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?
*************************
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.
************************
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.
*********************
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.
********************************
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
************************
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?
*************************
….,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
Only a quick update on the arcade cabinet today. I’ve now got two replacement locks for the coin doors and one for the rear back panel which I’ve fitted this evening. The removable portion of the back panel is practically held on with just the lock so it’ll be nice to have it in position again to shut out all the light bleeding in around the edge of the monitor.
Having had to source these from a gazillion online vendors and pouring over endless searches, I’m becoming a bit of a lock nerd and find myself talking about cams , tumblers, tubular seven pin, cam barrels, keyed to differ or alike, straight or cranked, 90 or 180 rotation. Also I’ve discovered that if you’ve accidentally ordered a straight cam instead of one that needs a slightly cranked end, one should simply whack it a few times with a large hammer. Perfect!
If there’s any lock nerds out there that are interested, mine are 27mm cam locks, keyed alike, 90 degree turn with 45mm straight cams….and one slightly bent one.
Also, if anyone knows how to cure lock nerdism, please let me know.
It’s too cold to work out in the garage on the Arcade machine so I’ve detached the Control Panel and brought it inside to do a little bit of work in the warmth.
Top tip – using a suitable old dust cover on the kitchen table means that you keep in favour with the good lady - which is always handy if you plan to buy even more crap retro gaming stuff from eBay
Here’s the CP ready for stripping and cleaning. The wooden board in the picture is the PCB shelf that had the original game board on it…soon to be a shelf for the PC.
Here’s the original Jamma wiring harness. I won’t be needing it for his particular project but it may come in handy for another especially as the contacts are all in very nice condition. As I removed the harness though I noticed that some of the buttons and micro switches were broken. More than expected would need swapping out.
The harness is removed and I’ve starting to unscrew the original buttons. Some of them were in a right state and some fell to pieces as I removed them. Once the CP was devoid of all the controls I cleaned it inside and out. I’ll be revisiting the inside of the CP again when the weather is better as the rust on the inside could do with being treated and painted. Under better lighting I also noticed that there were quite a few specs of white paint on the front side too. Being on a navy background they were quite noticeable but a splash of soapy water and a spot of elbow grease soon shifted them.
Hmm, I wasn’t expecting to be replacing as many buttons/microswitches. I fear I might not have enough…time to raid other spare parts boxes.
In the end I settled for what I could lay my hands on. Ideally I’d like to replicate the original red, white and blue scheme of the original cab but after cleaning up some of the original buttons, they still looked a bit rough and discoloured.
Ready for a bath….or the bin?
So, at the moment I’ve gone for red, red and blue and sadly they’res a mixture of convex and concave buttons. It looks bloody awful to be honest, but a shopping list is being devised and a new order to http://www.gremlinsolutions.co.uk will be placed later on today.
The 1-up and 2-up (acting as Coin 1) use two of the original (very cheap) switches I removed from my iCade. They are nice and stiff, useless for gaming but are perfect for secondary controls like coin/start/select etc………besides, I was running out of Cherry switches!
Next up was to wire the controls to the Mini-iPac wiring looms and connect to the iPac board. First up was the positive connections (middle pin), followed by the daisy chained common wire (top pin). I’ve done this quite a few times now so it becomes almost second nature..having said that, there’s always mistakes made and today was no different – I had coin/start wired the wrong way around!
Looking pretty messy but will tie up once tested.
You can use any text editor to test the controls but I prefer to use this freebie iPac testing program from Ultimarc.
All good to go…once coin and start were rewired
Now the fun bit, game testing time! I’ve got my netbook setup with Mame32, connected the iPac and fingers crossed.
Woot woot, all working perfectly….first game, Rolling Thunder.
The thing I like about the Mini-iPac are the shift key functions. By default, pressing the 1-up button and simultaneously pushing one of four directions on the one player joystick will give access to the Mame main menu, volume controls, exit game etc. It can also be used with other buttons to perform other emulator functions including credit control if say for example you don’t want to have a dedicated coin button. It’s a great feature and cuts down the need to have ‘non gaming’ buttons on your CP.
Next test, 2-up mode and I even persuaded Curstie to come and clear out the streets of Metro City with me.
That’s the control panel done for now. Like I mentioned above, the buttons aren’t exactly matching but for the time being they’ll suffice.
I just need to finish off setting up the emulation PC….which is proving to be a bit of a nightmare but more on that to follow. For now, it’s twin stick Robotron time!
Now with the rear panel lock drilled out and looking a bit worst for wear, I can finally have a looksee inside the arcade cabinet and get an idea of the space available for the PC gear etc.
As a quick fix, to get me up and gaming this weekend I won’t be looking at using the faulty Hantarex monitor but will be swapping this out with a VGA PC monitor instead. I know it’s not arcade perfect but maybe I’ll look at getting the original fixed soon.
Mounted on the wooded shelf below this is the game board. It appears to be a an SNK Techmo World Soccer 96 in a MVS slot 1 board (thanks for the identification assistance JT).
….and I also found quite a bit of documentation in the bottom section of the cabinet as well as a service record - last serviced in 1997 apparently!
Obviously this didn’t include the latest edition of Retro Gaming Magazine (thanks hon!) but am loving the cover of this months edition as I enjoy a coffee, I had to include it in the picture…..Hmm, that gives me an idea, I wonder if I can get Daphne/Dragons Lair running on the PC bound for this cabinet?
The original monitor is housed in a mounting cage which also has a wooden front fascia With the bezel glass and release pins removed, the entire monitor assembly can be lifted out, rotated and slid back in again thus changing the monitor to suit vertical oriented games. A feature I don’t have on my other cabinet and something I’ve longed to have.
Now in vertical mode…it sure it heavy though but the hand slots either side make the job so much easier.
I’ve also released the two clips that hold the control panel assembly in place and can now get access to the joystick, buttons and wiring loom. I’ll need to strip this and attach the iPac and new wiring. I’ll be reusing the gear from the Mini bartop I started to build – see previous blog post - http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/mini-mini-mame-arcade-cabinet-pt7/
Sweet, I found a few coins in the coin box and now another 20p in the CP. – I’ll soon have enough for a chocolate bar
The interior looks a little rusty though, I’ll add that to my list of todos.
I’ve now spent the morning gutting the insides of the cabinet. I’ve carefully removed the main power supply, monitor, wiring, and light fitting behind the marquee. It’s pretty much an empty shell now ready for a bit of a clean before fitting with PC bits n bobs.
I’ve got a couple things I need to thing about as well as I get out the cleaning gear.
1) I’m a huge fan of the Mame frontends called MameWah and Mala and have used these on many cabs and emulation PC’s before. Do I stick to what I know and have a simple game list or go for something with a bit more eye candy…say HyperSpin for example. I don’t intend to have 1000′s of games in this particular cab so all that graphical gloss might not be to distracting.
2) I’d love to have access to the PC speaker volume from the front exterior of the cabinet as volumes can drastically change from game to game and I really don’t want the hassle of opening up the cab every time I want to change volumes. Ideally I’d like to fit an external dial or something similar, or maybe use the Mame software volume controls?…I need to research this a bit more.
3)I want to keep the button layout as is (three per player) but I need to think about which button options to use with the iPac For example, a shift button to give access to emulation settings etc. Also, although I intend to use the coin door for credits for that authentic arcade vibe I’d like to promote one of the buttons (via shift key) to act as a secondary coin button….cos you never know when you’ll run out out actual coins
4)The coin mechanism. This one seems to be a fully electronic model rather than the mechanical type I have in my Phoenix cab. As a result, I’m not sure how I’m going to interface this with the iPac. Maybe I can retrofit a switch in a similar place to the Phoenix coin mech. Again…I need to have a play around with this first…unless someone out there knows how to interface a ‘MARS’ coin mech to Mame?
5) Compared to the nice side art on my other cab, this V-BAS jamma cab certainly looks a bit sparse. I think I’ll have a word with the chaps at Turnarcades when i see them at Revival next month as they really know all about the arcade customisation stuff.
I took the drive up north the other day to pickup that ‘Vbas’ Jamma Arcade machine I won on eBay last weekend. Thankfully my measurements were just about right as with a bit of manoeuvring and taking a few back seat out of the MPV there was just enough room….for the plug and that’s about it
Getting back late and after dark, I dragged it into the garage (yay, finally I’ve got an arcade machine with wheels on the back) I reluctantly left it there until today and with four days off for the Easter break and a little more free time (and light) , I couldn’t wait to get out there for a looksee this afternoon.
Here it is.
Overall the woodwork is in really nice condition. Sure there’s a few bit scuffs here and there but there doesn’t appear to be anything that looks like it’s about to drop off. It could do with a good cleaning though. The rear panels are present and the the T-Molding on both sides is complete with no chipped or loose bits.
I’m also really happy with the bezel glass too, there’s not a mark on it and all the paint on the reverse side is intact and has not flaked. Likewise, (boring though it is – it will be swapped out soon) the ‘V-BAS’marquee is unmarked and complete with both retaining clips
A bit rough down at the bottom side but still sound and the metal work will probably get a fresh coat of paint.
The control panel exterior is in really nice condition with no major scuff, rips or unsightly cigarette burns. Both joysticks seem to be o.k, centred and have a microswitch audible click on all directions. Most of the buttons seem to be good too although there’s a couple on the right hand side that might need replacing or have new switches fitted. Either way, I’ve got plenty of spares so no major problems there. The joystick mount bolts are looking a bit rough and rusty though so I’ll treat them to some new chromed ones.
Clean me!
The eBay seller mentioned that the coin mechanism is fully working but the coin box door at the bottom will need a new lock.
As you can see here, the bottom coin box door is looking a bit rough compared to the coin mech door. I’ll give it a good rub down and a fresh coat of hammerite and hopefully it’ll look much better. It seems to shut o.k though so at least there’s no dents beat out etc.
The seller also mentioned that the monitor was dead but the game board was working. I thought I’d check it out myself and true enough, no picture on screen but the coin and marquee lights up and the familiar SNK startup sound could be heard through the speakers.
My next job is to have a looksee inside and get a feel for where the PC, Monitor and various components will go……it’s here that I hit a snag. When i collected the cab, we were far too busy nattering about good old games, I completely forgot to ask for the keys to the rear panel door I could ask him to mail them down to me but with the holidays etc, there would be no chance of getting these anytime soon and I’m itching to make a start on the Mame conversion.
It’s a cheap tubular lock on the back anywasy and easily replaced and so I broke out the power tools ….and watched a few lock picking Youtube videos.
Well I wasn’t expecting to own another arcade machine when I woke up this morning but after practically being snowed in today and a carefree session on eBay – pop, got myself another one!
It was a bit of a bargain really and was quite surprised to win it at a very low price without many bids. It’s a standard Jamma cab rather than a specific game (the board included is some sort of soccer game) and despite everything looking in really good condition, the monitor appears to be faulty. That’s no problem though as I intend to swap it out for something slightly bigger anyway.
Its more than likely that I’ll use this as a basis for a quick Mame conversion especially as i have everything i need in my spares box to complete this straight away. The cabinet has two sticks fitted (wooho – Robotron twin stick funtastic-times ahead) with three buttons per stick. I could drill through for more, the control panel certainly has room for them but I think I’ll keep this as is and mainly use it for playing classic games.
A couple of features that attracted me to the cab in the first place was that the monitor can be easily be rotated, by lifting out the front glass bezel, rotate the screen and pop the glass back. It’s also slightly taller than my other arcade cabinet and a bonus being quite a tall fella.
All I need to do now is arrange to go pick it up…come on snow melt already!
I’ll be back with more and pictures as soon as I’ve got it and will blog about the conversion as I progress.
Out of curiosity, how many cabs do you have to own to count yourself as having your own arcade hall
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.
Missed iMame when it appeared briefly in the Apple App Store? Not got a jailbroken iOS device and want to play arcade classics? Eager to run arcade games on that iCade you received for Christmas?
Well, there might be a chance afterall with a new (free) game that’s appeared on App Store.
Gridlee is an arcade game that was originally designed for hardware designed by Bally / Sente. It’s an interesting looking game and well worth a look in itself, however the real interesting bit is that it uses a emulator wrapper to allow it to run….and that wrapper appears to be a version of Mame.
Although I haven’t tried this myself yet, it’s alleged that like Mame it has a Rom folder and if you use something like iExplorer or I-funbox and drop other game Roms into this folder and restart the Gridlee app, you’ll be presented with the familiar Mame games list including access to all the usual emulator options (including iCade support).
Even more interesting to those who already have Mame on their iOS devices is that this particular wrapper is based on Mame version 1.3 (.139u1) which is a much more feature rich version than the version of iMame that appeared on the App Store.
It stands to reason that Gridlee might not stay on the App Store for long, so head on over there right now and pick up yourself a copy ASAP.
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.
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
A busy week at work so I’ve not had chance to post a lot since coming back from Play:Expo but one thing I have been working on is building up a suitable PC for a MAME arcade cabinet at the Retro Computer Museum.
and it’s pretty much ready for installation in to the cab, configure the ipac/controls and give it play test (lots!). I’m heading down to the museum this morning with all the relevant bits so hopefully myself and Jim should have this completed today.
Also, I’ve been given a rather nice HP TFT monitor from my work collegue, which has got a really nice pivoting stand allowing the screen to rotate almost 360 degrees including all the way back so it practically lies flat (great for Visual Pinball). As the Mame cab will feature a vertical mounted monitor, this particular TFT has been a great help this week as I’ve been able to setup and test the MAME frontend in the correct orientation at home. My thanks to Savi for this great monitor!
A quick test at work soon turned into a lunchtime competition
Back home, the PC is built and although is of modest specification (P4 2ghz/1Gb) its more than enough to play all vertical games including newer stuff like Do Don Pachi schmups. I’m using an older version of Mame, one i usually use because its good for compatibility and had speed because its prior to all that 3d accelerated changes.The version I’m using is 0.89
For the MAME frontend, I’m using MALA. I’ve always been a fan of MameWAH which is usually my weapon of choice for a simple menu/snapshot/marque frontend. However, it can be a bit if a pain to setup if you haven’t used it for a while as you forget the config file format. MALA is almost similar but has a nice setup GUI as well as command line and I find that setting up custom graphical layouts and game lists are much easier as MALA is equipped with tools to help with this.
The PC is pretty much done and ready for installation into to the cabinet today. I’ve still got a few duplicate/clone roms to remove from the game list and there’s a few that have either missing snapshots and/or marque pictures but that can be sorted out whilst I’m at the museum. I’m not sure if Jim has used the standard Mame controls for the iPac interface for the joystick/buttons but again, I can always adjust them to suit the frontend when I get there.
One final play test last night.
Right, I better get cracking and load up the car and head down to the museum. I’ll be back with more photos soon.
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.
The builder has fitted controls from an iCade, an iPhone connected to a VGA screen via the Apple VGA adaptor and a novel idea to boost the sound. Run Mame and you have a pretty sweet arcade machine.
Further details and lots of build pictures can be found here -
I could ask him to mail them down to me but with the holidays etc, there would be no chance of getting these anytime soon and I’m itching to make a start on the Mame conversion.
