Yarr The Pirate!
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Arcade Cabinet
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Author:  Ketrebu [ Fri Dec 30, 2011 12:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Arcade Cabinet
So since I couldn't find anybody last night to talk me out of it (looking at all you afk people) I've gone ahead and started the ball rolling on getting my own MAME arcade cabinet built.

In case you're not sure what these are, it's an arcade cabinet, like at the arcades, except it has a PC inside of it with a harddrive full of every classic and emulated game under the sun, and a menu system to replace the OS interface with an easy way to get at all of the games.

Once upon a time I thought of maybe trying to do this myself and just ordering all the bits and pieces, and getting a carpenter friend of mine help with building the actual cabinet itself, but I don't have the drive in me anymore for that. So I thought maybe I could find somewhere to buy or get it custom made. Theres a well known place in the US that does it but they cost a good $3000+ even for a basic one.

While looking for a UK alternative, I found a place that seems to do them custom built basically any way you want it for under half that price. And it's literally just up the road from here, like a 15 minute drive. Better still, they're able to make them "slimline" so that they don't take up your whole damn house and be nowhere near as heavy. The only reason they were ever so damn big was because of the massive CRT TVs inside them anyway.

So I'm looking at getting made a so-called "slim" cabinet:

Image
(Sample picture, may look different, but basic shape/size/layout will be the same.)

I'm going to get it fitted with the lit up buttons and marquee and a proper coin mech (you'll have to actually put coins in the machine to play, no mashing the insert coin button.) and hopefully a few fancy extras like USB ports on the front for attaching addons.

It will probably take approximately 4-6 weeks to build, but you do get photos and updates on it's progress so I'm going to post those in here as and when I get them.

So there you have it, tell me if i'm crazy if you want, but I already contacted the company with what I want. Can also let me know if you know of any particular arcade games I need to get ahold of, like Turtles/Simpsons Arcade and the Metal Slug series. This thing won't actually come with a game collection pre-installed on it (just a small selection of free ones) since, you know, it would be slightly less than legal.
Author:  Ridere [ Fri Dec 30, 2011 12:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
nah, I don't think that's crazy. It seems pretty neat, to be honest. You need to make an awesome man cave place now. haha. I'd totally get one of those, actually, if I had a "man cave" area. I have an office, but it's not the same. lol
Author:  tehkei [ Fri Dec 30, 2011 2:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
If you got the money, go for it dude. You would get more cool points if you made it yourself thou. maybe you can do some cool metal slug art on the side or something and also get all the KoF games on that thing!
Author:  Pantherxx [ Fri Dec 30, 2011 6:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
I would buy it ^_^b

edit: I own a real coin Op pinball machine at home and its Guns N' Rose Verison!
Author:  Kioko [ Fri Dec 30, 2011 6:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
Ridere wrote:
nah, I don't think that's crazy. It seems pretty neat, to be honest. You need to make an awesome man cave place now. haha. I'd totally get one of those, actually, if I had a "man cave" area. I have an office, but it's not the same. lol


you have your own house now, technically every room could potentionally be a man cave.
Author:  Pantherxx [ Sat Dec 31, 2011 5:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
Kioko wrote:
Ridere wrote:
nah, I don't think that's crazy. It seems pretty neat, to be honest. You need to make an awesome man cave place now. haha. I'd totally get one of those, actually, if I had a "man cave" area. I have an office, but it's not the same. lol


you have your own house now, technically every room could potentionally be a man cave.



Don't you mean "He owns a Cave?" :mrgreen:
Author:  Yarr [ Sat Dec 31, 2011 9:01 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
I dont have a Man Cave at my new house, I have a nerdatorium. However its now the back end of the basement now. There wasa small room in the basement I was going to make into a full blow shrine to my nerdy life, but its the room under the laundry room (the laundry room in our house in the main floor). I took a look at the room after we moved in and noticed that theres a few marks from water damage on the walls. So I dont feel like tempting fate and putting a bunch of my most valuble paper belongings in that room.

However, I have already told my wife (and shes totally cool with it) that I will eventually be putting a cabinet down here. However I want a full blown Street Fighter (Any) or Killer Instinct (1 or 2) to put in here. One of the biggest regrets I have is not bying a KI2 arcade (in perfect shape) for 400 bucks about 10 years ago. I had the OK from my parents and everything, but I didnt do it because 400 bucks back then was a little too much to spend. In retrospec it wasnt.
Author:  Pantherxx [ Sat Dec 31, 2011 11:56 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
Heh I remember my dad yelled at me when I bought 1982 Honda XR200R dirt bike for 200 buck back in 1997 and it was well worth it and I still have it also it runs! Then that Pinball was also best ever I bought, yes my dad yell at me once again. heh heh

Now I have been saving monies to goal for new house that we need for my wife and kids that need a place so I will get one in year or so and I will post the picture of my new house when I get one.

Yarr I gotta come down there and visit ya in your area when I can at a public place that we can chat for bit.
Author:  Ketrebu [ Tue Jan 03, 2012 9:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
I've finalised my order and paid my deposit, this project is now a-go.

It's costing me around £1100 in the end, which is about $1700. I could cut down this cost a lot if I wanted, but I decided to have a bunch of the extras because I figured if I'm already splashing out I might as well get it done right rather than wishing I had gotten something added or even worse screw it up by trying to add it myself later.

Final specs will be:

- Full-size two-player cabinet, but much thinner to account for it using an LCD screen instead of a big old CRT.

- 24" LCD Screen. Again, it's going to be an LCD. I know this may dishearten some of the purists, but the huge space saving alone is worth it to me. There's some really good CRT DirectX filters out there these days too, I might have a play with them sometime to see how they look.

- Subwoofer (2.1) sound system, just to give the thing a bit more oomph and make it sound a lot more like what original cabinets sound like.

- Illuminated buttons and marquee. Because having things lit up is cool. I expect this to look awesome in a dimly lit room. Maybe one day I'll try and fit this with a programmable LED driver. Then you can do things like make the buttons flash and have them do different things depending on what you're doing.

- Controls. It'll have the standard "American style" Capcom layout. What you see on most 360/PS3 arcade sticks today is what's known as the "Japanese style" Capcom layout. All of the player 1 controls will be blue (and lit up in blue) and all of the player 2 controls will be in red. The arcade sticks themselves should match too.

- Coin Mech. You'll actually be able to insert coins. They're not real coins, because it's illegal to make money off of it (even if it's just your own money) without a licence or something. Instead it'll come with a set of 50 or so brass tokens. I'm tempted to disable the "insert coin" buttons on the cabinet (or just in MAME or something) so you have no choice but to actually insert some coins. Feels like it kind of defeats the point if you can just mash the insert coin button.

- Gonna have some USB ports hidden underneath the control panel. I figured this would be a great idea for connecting extra periphreals if I ever felt like it rather than spending a huge fortune getting the cabinet built with them. This could be anything from a gamepad, to a light gun, to a steering wheel, to a freaking dance mat. It's only a 2P cab, but I could plug in two pads and play 4P on it easily, rather than getting a 4P cab that costs a fortune and won't be used so much.

- It'll have an old Pentium 4 inside it to begin with. Most older emulated games will run perfectly fine on it. I can always replace the machine with a Core 2 Duo should I ever want to try any of the later stuff. I know there are people who install Street Fighter IV on these machines. Though I was never a big Street Fighter guy, I think I'd maybe rather play Marvel vs. Capcom on it.

I'm supposed to receive photographs of the cabinet as it is being built as part of the service, which I'll post here for you guys to see. Obviously once I have the thing I'll try and post some more stuff about it too.

Should take about a month, looking forward to it.

You know, just as much as playing on it I think I'm looking forward to having the thing running in Attract Mode. That's the demo gameplay mode arcade cabinets run at when nobody is playing on them. I believe you can set up these MAME cabinets to randomly cycle through games (choosing them at random) and show them being played.
Author:  Pantherxx [ Wed Jan 04, 2012 5:25 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
Ket, My pinball machine have Coin Op and they work on real monies but I have then disable to free games.

Here one looks like this one from picture but dont have my camera working atm.

Image
Author:  Kluya [ Wed Jan 04, 2012 9:48 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
WOW Ket, that sounds badass. I want one now haha. I would take LCD > CRT any day.

I would play Mortal Kombat trilogy until my hands bled. Just like back in the day.

I am excited to see your updates and pictures!
Author:  Yarr [ Wed Jan 04, 2012 7:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
Ket if you can setup some filters to add the CRT look (bleeding colours, black lines and so on) then I can forgive you for going LCD.

lol. Kluya isnt quite the purist I am.

Im super excited to see this when its done and Im beyond jelous of Ket lol.
Author:  Kioko [ Wed Jan 04, 2012 7:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
i want one of these
Image

yes, please!
Author:  Ketrebu [ Wed Jan 04, 2012 7:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
They're not perfect but the MAME HLSL filter only really came into existance less than a year ago, so if you look around you'll find wildly varying results. Eventually someone will get the look down.

e.g: "curved" screen, with 4x resolution scanlines and a bit of distortion on the color.
Author:  Dmitry [ Wed Jan 04, 2012 8:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
When that's done you should have everyone over for a night. Fuck anyone that doesn't want to fly.
Author:  Yarr [ Wed Jan 04, 2012 9:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
yeah thats pretty cool ket.
Author:  Kluya [ Thu Jan 05, 2012 10:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
Ok I do like the curved screen and the scanlines. I can appreciate that lol.
Author:  Ketrebu [ Sun Jan 22, 2012 3:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
Sorry, no cabinet pics yet, but I do have something to show.

I've been looking around for a front-end to put on my cabinet when I get it. There are basically two choices:

1) Hyperspin. Overly flashy. Lots of CPU power required.
2) Everything else. Looks like a list. Basic. Plain. Boring.

But I'd personally rather have something in the middle, that looks kinda flashy but still works like a normal game selection list. I've looked everywhere for the past week or two trying to find either something that fits the bill or a way to skin an existing one to be nice, and I can't find anything.

So in true me style, I'm just going to try and make my own. It can't be THAT hard, right?

I figured it'd look cool to be like one of the DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) song selection lists, with the "wheel" style list and information on the left. So after two days or so, here's where I am:

Attachment:
File comment: Arcade FE WIP 1
arcadefe.jpg
arcadefe.jpg [ 253.26 KiB | Viewed 4903 times ]

Tha background is animated. The wheel spins around. And the picture on the left is actually a video that plays the current game you're hovering over.

I want to get a decent front render of an arcade cab (seems to be a lot harder than you'd think) to overlay so it looks like the floating video is actually on a cab screen.

EDIT: Actually, here's a vid, easier to show off.
Author:  Yarr [ Sun Jan 22, 2012 4:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
Im officially jelous.
Author:  Ketrebu [ Mon Jan 23, 2012 4:29 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
You can see my MAME collection so far in that video. I've been hand picking the games as I find out about them rather than just dumping a complete 40,000 game romset (most of which will be horrible) onto my computer. Anybody in to this stuff that spots something important I don't have?

What about Street Fighter in particular, there's about 30 different versions of it? Alpha, Zero, 2, 3, Turbo, Hyper, etc?

Even since that video I've already improved it a bit simply by having it show the name and company/date in the corner along with a little "start button" that changes based on how many players the game is (shows a 2P start button if the game is two player, etc) I also made more room in the middle of the wheel so that there's now a little selection marker thing. I'm now looking for render of a front of a cab I can super-impose the video onto.

I'll post some more pics later.
Author:  Ketrebu [ Thu Feb 02, 2012 7:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
I believe this is my (obviously unfinished still) cabinet. It was posted on the company's facebook page with my initials on it.

Attachment:
File comment: Cabinet WIP 1
cab1.jpg
cab1.jpg [ 60.66 KiB | Viewed 4844 times ]
Author:  Yarr [ Thu Feb 02, 2012 7:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
you suck
Author:  Pantherxx [ Thu Feb 02, 2012 8:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
awesome and can't way to see it when its done.

Yarr, you should hate me for having pinball machine here lol
Author:  tehkei [ Fri Feb 03, 2012 10:59 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
Looks really skinny :P
Author:  Ketrebu [ Fri Feb 17, 2012 9:32 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Arcade Cabinet
So the cabinet is done, I'm now busy arranging delivery with a courier.

Attachment:
File comment: Cabinet 2
cab2.jpg
cab2.jpg [ 33.43 KiB | Viewed 4785 times ]

I'd post more pictures but as you can see the lighting on them is terrible. I'll try and take some decent photos with a real camera (i.e.: not a phone camera) once I have it. Hopefully some time (early?) next week it should be sitting proud in my room.

I'm going to try and fiddle with the wiring slightly when I get the chance to attach a LED controller board. Instead of all the lights just always being on, I'd be able to do things like animate them and get only the controls relevant to the current game to light up. It'll be neat.
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