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Arcade Cabinet / Retro Discussion


RussTCB

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On 10/05/2020 at 1:59 PM, RussTCB said:

Thread name changed at the request of @Dazey

Thanks for that Russ. I figured that this has kinda evolved towards a more general retro/arcade thread so maybe a name change could invite a little more discussion. 

So at the time of my last post in this thread I'd pretty much installed a monitor in my cab but no controls and was just using a Raspberry Pi plugged into an XBox controller with Retrorama Rampage Pi image. I kinda got distracted so the cab has basically been sitting unfinished gathering dust for the better part of a year and the current lockdown situation has kinda inspired me to pick up where I left off and get this thing finished. 

I ordered two Sanwa Denshi balltop joysticks along with an iPac2 encoder board to plug them into and have now installed both. I've also decided to get rid of the Raspberry Pi as for some reason it ran like a bag of shit even on some of the older sprite based arcade games (I'm guessing that this is just my Pi as other people seem to use them just fine).

Anyway I got an old(ish) laptop from work that they were getting rid of (intel i5, 8GB RAM, 500GB SSD and 1TB external HD) and I've installed Launchbox and Big Box Premium ($50 lifetime licence) as my emulator manager and front end. I've downloaded the most recent MAME romset along with CHDs (60GB and 500GB respectively) along with full sets of SNES, Genesis, NES, Neo Geo and N64 roms and after much pissing about trying to set it up I've finally got a fully working arcade cab that runs brilliantly.

All in all I'm pretty happy with my build for now. Next step would be to change the laptop for a something with a decent graphics card in it for Gamecube/PS2 emulation etc but I'm not in a rush to do that for now.

Is anybody else using a similar frontend setup? I think that Launchbox is by far the best I've managed to find. Makes it really easy to add systems and games without having to worry about text editors and config files (looking at you HyperSpin) and without having to find your way around a Linux system if you're using RetroPie. It also auto imports all the game info, graphics and videos for your collection which I think is fucking awesome!

Here's a couple of pics and vids of the system as is including a video cap of the front end. All I need to do now is connect the power to the marquee light and LEDs in the buttons and fit the speaker covers to the top of the cab.

Zzcqaf8.jpg 

wfLuyPV.jpg 

JR8ckjj.jpg 

 

 

 

Edited by Dazey
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Just downloaded a 128GB Sega Saturn ROM collection in about 3 hours. Quite impressed with that to be honest. :lol: Now to see if I can figure out how to configure the emulator to get the games working on my cab. :lol: 

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  • 3 weeks later...

All button and marquee lighting now installed and I’ve replaced my old little PC speakers with a pair of 5” car speakers and an amplifier. :lol: 

Looking and sounding pretty good now. :lol: 

 

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On 07/06/2019 at 3:51 AM, RussTCB said:

My MK cab received some serious custom upgrades tonight! 

IMG_20190606_221346_337.jpg

That looks really cool. Been looking into these the past couple of years, it's just finding the time

I was looking into getting a decent version of Tron, which I like and was bad at, and Gorf, which I could clock at the arcade. Dragon's Lair and Space Ace looked pretty when they came into the arcade but I prefer the earlier games.

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16 minutes ago, Mysteron said:

That looks really cool. Been looking into these the past couple of years, it's just finding the time

I was looking into getting a decent version of Tron, which I like and was bad at, and Gorf, which I could clock at the arcade. Dragon's Lair and Space Ace looked pretty when they came into the arcade but I prefer the earlier games.

I’ve just installed all the old Laserdisc games on my cab and played them for about 5 minutes before remembering why we don’t have laserdisc games anymore. :lol: 

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36 minutes ago, Mysteron said:

That looks really cool. Been looking into these the past couple of years, it's just finding the time

I was looking into getting a decent version of Tron, which I like and was bad at, and Gorf, which I could clock at the arcade. Dragon's Lair and Space Ace looked pretty when they came into the arcade but I prefer the earlier games.

LOVE me some Tron. I have the game on the Raspberry Pi image that's in my Moonwalker cab. Can't really play it right without the proper controls though. 

This dude went the extra mile and converted an Arcade1Up cab to a dedicated Tron machine:

 

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10 hours ago, RussTCB said:

LOVE me some Tron. I have the game on the Raspberry Pi image that's in my Moonwalker cab. Can't really play it right without the proper controls though. 

This dude went the extra mile and converted an Arcade1Up cab to a dedicated Tron machine:

 

That looks great

Golden Tee was great as well, that was the one with the roller ball, very quirky at the time. Another game popular here was Gauntlet, but I don't know whether that has aged as well. Have played it in recent times, and it wasn't the experience of yesteryear. I used to enjoy Scramble as well, the side scroller. We had a sit down cabinet version here at a local club I used to go to, ages ago. There are some real gems from years ago

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4 hours ago, Mysteron said:

That looks great

Golden Tee was great as well, that was the one with the roller ball, very quirky at the time. Another game popular here was Gauntlet, but I don't know whether that has aged as well. Have played it in recent times, and it wasn't the experience of yesteryear. I used to enjoy Scramble as well, the side scroller. We had a sit down cabinet version here at a local club I used to go to, ages ago. There are some real gems from years ago

I did buy the Arcade1Up Golden Tee cabinet. It's VERY popular every Friday when I have people over to spin records haha.

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9 minutes ago, RussTCB said:

I did buy the Arcade1Up Golden Tee cabinet. It's VERY popular every Friday when I have people over to spin records haha.

I can imagine. Great game. I used to like the sports games. I remember Hypersports being popular, I wasn't good at that though. And Mortal Kombat, what a game that was when it came out. Like Street Fighter, but you could pull people's spines out at the end of a round, brutal at the time. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

I've been looking at picking up a NES. I always preferred the look of them over the SNES, but never actually owned one. Aesthetically pleasing. I'd never find the time to play it though, my SNES is up in the loft with all the glorious games I amassed back in the day.

I found an old Gameboy Advance SP that hasn't seen daylight in a long time. Ordered a flash card for it so I can load all the games onto it. I've had an itching to play Mario again, but I never liked the PC emulators and the hassle of setting up the console to play for 10 min and turn off isn't worth it, so at least with this, I can pick it up and play whenever I fancy it!

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 7/3/2020 at 3:57 PM, RussTCB said:

Put the NBA Jam cab together this morning. That thing is sweet. Having friends over in a few hours, should be fun to give the game a work out. 

Hey Russ, how do you feel about the Arcade1up virtual pinball machines that are coming out?  I was going to build a full size but I'm trying to wait it out and see if they can be modded like the arcade cabs.  It would take me forever to build one with the little free time I have.  If the Arcade1ups  can be modded I would want to get the graphics from the original gnr pinball from 94 and have a 3/4 size version.  I modded my SF2 machine and your Moonwalker mod has me thinking about doing it with pinball.

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18 minutes ago, Swampfox said:

Hey Russ, how do you feel about the Arcade1up virtual pinball machines that are coming out?  I was going to build a full size but I'm trying to wait it out and see if they can be modded like the arcade cabs.  It would take me forever to build one with the little free time I have.  If the Arcade1ups  can be modded I would want to get the graphics from the original gnr pinball from 94 and have a 3/4 size version.  I modded my SF2 machine and your Moonwalker mod has me thinking about doing it with pinball.

I'm honestly not sure what to think yet. I'm certain they'll be able to be modded, but I have no idea what will go into that. I also don't like the $549 price point, so I'll definitely wait til spring to get one for half price or less. 

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Very nice @Iron MikeyJ. I'm still on the 4 cabs and I really don't think I'll get more. A nice looking (and playing) Tron cab from A1U would be an instant buy for me, but I'm really not sure if there's anything else I'd make room for. The records and sound equipment take up so much room that I kinda have to choose going forward. The choice is always going to be music though, so I have to save the most room for audio related stuff.

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1 hour ago, RussTCB said:

Very nice @Iron MikeyJ. I'm still on the 4 cabs and I really don't think I'll get more. A nice looking (and playing) Tron cab from A1U would be an instant buy for me, but I'm really not sure if there's anything else I'd make room for. The records and sound equipment take up so much room that I kinda have to choose going forward. The choice is always going to be music though, so I have to save the most room for audio related stuff.

I have my records and player in this room as well, you just can't see them well in the pics here. My collection is no where near yours. I probably have 200 or so records. I enjoy collecting them, for sure. I'm a bit of a multi collector kinda person, meaning I collect a TON of different things, but maybe not a TON of one or two things. 

As for Arcade1up, I'm watching what they are doing with pinball. That's what I want next, a sweet virtual pinball machine.

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On 10/20/2020 at 10:20 PM, Iron MikeyJ said:

I have my records and player in this room as well, you just can't see them well in the pics here. My collection is no where near yours. I probably have 200 or so records. I enjoy collecting them, for sure. I'm a bit of a multi collector kinda person, meaning I collect a TON of different things, but maybe not a TON of one or two things. 

As for Arcade1up, I'm watching what they are doing with pinball. That's what I want next, a sweet virtual pinball machine.

If I started collecting anything other than records, my wife would kill me haha. 

As far as pinball goes, it's looking like AtGames is a MUCH better deal than Arcade1Up at this point. We'll have to see what the quality is when they come out, but based on specs alone, AtGames killed Arcade1Up. 

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24 minutes ago, RussTCB said:

If I started collecting anything other than records, my wife would kill me haha. 

As far as pinball goes, it's looking like AtGames is a MUCH better deal than Arcade1Up at this point. We'll have to see what the quality is when they come out, but based on specs alone, AtGames killed Arcade1Up. 

One thing to bear in mind re AtGames is that they don’t have a great reputation for quality. They made a number of really bad Genesis clone consoles not too long ago. 

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3 minutes ago, Dazey said:

One thing to bear in mind re AtGames is that they don’t have a great reputation for quality. They made a number of really bad Genesis clone consoles not too long ago. 

I remember that. People seem quite happy with their arcade cabs though, so I'm caustiously optimistic about the pinball machines.

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@RussTCB,

I've been watching the Atgames pinball as well, and I agree that it looks like the better deal. I'm going to wait until I have all the information before I decide, but right now Arcade 1up is what I'll probably get. 

The biggest factor for me is space, my room isn't huge, and I have to maximize every square inch. So while the ATgames table looks better specs wise, me finding room for it is an issue. I feel more confident that I can squeeze the smaller Arcade1up table in somewhere. 

My 2nd issue is artwork. While it might not mean much to some, the ATgames table looks ugly imo. What we've seen from Arcade1up just looks far more appealing to the eye for me. Sure you can spend $600 on the ATgames, and another $150 on your own artwork. But now your $750 invested... Ouch.

I don't have much interest in either the Star Wars or Marvel tables (though if I had to pick, I'd pick the marvel one). I've heard that Arcade1up had 10 different tables that might get released. I've heard rumors about a Universal Studios table (jurassic park, back to the future, Jaws and ET). That one appeals to me the most, if it gets released. 

Having said all of this. If space or money are not an issue, the ATgames table is better. Just like the ATgames legends cab is better than any one Arcade1up. Not better than modded arcade1ups though. I wouldn't trade my modded SF for the Legends cab, no way. 

I WISH a virtual gnr pinball would get released, I'd be all over that.

Edited by Iron MikeyJ
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