. Games like Robotron, Defender, Centipede, Joust and Berzerk – All unknown titles at the time, released onto the gaming world with a large degree of risk..would gamers take to them?
Each magazine is chock full of nostalgic articles including editorials on the birth of gaming hardware, a look at up and coming home gaming hardware (MB Vectrex), reviews of the latest arcade games, tips on mastering games like Robotron & Q-Bert among others and a fascinating story about the creation of Space War. Very good reading!
The free digital retro gaming magazine – Retro Gaming Times has recently celebrated it’s 100th issue and as always, contains some truly great features and reviews. One article in particular this month, starting on page 14, is rather interesting as it focuses on lawsuits filed for and/or against two classic games Donkey Kong and Pac-Man.
You can read the magazine online or as I do, download the PDF version at -
